Lillian Ross: Friend or Foe of Hemingway

The below is from a recent article about Lillian Ross who wrote an iconic interview of Hemingway. I quote just a bit but reprint my blog post on this topic. Thank you as always for your interest in Hemingway. Love, Christine

“Lillian Ross, who recently died at the age of 99, was one of the most remarkable writers of her time. She wrote for The New Yorker for half a dozen decades and redefined magazine journalism while providing fresh, vivid accounts of reality. She was never seen writing a note. The critic Edmund Wilson called her “the girl with the built-in tape-recorder.”

Her clever handling of quotations was not always admired. She first aroused intense criticism with her profile of Ernest Hemingway, published in The New Yorker in 1950. Hemingway loved to talk about himself, especially when drinking, and he particularly liked comparing himself to champion athletes. When Ross interviewed him, he had just turned 50.

Many believed that she had depicted the leading American novelist of the day as a drunken blowhard. Hemingway didn’t think so. He liked the article and years later even provided a jacket blurb for a book by Ross.”

Read my blog post on this from a while ago. So sorry for Ms. Ross’ passing as she was a fine journalist, but Hemingway, from my reading, was not thrilled with the article she wrote. He accepted that it was what it was, the dye was cast, and maintained a friendship with her. My post is below.

Older post from nov 2015

How Do You Like It Now, Gentlemen?

The above is a link to the Lillian Ross interview with Hemingway, a sad betrayal of his kindness and friendship to a young writer. My thoughts on this below.

There’s a famous profile of Hemingway that was published on May 13, 1950 in The New Yorker done by a very young journalist at the time named Lillian Ross. Hemingway had helped her with her first big article about Sidney Franklin, the first Jewish-American bull fighter. Hemingway and Lillian Ross became friends and as Hemingway often did, he enjoyed taking this younger, very smart woman under his wing and addressing her as “daughter” and sharing some of the things that he knew with her.

Lillian's book after Hem's death — Lillian’s book after Hem’s death

Lillian Ross started working at The New Yorker in 1945 and seemed particularly adept at charming her subjects into saying things they might otherwise not say. She asked to do a profile on Hemingway, who needed the publicity like a hole in the head, but he agreed, hoping to help her career. She shadowed him for months and in particular went with him to New York on a three-day tour. Hemingway viewed it all as a lark.

Here’s where my objectivity stops. As I noted in my opening post five years ago, while I try to be objective about Hemingway and his flaws, which were many, I’m on his side. I’m not neutral. Lillian Ross’ article made him look like a self-involved jerk, almost ignorant. He thought she was his friend.

In that article are statements by Hemingway such as “Book is like engine. We have to slack her off gradually.” And then there’s this repeated gem apropos of nothing, “How do you like it now, Gentlemen.” Ross always maintained that it was an affectionate portrait of a wonderful writer, but, in essence, it made fun of him and it made him look ludicrous. If that’s how she saw him, then so be it. The press is free and she can write what she’d like to write, but don’t pretend it was an “affectionate” portrayal.

At the time, Lillian Ross was 24 years old and it was the opportunity of a lifetime to profile Ernest Hemingway, the biggest writer of the day. Years later, The New York Times wrote that “The effect of her severely unadorned portrait was to create an impression of an unpleasant egotist, a celebrity who, to a pathetic extent, had identified himself with his own public image.” As one of Hemingway’s biographers, Jeffrey Meyers, wrote later that she’d repaid his generosity with meanness and malice, and established her reputation at his expense.” Quoting Meyers again, he notes that she never recorded or revealed the serious and sensitive side of his character and chose instead to portray him as a boring braggart. So how do you like it now, Gentlemen?

When Lillian published the profile in book form shortly after Hemingway’s death, she still claimed it was a sympathetic portrait of a great, loveable man. Few readers were fooled. She also claimed he was fine with it. True. He read it before publication; felt the dye was cast so said little; and passed on it, but it was not really “fine” with him. He was hurt.

If you look at the cover, could Lillian have picked a less attractive, less compelling photo? (See below right). In a reissue, there’s a nice photo of Hemingway and Lillian on the front, but I believe the original shows a Hemingway looking out of it and bizarre. If I’m wrong on this, someone out there probably knows, so please correct me.

Lillian Ross has written a new book in which Ross has collected selected pieces, including the Hemingway profile along with newer works spanning her sixty year career as a journalist. It is called “Reporting Always: Writings From The New Yorker.” It was published last week by Scribner’s, which, of course, is Hemingway’s publisher.

I can’t help being wounded for him. He trusted her and thought they were having some fun together and that she would not portray him as a lout. It’s his fault in part, no question for being too casual and not foreseeing damage for not taking the interview seriously. However, his loyalty was betrayed.

Take a read and see what you think. Perhaps you’ll see it differently. I’m happy to stand corrected or confronted.

Love,

Christine

Answers to Trivia Test

Real aficionados will find this so easy but casual readers . . . not so much. Answers below!

: Mary’s book

1) Which Hemingway novel(s) were made into movies (Check all applicable)

The Sun Also Rises YES
Old Man and the Sea YES
For Whom the Bell Tolls YES
A Farewell to Arms YES

2) Number of wives

Three
Four X
Five
Two

Bonus point for first names (Hadley, Pauline, Martha, Mary)

3) What was Hemingway’s nickname for the Nobel Prize for Literature? THE IGNOBLE PRIZE

4) What animals populated his Cuban home? CATS and Dogs and chickens

5) As a writer, was the Hemingway the type to:

get it down right the first time with few revisions or
did he revise extensively YES

6) Famous couples in his books

Jake and ? (BRETT)
Robert Jordan and ? (MARIA)
Frederic and ? (CATHERINE)
the Colonel and ? (RENATA)

7) What was Hemingway’s personal nickname from the time he was 27? PAPA

8) Which book was Hemingway’s memoir and love story to the city of Paris? A MOVEABLE FEAST

9) In what state was Hemingway born? ILLINOIS

10) In what state did Hemingway die? IDAHO

11) Where do Hemingway’s original papers and most of his memorabilia reside? THE KENNEDY LIBRARY

12) To whom did Hemingway say “Never mistake movement for action.” MARLENE DIETRICH

13) Who was Hemingway’s closest Hollywood friend, starred in one of his movies, and who “made it to the barn” (their slang for ‘died’) before Hem, much to Hemingway’s grief. GARY COOPER

14) Who said that Hemingway needs a new woman for each new book? F. SCOTT FITZGERALD and Faulkner said something similar: that Hemingway seemed to feel he had to marry every woman he fell in love with.

: Marlene

So You Think You Know Hemingway? Take My Trivia Test!

ready for Hemingway Party July 21 with Trivia Test

Real aficionados will find this so very easy but casual readers . . . not so much. Answers in a few days.

1) Which Hemingway novel(s) were made into movies (Check all applicable)

The Sun Also Rises
Old Man and the Sea
For Whom the Bell Tolls
A Farewell to Arms

2) Number of wives

Three
Four
Five
Two

Bonus point for first names

3) What was Hemingway’s nickname for the Nobel Prize for Literature?

4) What animals populated his Cuban home?

5) As a writer, was the Hemingway the type to:

get it down right the first time with few revisions or
did he revise extensively

6) Famous couples in his books

Jake and ?
Robert Jordan and ?
Frederic and ?
the Colonel and ?

7) What was Hemingway’s personal nickname from the time he was 27?

8) Which book was Hemingway’s memoir and love story to the city of Paris?

9) In what state was Hemingway born?

10) In what state did Hemingway die?

11) Where do Hemingway’s original papers and most of his memorabilia reside?

12) To whom did Hemingway say “Never mistake movement for action.”

13) Who was Hemingway’s closest Hollywood friend, starred in one of his movies, and who “made it to the barn” (their slang for ‘died’) before Hem, much to Hemingway’s grief.

14) Who said that Hemingway needs a new woman for each new book?

Story from Hemingway at age 10 is found in Key West

Hemingway’s spare style started early. Read for yourself! Article by Robert k. Elder Love, Christine

Hemingway’s First Short Story Found in Key West
By ROBERT K. ELDER SEPT. 29, 2017

Hemingway’s First Short Story Found in Key West

By ROBERT K. ELDERSEPT. 29, 2017

Ten-year-old Ernest Hemingway’s notebook containing his untitled, previously unknown work of fiction. CreditSandra Spanier

When Hurricane Irma smashed into Key West, Fla., author Shel Silverstein’s historic home was nearly leveled. But it was another home in his neighborhood that had Brewster Chamberlin, a writer and historian, worried.

His friend Sandra Spanier was also nervous. Not only because she feared for Mr. Chamberlin, who weathered the hurricane at home with his wife, but also because they shared a discovery that few people knew about.

In May, she and Mr. Chamberlin found Ernest Hemingway’s first short story — an untitled, previously unknown work that he wrote at the age of 10 — in the archives of the Bruce family, longtime friends of the Hemingways. now this rare artifact could be blown off the island entirely. “I was really terrified,” said Ms. Spanier, the general editor of the Hemingway Letters Project and an English professor at Penn State University.

On Wednesday, Sept. 27, Mr. Chamberlin returned to the archive in Key West’s Old Town neighborhood. He walked past fallen trees and debris lining the yards, sidewalks and streets. “The collection is in fine shape,” Mr. Chamberlin reported. While the property lost several large trees, “there was no damage whatsoever to the building,” he said.

The notebook was there, unharmed, tucked inside a Ziploc freezer bag, with “Sep. 8, 1909,” written in black marker.

But how this notebook traveled from Hemingway’s hometown in Oak Park, Ill., to storage in ammo boxes in Key West is another story. Hemingway was the best chronicler of his own life, or in modern terms: a hoarder. He kept not only photos and letters, but also receipts, ticket stubs, dental X-rays, school assignments, Spanish bullfighting magazines and other ephemera. By the time Hemingway died in 1961, he left scores of material scattered in places such as Key West, Oak Park, Cuba and his home in Ketchum, Idaho.

Ernest Hemingway, left, poses with his longtime friend Toby Bruce in 1940. The latest collection was found in the archives of the Bruce family. CreditRegional History Department Ketchum Community Library

The author’s fourth wife, Mary Welsh Hemingway, spent years gathering letters, notebooks and Hemingway’s unfinished manuscripts, including the memoir of his Paris years, “A Moveable Feast.” In the winter of 1962, she traveled to Key West to visit Betty and Telly Otto “Toby” Bruce, who retrieved a pile of boxes left in a storeroom behind Sloppy Joe’s Bar, Hemingway’s favorite saloon. Bruce was a longtime confidant who had served as Hemingway’s mechanic, handyman and sometime chauffeur.

Mary took what she deemed important back to New York and gave the rest to the Bruces.

The collection also includes little-seen Hemingway photos, letters, a lock of the author’s hair and 46 prints, a gift from the famous photographer Walker Evans. Only within the last 15 years has it begun to be properly cataloged, due largely to the efforts of Mr. Chamberlin, who wrote “The Hemingway Log,” a timeline of the author’s life and career.

Hemingway’s travelogue through Ireland and Scotland was written as letters to his parents and what seem to be diary entries, so it didn’t seem significant. It was only when Ms. Spanier visited Mr. Chamberlin in May that they realized Hemingway never made this trip, as a child or as an adult. It was then that the full weight of the discovery hit them. “Oh my God, I thought, this is quite something. This is Hemingway’s first attempt at fiction,” Mr. Chamberlin recalled thinking.

In one section of the notebook, young Hemingway tells the story of a dead man who returns once a year to rebuild Ross Castle in Ireland, and host a nighttime feast. “When daylight comes the castle falls in ruins and O’Donahue returns to his grave,” wrote Hemingway in a spidery scrawl.

Although Hemingway’s penmanship wouldn’t improve much, his writing would. The story foreshadows the writer to be, not only in terms of Hemingway’s economy of language and use of landscape, but also in his mixing of reportage with fiction. This is a technique Hemingway would employ throughout his career to inject realism into his stories, to ground them with gravity of facts and experience.

There are no grade marks on the piece, so it’s unknown whether this was a draft of an English assignment, or if Hemingway was writing for his own amusement.

As for Dink Bruce, he couldn’t be more surprised by the whole thing, although time and the recent hurricane have made him rethink the future of the archive.

“A tornado can take them out, but they are as safe as they can be right now,” said Mr. Bruce, who splits his time between Key West and Livingston, Mont.

He’s considering selling the archive, so it can find a new home inside or outside of Florida.

“It deserves to be in some place where it can be studied,” he said.

Robert K. Elder is the co-author of “Hidden Hemingway: Inside the Ernest Hemingway Archives of Oak Park” and six other books.