Book Review : The Paris Husband : How It Really Was Between Ernest and Hadley Hemingway
fact . Bradford rejects previous accounts , declaring that most Hemingway biographers have attacked Hadley for sinning “ against their subject , and against art . Meyers states that her ‘ inexcusable negligence …[ and ] The fact that she had been so careless about his most precious possession�the tangible expression of his deepest thoughts and feelings ... and had shown so little understanding of his life as a writer dealt the first disastrous blow to their marriage .’ This portrayal of Hadley as feckless and insensitive is ludicrous , as is Meyers ’ conviction that Hemingway would eventually leave her because of this first sign of indifference to his vocation as a literary artist .”
Realizing that we have only Hemingway ’ s word for what was in the valise , Bradford brushes aside decades of Hemingway biography : “ We know nothing of the content of the lost manuscripts but it is reasonable to assume that most of them would have reflected the narrow range of reading of the pre-Paris years and be based mainly on his experiences in the U . S . and Italy . He had been in Europe for less than twelve months and of the two pieces left in drawers in the Paris flat�notably ‘ Up in Michigan ’ �the imprint of Anderson is evident , laden with a clumsy dose of immature , brutal and very male sexuality . It remains a matter for debate as to whether the lost manuscripts hindered or energized his progress as a writer .” Bradford does not deny the blow to Hemingway , but definitively measuring its impact , as he rightly notes , is not within a biographer ’ s remit�notwithstanding the generations of biographers who behave otherwise . Instead of “ must have been ,” we have “ reasonable to assume ” and “ a matter for debate .” Biography is as much about preserving certain mysteries as it is about solving them . It is striking that Bradford uses the phrase “ must have been ” only once�and that it refers to the speculations of others .
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