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A review by lizbeth5
Everybody Behaves Badly: The True Story Behind Hemingway’s Masterpiece The Sun Also Rises by Lesley M.M. Blume
5.0
Not sure why I was drawn to this book, I read a review in the Boston Globe and then there it was on the library shelf. I am not a huge Hemingway fan, I can't honestly remember if I read The Sun Also Rises. What Hemingway I do remember I didn't terribly enjoy. It was the heyday of "women's lib" and Ernest was a bad man.
That being said, what a fascinating book! It is as much a study of 1920s to 30s Paris expatriate society as anything else. It shows a life and lifestyle few of us can ever know, whether by limits of income, or history. It portrays the life of a writer, a certain type of writer, surely, but still, that unscheduled, "life" that ends up as a piece of art.
Of course, it focuses on Hemingway as the traitor, if you will, using his "friends" and compatriots as fodder for his novel with no regard as to the consequences for their lives. And it is hard to imagine that their "adventures" we're so damaging to them when his book was published. In our time a group of friends going away together and drinking too much and sleeping around, isn't that a reality show? But once upon a time that behavior happened, but wasn't celebrated. And Hemingway became famous from publicizing it.
I highly recommend this book, for the literati of course, but also for the social historian.
That being said, what a fascinating book! It is as much a study of 1920s to 30s Paris expatriate society as anything else. It shows a life and lifestyle few of us can ever know, whether by limits of income, or history. It portrays the life of a writer, a certain type of writer, surely, but still, that unscheduled, "life" that ends up as a piece of art.
Of course, it focuses on Hemingway as the traitor, if you will, using his "friends" and compatriots as fodder for his novel with no regard as to the consequences for their lives. And it is hard to imagine that their "adventures" we're so damaging to them when his book was published. In our time a group of friends going away together and drinking too much and sleeping around, isn't that a reality show? But once upon a time that behavior happened, but wasn't celebrated. And Hemingway became famous from publicizing it.
I highly recommend this book, for the literati of course, but also for the social historian.