An enjoyable biography of Ernest Hemingway during his years in France, primarily when he lived there during most of the 1920s, though the book in a later section does detail his time there was a war correspondent (and irregular soldier) in World War II and a little on later visits to France. Most of the book is on him living in Paris, but time spent in other places such as Provence are also detailed.
Thematically, the author talked about how it was in the 1920s in Paris that Hemingway became Hemingway, that he went from being a Midwestern writer to a more cosmopolitan author, detailing the books he read that were influences (and even the visual artists too, as Cezanne was noted as influence on Hemingway’s writing style) and most of all the people he met that helped shape him as a writer. The most notable that influenced Hemingway were Gertrude Stein (influential American art collector, writer, and editor, famous for "Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose" and "there is no there there"), James Joyce (Irish novelist, literary critic, and poet, famous for his 1922 novel _Ulysses_ and 1939’s _Finnegans Wake_), Ezra Pound (American poet and critic), and F. Scott Fitzgerald (popularizer of the term the Jazz Age and author of 1925’s _The Great Gatsby_ and 1934’s _Tender is the Night_). The author talked about the relationships Hemingway had with these individuals, friendships and rivalries, and how they influenced his work and how Hemingway’s life experiences in France and especially in Paris could be seen in his various works, whether sent in France or not and whether general life experiences or specific fictional individuals based on people Hemingway knew.
The author talked at length about the concepts of the “Lost Generation” and modernism in terms of society, literature, art, poetry, and how they influenced Hemingway and Hemingway influenced them.
Hemingway’s significant others are detailed, most particularly Hadley Richardson (Hemingway’s first wife, married 1921-1927 and his wife through most of his life living in France) and Mary Welsh (his fourth wife, would become his widow, also a notable war correspondent during World War II).
I was surprised how active Hemingway was in World War II and had known nothing of his being at Normandy (though not landing with the troops) and the liberation of Paris nor how he lead a band of irregular soldiers in direct contradiction to the Geneva Convention on how correspondents are supposed to act.
The final section spends a lot of time detailing Hemingway's passion and knowledge of bull fighting, his role in making it internationally known, and also the differences between Spanish and French bullfighting.