Sunday, July 18, 2010

By Reviewed by Mark Howell

"A Portrait of Hemingway

as a Young Man"

By Jerome Tuccille

Blue Mustang Press, $13.95

'Ihave written this book with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek, but also with great respect and admiration for Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, Ford Maddox Ford, Morley Callaghan and other truly fine writers of perhaps the most glamorous era in 20th-century literature. I have wanted to write this book for some time now for therapeutic as well as literary reasons."

What could this author's note by Jerome Tuccille possibly mean?

It means what it means for all of us in need of therapy: That it feels so grand to have your way with Hemingway.

Tuccille has done it before, in his biographies of Donald Trump, Rupert Murdoch, Alan Greenspan and the Gallo wine clan with its roots in organized crime ("Gallo be Thy Name"). The author's photo on the back cover shows a bald and portly fellow sitting under an ivy-clad tree, wearing a magnificent wool cardigan and a beatific smile and a pair of archly raised eyebrows.

In "A Portrait of Hemingway as a Young Man" -- a wholly Joycean title with the rather more Tuccillian subtitle of "Romping Through Paris in the 1920s" -- we meet the primary figures of that time and place through a piercing yet infatuated eyeball.

Here is Hemingway's first encounter with Gertrude Stein:

"Gertrude was not pretty ... she was anything but pretty. But Ernest wanted to (deleted) her anyway. She reminded him of his mother Grace back in Chicago. 'Her breasts weigh about 10 pounds each,' he told his wife Hadley.

"For her part, Gertrude enjoyed the occasional dalliance with a man. At different times while she was living with Alice B. Toklas, she had intimate relationships with Pablo Picasso, Sherwood Anderson and other men. Alice knew about Gertrude's heterosexual flings but she never considered them a threat ... But Alice was struck by the notion that there was something of a disturbing sexual undertone between Gertrude and Ernest. Gertrude was old enough to be his mother and had a decidedly masculine nature. Ernest was the young courtier seeking her literary approval, a boy-man only 23 years old and in need of a mother-substitute."

I must say this does provide a most original insight into that one constant of Papa's life, his desire to cut and cut and cut his partner's hair until she looked like a boy. It is a subtext in the story "Cat in the Rain" of 1938 and the theme of "The Garden of Eden" published posthumously. It was in real life a highly visible fetish indulged in his marriages to Hadley, Pauline and Mary. (Martha Gelhorn kept her tresses; she was the one that got away.) And to think it all goes back to boygirl Gertrude, who reminded him so much of mom -- the very same mom who let her boy's hair grow to his waist and dressed him in dresses. Hmm....

Come to think of it, I don't doubt any of this.

What other gems of insight might be found in Tuccille's reckless little paperback ?

How about the one about a bad evening with Hemingway and Hadley and a gentleman named Lewis Galantiere?

A journalist from America who became a writer and translator in Paris while Hemingway and the guys were setting fire to the Seine, Galantiere was a man of sophisticated taste and witty charm. During a dinner with Ernest and Hadley at a rather expensive restaurant -- Galantiere had offered to pay -- Ernest noted that Hadley was paying far too much attention to the man. So he suggested Galantiere join him in a postprandial boxing match back at the hotel.

Despite Galantiere's pleas that he hated hitting other people, Ernest put a pair of gloves on him and commanded Hadley to count out three-minute rounds. Ernest was a "rough, tough piece of work," writes Tuccille, "more of a brawler than a boxer," a man most dangerous in the first couple of minutes in a fight when he was "capable of knocking a man out with a powerful overhand right if he landed it cleanly."

After a few moments of the two men circling each other warily and not connecting, Hadley called the end of the round. Lewis Galantiere seemed relieved to have survived it with his jaw intact, writes Tuccille. "He lowered his guard and put on his eyeglasses, smiling, indicating that the boxing match was over as far as he was concerned." Then, when Hadley called the second round, "Ernest simply walked up to Lewis, sucker-punched him in the face and broke his glasses."

Good ol' Papa. This is the kind of detail that keeps fueling our ongoing intuition that Hemingway was as bipolar as the worst of his peers even in tinsel town. For example, the notoriously nasty bonbon Vivien Leigh or, for that matter, the notoriously nutcracking Ava Gardner, his own gal pal. Which is to say barking mad, likely to turn on you as wickedly as a clitorectomized New Jersey housewife in the 1950s. Trapped and crazed in a time and place that show no trace of serotonin-norepinephrine-dopamine reuptake whatevers. Lost indeed.

Tuccille says it best: "In the Bronx where I igrew up, Ernest would have been known as a real prick -- a funny guy to have a drink with, a good guy to have on your side if a brawl breaks out, but someone to keep your eye on as the evening progressed because you never knew when he could turn on you."

One of the splendid moments in this skinny little book is about revenge. Than which, we hear, there is nothing finer (including living well). During a 100-day separation that Hadley had imposed on Ernest and his new lover, Pauline Pfeiffer, "unexpectedly," reveals Tuccille, "Hadley fell in love. In a delicious stroke of irony, Hadley not only fell in love, she fell in love with her best friend's husband. It appeared she was pulling an 'Ernest,' as it were, but that was only on the surface. The reality of the situation was that Hadley's friend Winifred Mowrer had grown tired of her husband Paul and encouraged Hadley to take him up on his advances toward her if she were so inclined. As it turned out, Hadley was indeed inclined. She found Paul attentive, suave and debonair. Within a trice Hadley found herself falling for him and was no longer interested in saving her marriage. 'The entire problem belongs to you two,' she wrote to Ernest. 'I am not responsible for your future welfare.'"

Those are a couple of wonderful sentences from a deceived woman who'd been paying all the bills ("The entire problem belongs to you two" being more of a full stop than a sentence). There are plenty more good sentences available in Jerome Tuccille's "A Portrait of Hemingway as a Young Man" but very few of them are actually by Tuccille, who writes in serial clichés ("delicious irony" ... "in a trice...") -- writing, in other words, words written by others.

But the true gem is here whenever real quotes are served and that makes this a deep, deep dish.

Can't get enough of it, frankly, we say in earnest.

mhowell@keysnews.com