The True Story Behind Hemingway's Masterpiece The Sun Also Rises

I thought this book was lacking in two respects. First, I felt the portrait of that time in Paris when Hemingway was trying to break through was not very detailed. Many other books, most notably Hemingway's posthumous memoir, A Moveable Feast, better capture the atmosphere of Paris in the 1920s. So if a reader is seeking to understand that particular time in Paris, this is not the book. Second, the author states often that Hemingway was a "revolutionary" writer, but does not really back up this opinion with evidence. Is Hemingway a revolutionary writer because kids have to read him in high school? What made him revolutionary? The author does not really provide evidence or say how he is a revolutionary writer.

Don't kill me but I haven't read Blume's book YET. But about Hemingway, I think readers ask too much of an author. Not only must he lift them to the celestial heights of compassion and understanding, but he has to be a genuinely nice person in his life. There are millions of nice people but there are not millions of geniuses. So instead of having the man, why not try reading the work. The fact of the matter is that most geniuses are not nice people and some are even worse than Hemingway. Koestler killed his young mistress and then himself; Fitzgerald drink a quart of booze every day; Pound hated Jews and praised the Nazis; Lowell was in and out of mental hospitals; Emily Dickinson never left her room; Dylan Thomas drank himself to death--I could go on and on. The truth is, nice people usually are not geniuses. They might like to be but they don't have the drive or whatever it is that races through a great writer. I'm going to tell you why this is true. A great writer has one abiding love--his work. Everything and everyone comes second. Joyce said that instead of having World War II, people should have read Ulysses. That being the case, niceness flies out of the window when it is brought up against the stone monument of the work. It is shattered. That is not nice. That does not lead to teaching creative writing at some podunk university and being married to so-and-so who is a sculptress and have three delectable children. Anyway, you can't choose to be a genius. It's like being gay. It comes before choice is even evident. Either you are--and you most likely are not--or you're not--which is most likely. Or ask any fifty-year old busboy who is working on his fifth novel what the truth is. I have to stop now. My break is up and the sink is about to topple under the weight of the dishes that need to be bussed. Ciao….

First read The Sun Also Rises. If you've already read it, read it again. Then read Everybody Behaves Badly. A great behind-the-scenes account. VERY readable and VERY revealing. To cap it off, also read A Moveable Feast, Hemingway's own version of several matters Blume treats.

Insightful in many ways. The events detailed in this work confirm that Hem could really only write about what he experienced. Probably the reporter in his background determined his path. This book is very entertaining and the result of detailed research. I enjoyed the personalities detailed and the presentation of same.

The people all do behave badly and my interest in their ambitions waned accordingly. The writing is excellent. The work is well-researched. However, it is difficult to devote precious hours to such obnoxious, transactional personalities. I stopped halfway through. This is not a reflection on the quality of the book but rather my fatigue with such astoundingly self-absorbed egotists.

Everybody Behaves Badly is a biography of the portion of Hemingway’s life when he was writing his breakout novel The Sun Also Rises. It portrays Hemingway in ruthless pursuit of fame and fortune via novel writing. This was a more realistic dream in the 1920s than now, but it still wasn’t easy for Hemingway. To achieve it, he used a journalistic style for fiction—a new idea at the time—and presented a colorful, macho persona for publicity purposes. He also aggressively competed with other, more successful writers, most notably F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose works Hemingway belittled as frivolous. Not that Hemingway stopped there; for example, this book prints part of a long poem where Hemingway savaged Dorothy Parker not only for disliking certain aspects of Spain (such as bloody bullfights and men pinching her behind), but for having attempted suicide and being Jewish. However, Hemingway did stoop to borrowing from other writers; I didn’t know before reading this book that the trademark phrase “Lost Generation” was actually Gertrude Stein’s. Hemingway also cast off his long-suffering first wife Hadley when wealthy socialite Pauline Pfeiffer came along.

The Sun Also Rises is about a group of people behaving badly when they go to watch the bullfights at Pamplona. Lots of drinking, casual sex, and sexual rivalry. If it’s been awhile since you read the novel, reread it before starting this biography. The characters are based on real people and Hemingway, who had a phenomenal memory, recorded many things they actually said and did. Not that he warned them—they found out when they read the novel and his depictions haunted some for the rest of their lives. Hemingway was really not a nice guy. Although he was charismatic, and strikingly handsome in his youth (not that this ARC contains any photos), I don’t know how he got away with being so deceitful and manipulative. But reading about him is fascinating, in a repulsive way.

Started rereading some of the "lost generation" authors and got interested in The Sun Also Rises and A Moveable Feast. This was a great companion piece to those titles. Really helped to establish context. Loved it.

It seemed like the author had much distance from her subject, whom she represented mostly as a beast. On the other hand there is much to encourage today's writers, when learning that the editing process took a village, even for Hem. The publishing stories are the most interesting. Much of it is a rehash.

The past few years have been great for books focusing on the making of classic novels of the 1920's which place the writing in the cultural context (The Most Dangerous Book in the World about Joyce's Ulysses and So We Read On about The Great Gatsby). Now we are gifted with Lesley M. M. Blume's Everybody Behaves Badly: The True Story Behind Hemingway's Masterpiece The Sun Also Rises.

Although the book is meticulously researched and features large cast of characters, Blume has structured a narrative that is never confusing or pedantic. Historical figures come alive and Blume strives to present each individual fairly, despite much bad behavior (great choice of a line from the novel as the title of the book). Everybody Behaves Badly is accessible both to the diehard Hemingway scholar and to the general reader who wants to learn more about the literary circles of the twenties.

Lots of juicy anecdotes and memorable characters in this book. A tidbit I particularly enjoy was that Hemingway originally planned to include a reference to Gatsby's Tom Buchanan in The Sun Also Rises which would have been a nice crossover and tip of the hat to Fitzgerald. I also was enthralled by the description of Hemingway's writing and editing process and the summer spent at Gerald and Sara Murphy's on the Riviera with Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald.

There are many riches in this book. Highly recommended for those who want to learn more about Hemingway's early years.

I read 'The Paris Wife' before this book and it was interesting to compare the two books. Hemingway's first wife Hadley was more the subject of 'The Paris Wife'. Two different perspectives in many ways but the portrayal of Hemingway was the same. Charismatic but selfish and often cruel. Everybody Behaves Badly is a great snapshot of a time in history after a devastating war that left many young people searching for ways to forget what they'd been through and not wanting to think about the future. 'The lost generation' they were called. Many found themselves eventually but many did not. A good and interesting read.

Initially I was somewhat skeptical about this book and suspected a kind of “hit job” emphasizing Hemingway’s less than admirable qualities (of which there were many) but the writing is very accomplished, sometimes rather clever and incisive and seems to be well researched; nothing really original--see Sarason, "Hemingway and the Sun Set" and many others for more on this topic--- but it does capture the atmosphere of post war Paris literary expatriate life rather well--better than a number of previous Hemingway biographies and critical studies). My reservations about the book involve the over use of Kitty Cannell's recollections---some of which have been debunked and/or revealed as unreliable by Michael Reynolds in his massive, scrupulously researched, multi volume Hemingway bio (see Reynolds pp. 298-99, 321-22), the suggestion that Hemingway may have slept with Pauline’s sister and with Duff-Twysden for which there is no real evidence at all--in fact Duff denied it saying she would not sleep with a married man and besides was fond of Hadley, Hemingway never gave any indication that their flirtatious friendship included sex which he probably would have gladly accepted should it have been offered (and would most likely have bragged about to someone) and if they did have carnal relations they could not have kept it secret from the small circle of people in which they moved---Harold Loeb's brief affair with Duff became known practically from the moment it started. Also, I think the author places a little too much emphasis on the autobiographical aspects of the novel and on the careerist part of Hemingway’s Paris years. There is little discussion of the relationship between Hemingway’s early stories and vignettes and “Sun” and the painstaking aspect of the novel’s composition once the first draft was complete and his extensive revisions began--- other than Fitzgerald’s certainly very important editorial suggestions. I do commend Blume for including Bill Smith’s comment that “Hemingway was not a diarist. He was an artist” as well as Blume’s own very perceptive, well-expressed observation that in “Sun” Hemingway was “ confronting the masses with a terrifyingly modern world bereft of any comforting stylistic trimmings….There was no shelter in that writing, nary an adjective to shade readers from a harsh sun.” It is rare that any new book about Hemingway--surely the most written about American author of all time---will hold my interest but this one did. Definitely worthwhile despite a few shortcomings.


For those readers who would prefer a nonfiction version of THE PARIS WIFE, this readable narrative might just do the trick. Written by a journalist, children’s author and “cultural historian,” EVERYBODY BEHAVES BADLY chronicles the Hemingways’ life from 1921, when the 21-year-old Hemingway was engaged to Hadley Richardson, through the publication and initial extravagant success of THE SUN ALSO RISES. This book’s title comes from that novel’s protagonist Jake Barnes’ comment that “Everybody behaves badly. Give them the proper chance.”

Though there is a coda to this story explaining what happened to the various characters portrayed in the novel, the focus here is squarely on the Hadley years. (Her divorce from Hemingway came through in January 1927, just as THE SUN ALSO RISES was about to go into its fifth printing; her settlement was the royalties from the book.)

Lesley M. M. Blume is not unsympathetic to Hadley, but this story is about Hemingway as he begins his five-year climb to successful author and international celebrity. At the end of 1921, when the Hemingways first moved to Paris, the chances of him supporting them as a writer --- as opposed to the journalist he had become --- seemed remote. Nevertheless, he would soon gain the support of his first friends and mentors, Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound, to whom he was introduced via Sherwood Anderson. F. Scott Fitzgerald would join that cadre eventually, and his unwavering support of Hemingway would prove to be critical.

There are many stories in these pages of the bacchanalian trips to Pamplona and the South of France, the dark months in Toronto, and Hemingway’s messy affairs, but his obsession with writing, and success, is always front and center. What is hard to grapple with are the ways in which he seemed to jeopardize the potential for success, especially with his attempts to caricature and belittle his most loyal mentors. In his book, THE TORRENTS OF SPRING, which some suggest he wrote to get out of his original publishing contract but which he insisted his next publisher acquire, he parodied Sherwood Anderson, his first major supporter. In THE SUN ALSO RISES, barely any of his friends survived skewering --- and some never talked to him again. Hemingway’s need for discord to feed his creativity seems likely, but Blume dwells more on how the victims responded than on Hemingway’s psychological impetus. She does, however, quote Fitzgerald, who anticipated then that each major novel would require that Hemingway find a new wife to spur him to create. He was right.

It would be easy to say that, following Hemingway’s introduction to Maxwell Perkins at Scribner’s, “the rest is history,” but Blume actually makes the navigation through the shoals of publication pretty compelling. Her journalism background gives her license to use terms that would make more academic biographers flinch: at one point, she refers to Hemingway being on a “gossip-lit bender,” a very apt description. At another point, she mentions that the ads from Scribner’s to entice prospective readers relied on “what today would be called “FOMO” --- or fear of missing out.”

What’s satisfying about EVERYBODY BEHAVES BADLY is that it doesn’t pretend to be more than it is --- a well-researched, accessible look at Hemingway’s meteoric rise to the pantheon of American literature, the mayhem it caused and the toll it took on those around him. Ultimately, we know what it would cost the writer himself, but this book is about THE SUN as it rises.

Reviewed by Lorraine W. Shanley

This book had great promise. It's a fascinating period of history and Hemingway was larger than life -- both a villain and a hero in his own story. Much of this was good but it was also repetitive (I listened to the audio book and after the intro was read, felt that a good deal of the information was repeated several times, almost verbatim). More irritating to me was that it sounded like the author had inserted her own opinions into the story, particularly in regards to Hadley and to F. Scott Fitzgerald, of whom she is very dismissive -- almost hostile. I've read The Sun Also Rises along with the First Wife and A Moveable Feast. I felt that Ms. Blume interpreted events with her own spin on them, which was unnecessary and distracting, especially when telling a "true story". Yes, Hemingway was a terrible friend and husband, but the contempt that Ms. Blume suggests motivated some of his decisions appears to come from her mind, rather than the sources.

Mon Dieu, Lesley M. M. Blume has written more than an historical novel revolving around Ernest Hemingway’s writing of The Sun Also Rises (1926). This novel gives the reader the details behind the birth of the modern movement of literature and the death of descriptive writing. Goodbye to Victorian Literature writers like Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, Thomas Hardy, Lewis Carroll, et cetera. Say hello to the 1920’s writers, such as; Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, Ezra Pound and, of course, Ernest Hemingway. Also say hello to Pablo Picasso and his Surrealism art movement. It’s the 1920s' in Paris, France and America’s talented expatriates flock to it. The leader of the movement in Paris is American poet, Ezra Pound. His new rules of writing are: never use superfluous (unnecessary) words, never be descriptive and distrust adjectives. “It was time for a revolution.” “Some expats likened their Paris experiences to an extended, drug-fueled party.” If Ezra Pound was the king of the movement, Gertrude Stein was assuredly the queen. Hemingway was warned before he met Gertrude at her apartment, “to maintain a reverential hush as she spoke.” and “don’t frighten her or she won’t talk.” Stein’s preferred term when describing herself was “genius.” Hemingway’s rival in America would be F. Scott Fitzgerald, who published The Great Gatsby in 1925, but “his style remained decidedly old-school.” Publisher Charles Scribner, who published both authors said, “Fitzgerald was a nineteenth-century soul. He was wrapping up a grand tradition; he was the last of the romantics. He was Strauss. Hemingway, by contrast, was Stravinsky. He was inventing a whole new idiom and tonality.” Is this good stuff, or what?

Hemingway married his biggest fan and helper, Hadley Richardson, when he was twenty two and she thirty. They planned to go to Italy where Hemingway served in the Red Cross Ambulance Corps during WWI, “...where he was wounded within weeks of arrival.” Hemingway planned to make a living as a freelance reporter for the Toronto Star and supplement their income with Hadley’s $2,000-$3,000 Trust Fund. But before they could go to Italy, they met American novelist, Sherwood Anderson, who told them about Paris. “During his visits, when he wasn’t reading aloud from his own manuscripts, he extolled the wonder of Paris to the Domicile crowd; the city was now a magnet for creative types from all over America.” Sherwood made a convincing case for Hemingway to ditch plans for Italy and book passage for France. “Paris was, after all, now a laboratory of innovative writing and the supposed creative center of the universe.” Sherwood recommended the Hotel Jacob et d’Angleterre in Paris. Once settled in, the Hemingways headed for the Cafe’ Le Dome, the gossip center for the Left Bank’s expatriate colony. Luckily for the Hemingways they were able to stretch their monies, because the dollar was very strong compared to the franc after the war. “Other writers must also have sensed that Paris was a treasure trove of literary possibility...for the American writer Malcolm Cowley, Paris was like cocaine, and just as debilitating a habit when it came time to pull himself together and work.” Hemingway was not overwhelmed by Paris like many Americans. “In holding back, Hemingway gave himself a distinct advantage as a clearheaded, removed observer. Later, many of his fictional protagonists would share this attribute.” Would you believe that so far all that I have reviewed is the Introduction and the first seventeen pages of the novel?

The Toronto Star is now sending the twenty three year old reporter all over Europe. His interview with Italy’s Benito Mussolini helped get him front page stories. Meanwhile in Paris, the expat literary gods were now known as The Crowd and didn’t meet in bars or cafes, instead they met in private homes and salons. These are the same artist I mentioned in the first paragraph. When Hemingway went to Switzerland he sent for his wife, Hadley. For some reason Hadley decided to bring all of Hemingway’s manuscripts with her. When she momentarily left her compartment on the train, the manuscripts disappeared. A frustrated Hemingway was sent back to Toronto for a prestige weekly salary of $125. Hadley informed him that she was pregnant. After a trip to Spain with the newly met founder of Contact Publishing Company, Robert McAlmon, and Bill Bird, co-founder of The Consolidated Press Wire Service, Hemingway quit his job and went back to Paris with Hadley and the baby. “There would be no more freelancing, no more deadlines, and no accepting faraway assignments. There would be only the writing-real writing.” In Paris, Hemingway starts writing in a rented flat overlooking a sawmill. “However gently administered, the sound of a buzzing saw-combined with the cries of a newborn-continually drove Hemingway out of the apartment to write.” With Hadley’s Trust Fund now being mismanaged by a friend of hers, they entered a period that Hemingway called their “complete poverty period.” Hemingway started to work for a new publication, the Transatlantic Review supervised by British novelist and literary editor, Ford Madox Ford. Although Hemingway didn’t get paid, Ford published everything that he wrote (short stories). “I knew I must write a novel,” Hemingway recalled. “...and here he was, practically over-the-hill at twenty-four, still without a major work to his name.”

Ford became one of the Crowd’s greatest host, throwing tea parties in his little Transatlantic office. At one of the tea parties, “Hemingway made a tea party appearance, at which he first encountered expat editor and writer Harold Loeb. This meeting would alter the course of both men’s lives.” “When they weren’t bludgeoning each other (Hemingway loved to box with all his friends) or whacking balls across a net, Hemingway and Loeb frequented cafes and bars together, drinking and trading stories.” What was important to Hemingway’s career was the fact that Loeb was about to publish his first novel, Doodab, with Boni and Liveright, a major American publisher. Why was that important? Because, so far, every Manuscript that Hemingway sent to America was rejected and Loeb would soon prove an invaluable asset in correcting that problem. Don’t panic! I’m not giving the story away, I’m only on page 56. This is a must read for potential reviewers, if you want to build a good literary foundation while establishing your writing skills. I, for one, have learned a lot from reading this historical novel. I patently advocate this novel and lecon livre.

I enjoyed this book. First, it prompted me to actually read The Sun Also Rises, which I had done in pieces over the years but never from start to finish. Once I did that, I dove into this book, but I must say you don't need to be familiar with the novel in order to enjoy this take on it. The author provides an indepth look at Hemingway's career and writing life before the novel and then briefly goes through what happened after. It was an unsentimental look at Hemingway and his first book.

If I had one criticism, it is that it didn't provide enough detail of the actual events while they happened. There was some, just not enough for my taste. However, overall very well written. I'd recommend it.

Everybody Behaves Badly is a meticulously researched (70 pages of citations at the end), detailed biography of Ernest Hemingway from the time of his marriage until the time of publication of his first successful novel, The Sun Also Rises. It reads almost like a novel itself because of the intimate descriptions and pieces of conversations running throughout the book. But, Lesley Blume did not make up the words; they came from access to letters, articles and interviews sourced both from the time period of the book and afterward. Interestingly, the real people in Everybody Behaves Badly seem to behave just as poorly towards each other over the 6 year period covered by the book as the characters in The Sun Also Rises - and not just during the time period in Spain that was the inspiration for Hemingway's novel. I highly recommend this both to people looking for an overall, though stylized, picture of American "expats" in Europe in the 1920's and for Hemingway fans looking to separate the man from the legend.

The very second I requested a review copy of this book I was instantly filled with regret. While I've never been particularly engrossed in reading about Hemingway, I have read THE SUN ALSO RISES twice (and inspired by this book, read it a third time, and far more carefully this time), A FAREWELL TO ARMS twice and with some interst as to its composition, ,since it was composed in part in the northern part of the state of Arkansas in Piggott, where he wife was giving birth. Both novels I loved, along with most of the early short stories from the early and mid twenties. From then on my reading is spotty. I read and was a appalled by TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT, which may be the worst novel written by an major American writer and I read THE GREEN HILLS OF AFRICA, which I liked a great deal more . I have tried twice to read FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS and I've been assured that it is a good book, but my psyche cannot reach this conclusion. I did enjoy A MOVEABLE FEAST, though I've always suspected it contains more fiction than many of his novels. For me Hemingway's books from the twenties are nearly all that I truly like by him, the one great exception being THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA, which is an astonishing work for a man who hadn't been at his best nearly thirty years. I should add also that I have read the first volume of his letters in the edition published by Cambridge University Press.

But what I had tried to avoid was reading the seemingly endless number of books on Hemingway. I had read Carlos Baker's shorter bio when in college and Lynn Hunt longer biography as an adult, but really, I reached the point where I felt that I was done with him. The drama and the romanticizing of his life. It seemed to me that people were reading the books to get clues about what he had done and in general weren't terriblby concerned about what he had written. So when I had to opportunity to review this I immediately said "Yes" before immediately regretting it.

A few days later the book arrived and I opened it up and began to read and was instantly taken with Blume's prose. The book wasn't taking Hemingway's life as the basis for a nonfiction soap opera, but was using it as an opportunity to share a series of observations abut why Hemingway had adopted the style he had, how he used real life loosely as a frame for his writing, and new things he managed to achieve in this way. And a picture emerges of what the real life events that inspired Hemingway to write his first and transformative novel did to make that possible. Instead of another run of the mill story about the naughty and drunken things that Hemingway did in Paris and Barcelona, I discovered instead a book of enormous insight an intelligence. It even inspire me to upgrade my copy of THE SUN ALSO RISES, which I promptly read.

There are a lot of bad books on Hemingway and as a rule one ought to avoid nearly everyone of them. But this is a delightful exception. I still recommend that most people interested in Hemingway just stick to Hemingway and perhaps a respected scholarly biography. But also, read this book.

What does it take to create a novel? For Hemingway, it meant betraying nearly everyone in his world – mentors, drinking buddies, literary rivals and even his wife – as he strived to become a giant in American letters.

The Sun Also Rises was a revolution when it was published in 1926, a fusion of high/low style, in which Hemingway took postmodern “less is more” prose and married it with a scandalous story of dissipation among the idle rich. What lifted it above a drunken yarn was the epigraph from Gertrude Stein, “You are all a lost generation.” This defining quote, as well as the title, turned the novel into a representation of youth scarred by war, seeking for a meaning in a landscape without God or authority.

The novel is less a story and more transcription of a disastrous trip to see the bullfights in Pamplona. Following the debacle, Hemingway wrote the book in a period of weeks, not even bothering to change the real names of people that he used in the first draft.

The characters in Sun are all real, and scarcely disguised from their actual counterparts. The most appalling depiction is that of Harold Loeb, who admired Hemingway with almost slavish devotion. In return, he gets mocked in the novel as Robert Cohn, a Jew who doesn’t know his place, with the temerity to romance Lady Brett, a woman that he certainly doesn’t deserve. It was a portrayal and a betrayal that Loeb never got over and one that he spent decades trying to understand.

After the publication of the book in 1926, there was a craze to be like Lady Brett, the hard-drinking sex symbol of the novel. Like her literary counterpart, Lady Duff Twysden was a broke alcoholic of a dubious lineage. Fleeing debts and family complications, she ended up in Santa Fe, before dying of tuberculosis. Hemingway, cruel to the end, told his biographer that her casket was carried by former lovers, who dropped it at the funeral – a fictitious tale.

Her husband in the novel, Mike Campbell (the real Pat Guthrie), the very model of the dissipated English upper classes, died of a drug overdose, owing money to bars and hotels all over Paris.

Depicted as trying to trick Cohn into marrying her, Frances Clyne (the real Kitty Cannell) went on to one of the most fascinating lives of all the people mocked in The Sun Also Rises. After surviving Paris during Nazi occupation, she become a game show guest, noted for her expertise in everything from timeless glamor to surviving prison. One subject she wouldn’t discuss: Hemingway. She thought he was a bastard from the very beginning.

While the backstories in Everybody Behaves Badly are fascinating, what makes the book great is the story of how Hemingway created his masterpiece. Everybody Behaves Badly is a writer’s book – I’ve never read a book that does a better job explaining how a novel actually gets written, showing how Hemingway took real events and transmuted them into his novel.

One character Hemingway leaves out of the book: Hadley, his wife. The Paris Wife depicts her as crushed by this omission, knowing that she was losing her husband.

By the time The Sun Also Rises is published, Hemingway was moving on from the woman who subsidized his early writing efforts for a richer catch: the heiress Pauline Pfeiffer.

Thirty years later, in the posthumously published A Moveable Feast, Hemingway tried to blame the pernicious influence of rich friends on his decision to leave Hadley. They said that Hemingway deserved someone more stylish than doughty Hadley.

But, as F. Scott Fitzgerald predicted back in 1926, with every major new book, Hemingway would have a new wife. After Pauline would come Martha Gellhorn and Mary Welsh.

Write what you know. That’s the cardinal rule of writing. For Hemingway, that meant mining his own life for the material to create The Sun Also Rises. It’s his best book and the novel that frees American literature from its fussy and florid predecessors. Everybody Behaves Badly masterfully details the cost in producing a masterpiece.

Because absolutely everybody in this book, with the sole exception of Hemingway's long-suffering wife Elizabeth (Hadley), acts like self-indulgent boors during the period depicted in it.

I don't know how much appeal this book will have to the younger generations of today, who may well be pretty ignorant of who Hemingway was. I don't know what's being taught in schools anymore. But to me, born in the late '40s, and those of my generation (at least) to whom he was a very familiar figure, this is virtually "must-read" material.

It covers the period in the 1920s when the young Hemingway was trying to make the transition from reporter to novelist while living in the "art" community of post-World War I Paris. He was developing his writing style, while at the same time trying ambitiously to climb the "artist" ladder with the intellectual "in crowd" of the era.

This book very entertainingly depicts the jealousies, cat fights, self-indulgences, petty arguments, amorous peccadillos, various successes and failures, and just generally bad behavior of all the players involved at the time, with Ernest Hemingway front and center as the driver of the action.

I ordered this book with serious reservations. In my mind, it could be a tremendous failure; simply another "tell all" rehashing of urban legend mixed with tawdry speculation and sordid spectacle. Instead I found a book backed by meticulous research and written with great skill, and was absolutely absorbed and engaged by it.

I strongly recommend this book to anyone who's familiar with the works of Hemingway, and/or interested in him as a "personality".

I am terribly disappointed with this book. As I read it, I kept waiting for something to be divulged that I didn't already know. I can't see a reason for this book to be written or read. All of this has been said before and, often, in so many words. Blume's style is not compelling; she sounds as bored with this old material as I am. Two stars because one is just so sad.

I read the first 100 pages and found It to be so boring I abandoned the book and started reading another book. Some writers get so involved in
minutia of detail of uninteresting "stuff" they never get to events which would be interesting to the average reader. I have no idea what the merit
of the rest of the book is and do not intend to find out. I felt the editors and assistant editors were not doing their jobs on this book. I still feel
there is an interesting story to tell about this peiod in Paris but not by this author. GWL

A fascinating look behind the scenes of Hemingway's time in Paris, and his work leading up to & including his classic debut novel. I listened to this as an audiobook and found it riveting. While I've always heard that Hemingway was a bit of an unpleasant person in real life, the extent of his personality flaws as outlined in this book are frankly stunning. Yet this doesn't detract from Hemingway's work, and the well-told story and supporting details only help to illuminate his famous novel - and in many ways make it a richer and more meaningful read (even if it's in ways that Hemingway himself might not have appreciated).

Highly recommended for fans of Hemingway's work in general, or in particular for fans of The Sun Also Rises or A Moveable Feast (his own memoirs of his time in Paris, and perhaps his best work).

This is a fascinating book on how Hemingway came to write The Sun Also Rises. It tells you the events that happened that inspired the story. It introduces you to the real life characters who are portrayed in that book. It also describes how his writing style was so revolutionary for the 20s. The author has done an excellent job in research and crafting this history.

The problem I have is Hemingway himself. He was an awful person. It appears he stabbed all of his friends in the back by writing snide comments about them. He took two of his friends and created unflattering characters, Lady Brett Ashley and Robert Cohn. He was very anti-semetic. He was a bullying overly aggressive heterosexual. He would be considered completely politically incorrect today.

Yet, it has been said that he had great charm. That charm has eluded me for decades. I have never been able to find that charm in any book I have read on him. It is probably best to only read his wonderful books and stories and stay away from his life stories.

Blume really shows that Hemingway was very calculating and ambitious. I just read Sun again after reading this and realize how nasty Hemingway truly was. From reading Baker's biography it was clear he married up with his career. This book combined with Baker's also make it clear that Hoechner had a man crush on Hemingway when he wrote Papa.
In some ways it seems like Hemingway was living his fraternity boy days as an expat writer. I wonder what trajectory his career would have taken if he went to college, grew up and got it out of his system first. The expats were young and had fun despite the depression, alcoholism and petty one upmanship. In my younger days I traveled to all of the Hemingway haunts: Paris, Pamplona, Italy, Key West, Bimini but never got to Cuba.
It's strange, but people who often hit the top in creative fields have some psychopathy in them. That driving narcissism seems to be a common trait among great artists.
Great book Lesley, well researched and a unique perspective.

Awful title even if it is a quote but after reading The Sun Also Rises and Paula McLain's The Paris Wife, this was exactly what I needed for balance. Blume's writing does not follow Hemingway's "ice berg" approach leaving much to your imagination. She answers your questions, at least most of them and if you don't know more about what Hemingway thought, you certainly know a lot about what all his friends wrote about him and he them. Much scholarship went into this book but it's anything but plodding. After all when "everybody behaves badly", you don't have to go far to laugh out loud at the absurdity of youth, even talented youth.

A wonderful read and an exciting timeline of events laid out by Lesley M. M. Blume who spares no details about one of literature's most pivotal books during a fleeting 1920's Paris.

I kept this book close to me because I didn't want to leave the milieu and always felt I was right there in the thick of it all following Hemingway's every move. Maybe it's my over-active imagination but that aside, without question, this book puts Hemingway's rise as a literary giant in perspective and makes abundantly apparent his undeniable shrewdness getting there.

A truly eye-opening read.

Congratulations all around, Blume and company.

In the early 1920s Ernest Hemingway is living in Paris with his first wife, Hadley, and ruthlessly pursuing his first published work. While there Hemingway heads to Pamplona, Spain for the annual running of the bulls. With his unruly Paris clique in tow he finds the inspiration he needs for his first novel.

Hemingway fans are sure to love this book - which covers the period just before and after the publishing of The Sun Also Rises - especially all of the gossipy tales that include such figures as Gertrude Stein, Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound and Lady Duff Twysden. With its larger-than-life characters, Everybody Behaves Badly reads like a work of fiction. And it’s from this deep well of personalities that Hemingway drank when he wrote this first novel.

The author does not gloss over Hemingway’s rough edges, questionable behavior or the cold way he leaves Hadley at the end. Everybody Behaves Badly leaves the reader with an unvarnished look into the early career of one of America's great novelists.

This is a book that will please Hemingway fans. Lesley Blume covers the novelist's early years, and focuses on his break-through years with the publication of "The Sun Also Rises" and his years married to his first wife Hadley Richardson. If there is one thing that Blume does well here is show that Hemingway was extremely ambitious, very determined, and did what he needed to do to get recognition and fame. He used his friends, lovers and publicists to become the writer he ended up being: a man known for journalistic, direct prose, with stories based on his life experiences.

Hemingway's earlier mentors were F Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, T. S. Elliott, all expats living in Paris after World War I, the "Lost Generation" living a privileged life by spending other peoples' money, drinking heavily and spending time in Montparnassian cafes and visiting Pamplona's bullfights. Blume researched this book thoroughly, using snippets from the various authors' interviews they gave contemporary magazine writers, or comments they made in their own writings, to describe their time with Hemingway. Part of this book almost read like a novel, as Blume cites the various writers as if they were talking to her. It's a very readable narrative that portrays life at that time for an American living in France.

The book is divided into three parts. Part I is the build-up, Part II is Hemingway's successful years as a recognized author as he relishes fame and fortune and goes through poor periods with his first wife Hadley Richardson, whom I feel he used and emotionally abused into submission. His goal of becoming an author was the most important thing to him, even though his reporting as a foreign correspondent gave him the ability to travel across Europe and cover scenes that later became parts of his novels. Hemingway's biggest joy in life was being a famous author. He didn't like being a husband or a father. Blume doesn't paint Hemingway as a chipper man; he definitely had dark moods and bouts of aggression. His years in Paris show the potential he had later in life toward depression and suicide: he needed to be loved and adored for him to be able to love himself.

While never a fan of Hemingway's writing, Blume made me see Hemingway as the hard-driven man that he was. I now better understand what made him tick, what his soft parts were, and I better understand the story behind "The Sun Also Rises." There are enough snippets in this book about his contemporaries as well, especially F Scott Fitzgerald and his struggles with alcoholism, who helped shape the man Hemingway became. Blume has an Epilogue describing the post Sun years of all the characters in the book. Most lived well into their 70s and 80s.

Recommended for Hemingway aficionados as well as literary history buffs.

I love just about anything having to do with Hemingway and the Paris expat crowd of the 20s. This is an amazingly well-researched book that gives a decent amount of information I hadn't read before. So, it gets a 5 on research. For me, the writing is somewhere between 3.5 and 4. There were times when the information could have been delivered more elegantly. But that's a fairly minor complaint, given the book's other achievements.

An extraordinary work by Blume as well exceptional reviews by readers. No need to repeat excellent comments of others.

On a personal level the book brought me back to July 3, 1961. I was just returning from a sail on Lake Michigan at about noon our time and heard the news on my car radio. It was one of those dates that stayed in my mind like the JFK assassination.

I grew up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, the land of the Nick Adams stories where most of us had guns even a 12 gauge shotgun and went hunting. Of course as I got older I was against unregulated gun ownership.

I was an English major at UM and as such read a lot of books, still do but I can't remember a book about a book as extraordinary as this book. The depth of research and details of an author, the agony of constant rewrites with help from friends, publisher and critics. It shows that Hemingway got lots of help along the way and had the sense to listen and work hard

I've been interested in Maxwell Perkins for years but never new much about him as a person and this book provided more of a portrait than I've read anywhere else. With "critics" a dime a dozen today in every media, it's nice to remember what used to be.

We all use the phrase "the book was better than the movie", In this case the book was better than the book.

One of my favorite 10 books of all time was Farewell to Arms, the sadist book I've ever read, especially the end. I never knew where the title came from until now. A 16th Elizabethan poet.

It's too bad that the store has a 5 star limit since I think many 5 star reviewers would go higher. Too many "ordinary" books get 5 stars.

This is a good biography of Hemmingway's younger days in Paris. (And who doesn't like Paris?!) It seems to fill in his early years which are not often covered in other biographies. Well-researched and reasonably well-written, it still felt a little...dry is the word. While reading this, I took the time to read Hemmingway's own A Moveable Feast for comparison. Although written 40 years after his time in Paris, his own writing was spare, almost too blunt but that was what he was striving for. Blume's book fills in much more, especially all the gossip and the daily lives of the expat community in the 20s. At times I felt I needed an org chart to keep everyone straight but it was fascinating to see how so many famous personalities crossed paths in a relatively small area and time. I came away from the book not liking Hemmingway as much as I had previously. Maybe it's just time, but he came across as singularly obsessed and more than a little self-interested. Selfish would be a good word.

The book has about 80 pages of notes and references. Sometimes I wonder why current authors feel the need to supply this all in the same book but maybe everyone is working on his/her Ph.D. The print in this advanced reader's copy was also tiring. I wish they could have used a different font. Photos of the era and people would have been nice, too. Maybe those will be included in the final version.

Overall, recommended for Hemmingway enthusiasts.

EVERYBODY BEHAVES BADLY is one of the best books I’ve read this year! All about some of my favorite folk: Hemingway, Hadleigh, the Murphys and Fitzgeralds, Gertrude Stein, Dottie Parker and that 20s Paris crowd and how earnest Ernest took their lives together and made it into The Sun Also Rises! Spectacular research, and writing to equal it, I couldn’t stop reading, drank it up like Absinthe and feeling the same boozy pleasures while I did. I’ve read so much about all of this and them, but this is a fresh approach. If you’re at all interested in writing and the geniuses and losers of that era, you don’t want to miss this one! And I’m a sucker for the coda she includes, telling what happened to the main players long after the dust has settled from all that turmoil. Bravo! More books please, Miss Blume!

I didn't want this book to end. As someone who grew up reading F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, I absolutely loved this detailed but fast-moving book about everything that went into Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises." It makes me want to go back and read the novel again, now knowing all the drama and betrayals that went into it.

Hemingway's life provides fodder for many writers, but M M Blume misses the boat with very little new information on Hemingway. I prodded along in this dull, senseless book hoping to reach the end before I died of boredom. I thoroughly enjoyed the pictures, but the book did little to maintain my attention.

Hemingway was one hell of an author, but when it comes to redeeming personal qualities, he does seem to be sadly lacking. This was an enjoyable read, a look at the guy behind the pen, but not necessarily anything new to those of us who have read much of Hemingway's background before. If you are new to the subject, this is a good book to read,for those acquainted with his history, you won't really learn anything you didn't know before

Very much enjoyed the book. Had read a great deal on Paris in the twenties and the period of creativity for expatriates after the first world war. Would highly recommend this book to those who are also fascinated by the Paris of the 1920's, it's artist and writers and the creative process that went into writing one of the great literary masterpieces of our time.

Fascinating look into the rise of Hemingway. Wasn't a fan of Hemingway before this book, but I'm tempted to try again with this new (to me) insight.

The story is told well and told entertainingly. I didn't expect to breeze through it as much as I did. Recommended for people with deep interest in what inspired renowned creative works.

It took me longer to read this book than it probably took Hemingway to write "As the Sun Rises". As I approach the final 20 pages I'm reminded of the Seinfeld episode where the characters suggest doing a show about nothing. This work is really a book about nothing. If a reader really cares to delve into the personal interactions of the Hemingways and their circle of expats in Paris, be my guest. You'll not come away with many insights other than this crowd is without much virtue. But then, lack of virtue on the part of the reading public was what Hemingway was counting on.

Ms. Blume has done a comprehensive and credible job portraying the "Lost Generation". It is a pleasurable read. I am a fan of Hemingway the author, I never thought much of him as a person and after reading Ms. Blume's account I think even less of him. The similarities between Hemingway and Donald Trump are striking. They both display a narcissistic personality disorder (NPD).

This book is for anyone who loves to read "behind the scenes."
You will be captured as soon as you begin reading the introductory comments. The Sun Also Rises was Hemingway's first novel and he was determined to be the "most celebrated writer in the world."
This is an illuminating and fun read. His group of hangers-on DID behave badly and it is fun to read about what led to the evolution of a classic loathing Hemingway.
Don't deny yourself this pleasure---read it and enjoy.

This is a very good book. It is fun to read.

The story of Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises" encompasses the real life cast of people who went to Pamplona with him, the development of this huge first novel.... everyone does behave badly. The result is a literary history, but the author writes clearly, and makes this a very fun read.

I learned a lot more than I thought I had known about Hemingway, and frankly, I found this a hard book to put down.

I've read LOTS about Hemingway and all the other expats in Paris as well as many volumes about The Sun Also Rises. Ms. Blume has aced the retelling of this old story. More so than any other book about this period she has a firm grasp of all the threads of this story and weaves them into a magnificent tapestry.

This is a spectacular book. Author Lesley Blume is a masterful writer who brings to life the creation of a defining novel of the twentieth century.

'The Sun Also Rises' is Ernest Hemingway's first novel. Many believe it to be his best.

Hemingway's enduring evocation of "the lost generation" draws life from his experiences with a group of privileged outcasts and artistic explorers in 1920s Paris. Blume ably recreates that milieu and sketches the real-life individuals who would be immortalized through Hemingway's pen. At the same time, she provides the context of Hemingway's determined rise to fame as a writer. Her understanding of the intersection of the artist and the publishing world is striking and put to good use.

Anyone interested in Hemingway, the generation of the 1920s, art, the intersection of art and commerce, or the cultivation and costs of celebrity will find this book to be a memorable experience.

‘Everybody Behaves Badly’ tells the tale of Hemingway’s early years in Paris and his excursions to Pamplona, Spain as he was writing ‘The Sun Also Rises’. The friends that surrounded him are also well detailed including all the instances of what becomes collateral damage to them. There are lots and lots of names and people to keep track of.

All of Hemingway’s frustrations, loses, affairs and friendships are well described. Interesting are the inclusions of instances of his temper, volatile nature, controlling behavior and the friend and wife to which it was directed to.
A reader can learn about the editing of ‘The Sun also Rises’ and the reasoning behind each. Hemingway’s friendship with F. Scott Fitzgerald is included, as well as their reaction s.
An excellent epilogue is included concerning the characters involved in the book.

As a gentleman of a certain age who has read about the expat community in general and Hemingway in particular for many years, I have bemoaned the fact that most detailed bios, studies, deconstructions of my favorite authors of that generation have, for the most part, run their course. As a friend asked "what more is there to say about that crew?" You can imagine, therefore, my happiness to read of this critical study of "The Sun Also Rises." I read the except in the NYer which served to whet my appetite. I waited, impatiently I might add, for its release and purchased a copy on its first day of release. Because I found myself shooting through the book, I decided to download a copy of Hemingway's novel to read in tandem with Ms. Blume's text. This has proven to be a most useful approach, one I would recommend to others. Blume does an impressive job of examining not only Hemingway's early days of writing, but also his discovery that the world right before his nose provided more than enough material for his first novel. If you are conversant with the left bank crowd, you'll find yourself reintroduced to the likely suspects -- Gertrude Stein, Ford Maddox Ford, Sherwood Anderson, Ezra Pound and so forth. However, I envy the reader who is meeting the group for the first time as an entire world of study awaits.

If you are a fan of Hemingway, you'll love this book. Ms. Blume caught my attention from the very beginning and held it throughout this biography. This is a story about how he became a well-known author. What's clear is Hemingway's confidence. He never wavered or second-guessed himself. I felt I was right with him and his cronies as they made their rounds. I'll be looking for more of Ms. Blume's books.

It moves as briskly as the author it covers. A balanced look at all the figures involved in the creation of his first novel, and the aftermath of those relationships upon the book's debut. Detailed. Balanced. Compelling. Blume's writing is as strong and alive as the characters covered.

This was an interesting read. Readers are cautioned to read the works of Hemingway before reading this or other biographies. The author appears to be cautious about adding even more mystique to the veritable barn of Hemingway memorabilia. Hemingway had a long life of very good writing but with few joyful moments.

Lesley Blume knows her stuff. Anyone who loves Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Stein will find the subject matter throughly interesting. Blume is a talented writer and is clearly passionate about the subject matter. For the most part, Ms. Blume uses only factual information to tell the story with information she has gleaned from diaries, letters, and other materials left behind by Hemingway and his gang of literary dilettantes. She does not act fictional accounts of what the character were thinking without having factual basis for such thoughts. While this is definitely admirable in many regards, it did make it harder for me to become truly absorbed in the book.

This book is well researched and reads more like a biography than a novel. I have to admit that I was expecting a book that was extremely well researched but read more like a novel (like Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken or Seabiscuit). I personally had a bit of a hard time finding compelling reasons to like most of these hard drinking, not so hard working, egotists. Blume tells it like it is. I felt like I learned a lot about Hemingway and Fitzgerald, in particular.

I would not have finished EVERYBODY BEHAVES BADLY if I were not obligated to write a review of it. That then I know is not much of an endorsement for the book. Ms. Blume is certainly a readable writer, and she has done a tremendous amount of research as her footnotes illustrate. She convinced me that she nailed the people she writes about. The title, an apt one, is taken from a line from Ernest Hemingway’s novel THE SUN ALSO RISES. Ms. Blume then has chosen to give us a picture of Hemingway’s friends in Paris and Spain in the 1920’s who show up slightly altered in his novel that apparently was not like any novel written before it. (And we of course know that Hemingway spawned a whole generation of novelists who imitated his style often with less than successful results.)

Everyone, including Hemingway, acts badly. And it is to his credit—I suppose—that he bases the character Jakes Barnes in part on himself. It is probably a fair statement to say that he acted badly time and time again during this period of his life and later. Some of the critics of THE SUN ALSO RISES were put off by “unlikeability of the characters—they of course would have to be unattractive if they were based on this group that Hemingway was hanging with. This criticism angered him as he said that the characters had been “smashed” by life and were “hollow and dull.”

I am a firm believer that where a novelist finds his characters and whether they are based on real people in his/her life is not something I need to know much about. A good novel is a good novel. Furthermore, I read a couple of years ago the second volume of Hemingway’s letters that cover much of the same time in his life so I had read much of this before.

There are of course interesting facts and trivia here: words that were considered too vulgar to show up in a novel —“balls,” for example. Ms. Blume gives us pictures of some of Hemingway’s fellow writers and artists: Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson, Ezra Pound et al. And I found the term “starter husband” hilarious.

Finally I’m not much of an objective reviewer since I did not care for the subject matter. Someone else may find the book delightful.

Somehow "Introduction" in Blume's book succinctly summarizes what the author wants to deliver to the readers. One might skip other chapters, except chapter 12 where The Sun Rises. In this work, one gets ample tidbits on who knew whom and what gossips there were about literary expats, but not much on Hemingway's "extraordinary" literary style.

This is a fun, quick read, as exhilarating as a run with the bulls in Pamplona. Lesley Blume knows exactly how to handle her subject. She explains what made "The Sun Also Rises" such a bolt out of the blue for its time, while making the reader a fly-on-the-wall of Paris' bohemian cafes, Left Bank garrets and Gertrude Stein's salon. You will meet a ruthlessly ambitious and monstrously egotistical young Hemingway, and the impossibly larger than life characters who populated his life in Paris, none of whom seemed to escape injury by his mean streak.

Sure, it will tickle your literary, history and biography fancies. But it's also good, fun, gossip.

The title says it all. 90 years later, the stories, characters, and emotions play out the same today, only in newer settings.
To para-phrase a review, "it about a bunch of tourists eating, bathing, getting drunk, and arguing all while having sex".