[lit-ideas] Re: Hemingway's quarrel with Gertrude Stein


On Sep 28, 2006, at 11:31 PM, Robert Paul wrote:

I wonder where Hemingway's
fascination with boxing came from--? His writing about it is much deeper and
far less stylized than his writing about bull fighting.

I'm not sure what "came from" means here. Should we look to his quarrels with his father and his faults as a football player? Or perhaps to an early episode when he was attacked while camping (p.28 of Carlos Baker's biography)? Baker tells us where it *didn't* come from, "As with his stories of learning to box from professionals in Chicago, Ernest's fictional accounts of sexual initiation with Prudy Boulton were more likely the product of wishful thinking than fact" (p.26). It is clear that this fascination with boxing was well established by the time he moved to Toronto, "While the Connables were in Florida, Ernest and Dutch escorted young Ralph to hockey and boxing matches at the Mutual Street Arena Gardens and the pseudo-medieval pile of Massey Hall. Ralph was sickened by the blood at one gory fight between Rocky Kansas and Fern Bull, which Ernest watched with obvious enjoyment."

When was this? Shortly after Agnes Hannah von Kurowsky--the nurse who is the model for the love interest in "Farewell to Arms"-- wrote to him to say that she had fallen in love with a handsome young Neapolitan, Tenente Domenico Caracciolo, and that she hoped he would "have a great career."

So Hemingway's passion for boxing seems to be connected with his passion for and a passion during the First World War, but may pre-date both.

And this is where Stephen Straker would fill us in with the real story; his father, I think it was, grew up in Oak Park and was friends with the Hemingways. Stephen even owned a painting by one of Ernest's sisters.

David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon


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