If you are an estimator of Ernest Hemingway and Francis Scott Fitzgerald you cant' absolutely miss the latest book released by Columbia University Press Fitzgerald & Hemingway Works and Days by Scott Donaldson. It's a magnificient portrait of both these two writers "read" and seen through their works and the thematic they appreciated the most. Divided in two sections, you can read all this book, the portion of the author you like the most, taking also inspiration from every chapter for appreciating more the works written by these authors, or it can be used for school or as a good introductions to their books.
We will meet in Fitzgerald appearance, richness but also desolation, desperation, loss, money problems. Fitzgerald, great friend by Hemingway introduced the pennieless writer at the Esquire, where Hemingway would have written a lot of wonderful pieces that made the history also of a new way of making and writing in journalism; a different writing-style, the same one that we will find in his numerous novels.
Nothing is missed in the reconstruction of the existence of Fitzgerald and Hemingway. The story of Francis Scott Fitzgerald starts from his birth, his arrival to Princeton his first love-delusions, the entrance in scene of Zelda in his existence, the years in Paris and New York and at the same time the arrival, pretty quickly of fame with his pieces and later thanks to his first and acclaimed novel This Side of Paradise.
Fitzgerald started to write this book when still in Princeton and it is remarkably autobiographic. Written with, what the writeer writes "So sure a sense of the times" it's a strong good-bye to the fascination of Victorian Age and the good manners, apparently brought with it. People were scandalized by what written by Fitzgerald: ""None of the Victorian Mothers ...had any idea how casually their daughters were accustomed to be kissed."
The belle, an expression typical of a southerner girl became "flirt" and later "baby vamp." Times were changing like customs as well.
The Great Gatsby immortalizes Fitzgerald in the Olymp of writers because as someone wrote (T.S. Eliot) that book was "The first step that American fiction has taken since Henry James."
Ernest Hemingway. Loved, appreciated, someone obsessively social, but also with profound demons in his own existence one of the main theme of his books, war apart, is death, and in particular the connection of life and suicide, particularly because heavily touched by it, because of the departure in that way of his dad and later, his frequent depressions.
Hemingway, like also Francis Scott Fitzgerald will always use his personal experiences and his reality for writing; changing names, situations, but slowly slowly writing down his own existence, seen and filtered through the eyes of the writer in all his books.
He was a man of strong passions and being a pasionario he wasn't diplomatic at all. He wrote strong words against Mussolini and his books would have been burned at some point because banned by the regime. He was in this way with everyone else; colleagues, other writers. He loved and hated; strongly and never falsely.
Although at some point abandoned the journalistic career for the one of writer, he would have met in the sector a lot of friends.
It's not an error saying that when someone writes there are problems around; writing, like painting, means also fighting against the soul's demons of the creative.
Scott Donaldon's writing-style is fascinating and captivating, because he loves the topic and he is in grade of transmitting very well what he knows to everyone.
Highly recommended.
I thank Columbia University Press for the physical copy of this book.
Anna Maria Polidori
