French Connections: Hemingway and Fitzgerald Abroad

by J. Gerald Kennedy (Editor ), Jackson R. Bryer (Editor )

Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald met in 1925, two weeks after the publication of The Great Gatsby, in the Dingo Bar in Paris. From that night on they maintained a complicated friendship born of mutual admiration, envy, and implicit rivalry. French Connections is a collection of thoughtful and often stirring essays devoted to exploring the shared influence that these two legendary writers had on each other’s work. The essayists examine the role of France, particularly Paris, in both writers’ bodies of work, and how their sustained contact with one another in France as opposed to the States determined the sometimes hilarious, sometimes resentful tenor of their relationship.

352 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1999

About the author

J. Gerald Kennedy is Boyd Professor of English at Louisiana State University. He is the author of Imagining Paris: Exile, Writing, and American Identity and coeditor (with Jackson R. Bryer) of French Connections: Hemingway and Fitzgerald Abroad. He was advisory editor of volumes 1–3 of the Letters of Ernest Hemingway, under the general editorship of Sandra Spanier, and he is coediting a forthcoming volume of Hemingway letters, the final years. He is also the author of a number of essays on Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and expatriate Paris, and he edited Modern American Short Story Sequences: Composite Fictions and Fictive Communities. His publications on nineteenth-century American literature include Poe, Death, and the Life of Writing and (with fellowship support from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the NEH) a wide-ranging cultural history, Strange Nation: Literary Nationalism and Cultural Conflict in the Age of Poe.

Reviews

[Claudine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have never been overly fond of American novelists (although I adore many American playwrights), preferring instead British or Russian authors. However, in honor of Bastille Day last week, I chose from the library a collection of critical essays analyzing the works of Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and in particular, the influence on their work derived from their living in France (primarily Paris), in the 1920s and 1930s. The contributors' insights and arguments were erudite and convincing and, I suppose if I were a Hemingway and Fitzgerald aficionado or expert, I would have appreciated this book much more.

[Lulu · Rating 1 out of 5]

For anyone suffering from insomnia, there's hope for you: simply read this insufferable book. A collection of essays on the influence of France on the writings of Fitzgerald and Hemingway - what's not to love, right? So so wrong. The authors take all the fun and sexiness and appeal of the authors and their era by overthinking and overanalyzing every damn thing. The worst.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

The articles in this book were really helpful and diverse. The Works Cited(s) were also very useful.