'Pilot Fish' a tale of Hemingway and Dos Passos

'I don't know, Tatie. There are so many sorts of hunger. In the spring there are more. But that's gone now. Memory is hunger.'

This hunger for life, for what it holds, for what it can give you, and for what you can give to it is limitless. This world is very vast and throughout history there has been constant change and movement wither it be with revolutions or wars, or movements that all lead to where the world is today. We learn about such events in times through readings, through documentations, through the people who were part of this community in their time. The quote above taken from Hemingway’s A moveable feast – A false spring describes that this hunger is everywhere that it will never be lost and even in the darkest side of the moonlight there will still be a glimpse of it in the little speck of light that remains. Going through Hemingway’s passages based on the spring in Paris and John Dos Passos time in the Spanish Civil war, will help describe how their realities were in the time they lived in.

Hemingway and Dos Passos were close friends, they lived in the same time, and both lived in Spain together during the Spanish Civil war at some point. Being so close, one can see that their style of writing have similar tendencies, however there are rather significant differences between how they objectify their themes. As the civil war continued the way Dos perceived communism altered gravely as when his good friend and translator Jose Robles was murdered and covered up in the propaganda of Stalinists for whom Hemingway was doing work for, greatly damaged their relationship, and Hemingway later in A Moveable Feast names Dos as a “pilot fish”. Their relationship fell apart and it is evident within their writings how they both perceived their times, and how they saw the world, including Paris. In Hemingway’s passages A false spring and People by the Seine he romantisises the idea of Paris, he manages to capture the honesty of Paris and place a pleasantry around it. He doesn’t make it just a perfect place or illustrate it with shades of pure beauty, but he shows how he accepts the darker sides of Paris and still finds it to be the center of the world. When he comes to describing Paris in in the spring he says, “Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light. But you knew there would always be the spring.” This idea of anticipation of spring, this yearning of a new life, a new time, when all the darkness is gone and nature begins to bloom again; “I could never be lonely along the river. With so many trees in the city, you could see the spring coming each day until a night of warm wind would bring it suddenly in one morning.” The way he describes Paris is a reality that is familiar, particularly since this is the case, is slowly comes and then one morning you realize we’ve entered a new season, a new chapter in one’s life.

“The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.” Hemingway’s style of describing Paris and the surroundings within spring is very romanticized but plausible, his view on reality is enhanced within his writings, there is a positivity to his writing of Paris in the spring, but goes on to describe and narrate almost what he sees in a fictitious yet documentary like way. “But Paris was a very old city and we were young and nothing was simple there, not even poverty, nor sudden money, nor the moonlight, nor right and wrong, nor the breathing of someone who lay beside you in the moonlight.” This idea or view of Hemingway is so beautiful, the use of his words is effortlessly placed together, even though he’s describing the darker sides of it, there is still holds Paris to a higher view. There is still this air of fiction like writing, the melody of the tone of his words enhance the meanings and symbolism he wishes to get through to the reader. Compared to Dos Passos – he has as well as documentaries style however his roots are very much political towards the fact rather than beautifying it.

“But Paris in the spring is pleasant as a song in a musical comedy, if you can get away from the chore of interviewing politicians and waiting for them in their gloomy antechambers where the furniture and carpets and the pale faced attendants with not very clean starched shirts and white ties and unbrushed liveries as if they hadn’t changed since the days of the sun king”. You can see the use of his irony used in his style- he has a rather cynical style of writing, it seems rather biased – the way he sees reality in this fictitious stories are based of the narrator or main character Andrew- sees things very different, represents himself as an almost disliked person by many. He has this impersonally logic to his literary writing/method, there are hints of dry irony, and “a kind of willed and slightly humorless desire to locate his subjects in neatly defined networks o history and social change”(Dos Passos). Sartre saw his writing as better than authors, such as Faulkner or Kafka- “ that he wrote the way fiction should be written, as “a responsible way, using materials from the world as it is without being a meme photographer” (Dos Passos). Marian Merrriman described John as being “a better writer than Hemingway. He was a seasoned writer of the prose of war”, but said that, as a person he didn’t impress her, he was perhaps ‘wishy-washy’. She couldn’t always make out everything he was saying, was clear- “for whatever reasons, he wanted out of there, out of Hemingway’s room, out of bomb shaken Madrid.”

This shows how both writers are rather different, Dos imposes his views on the reader through his character as Andrew, he explains things in rather biased light, even though Hemingway writes from his point of view as well, there isn’t a forceful way about it. He has this flow through his words that bring the reader on a journey and shows them the reality through this fictisious glass; unlike Passos who rather shows direct the political sides of life, and a very much harsher reality. They both demonstrate their love for Paris, in the Three Soldiers, Andrew tried to do everything possible to get to Paris, for this idea of freedom and liberty and art is what can be found in Paris. It is how he represents Paris, a place of wonder, a place of free spirit, where the music and the arts come together amongst some of the worlds most creative and interesting people. Hemingway also illustrates his love for Paris by the love for his wife Hadley, who represents those times that were hard but full of life and hunger for life. However even though they both write about the wonderment and life found in Paris, they both approach reality in different ways.

Andrew straight away from the beginning shows his interest in people and an interest in the arts as well as his desire to live in Paris. Andrews went on talking, almost to himself. "What a wonderful life that would be to live up here in a small room that would overlook the great rosy grey expanse of the city, to have some absurd work like that to live on, and to spend all your spare time working and going to concerts.... A quiet mellow existence.... Think of my life beside it. Slaving in that iron, metallic, brazen New York to write ineptitudes about music in the Sunday paper. God! And this."(Dos Passos) This shows him as a boy who wants to discover a new world, a world he’s only imagined to live. The life he lives seems to enclose him, seems to suffocate him, this shown by when he has the urge to rip his shirt open "Oh, I'd like to make the buttons fly all over the cafe, smashing the liqueur glasses, snapping in the faces of all those dandified French officers who look so proud of themselves that they survived long enough to be victorious." He wishes he wasn’t there, shows how Andrew who is narrating the view of John Dos Passos, despises the way the war is going, shows how he is changing in terms of his views on the war. He has a repetition of the ‘violet eyes’ of these two artists that he met, this idea of violet eyes has a metaphor for perhaps the eyes, the way they see life through creative and spiritual window. Represents the way they see things vs. the way Andrew sees life, and perhaps the way he wishes he could see life. This spiritual view, this view of freedom, is apparent throughout the whole story of the Three Soldiers, “He wandered aimlessly for a while about the silent village hoping to find a cafe where he could sit for a few minutes to take a last look at himself before plunging again into the groveling promiscuity of the army.” There is definitely a negative connotation to the way he sees the army, and shows how an American perceives this from an anti communist point of view. Through various characters and the plot line of the story, the readers can see how it was to be in the army for a young man who had no yearning to be a part of it, and how he held a desire to go to Paris to study music, to go to the American school of Paris, and live a life of freedom. At the end of the story he allowed to go through struggles and hardship, sweat and embarrassment he succeeds and get to go to Paris "Tomorrow I'm going to Paris," cried Andrews boisterously. "It's the end of soldiering for me." There youthfulness to the way Andrew is perceived, Dos has stubbornly in a way written through a story of a young man and his journey to Paris, how reality was at that time and the dreams that lived within him.

Both writers in the end encapsulate what their time was like, however the degree of irony in both alters, along with the enhancement of the good is more apparent in Hemingway’s rather than Dos’s, they both show and equal amount of love for Paris, however perhaps Hemingway’s sweetens the way he sees life, or hides the negatives through positives words. Unlike Dos who seems to perhaps darken what reality was truly, this cynical, dry irony is very much apparent. Either way, both authors have achieved in selling their views of Paris whether the actual reality was the way they illustrated, in their own versions, one will never truly know. 

Hemingway's Women as seen in a Parisian Showroom

Women in Paris have a different aura about them to American women, there seems to be this grandeur about the ways of Parisian women that they have this superiority, this elegance yet demining manner about them. Above men, control the men have this capability to tease and tempt the man into doing as she wishes. When working at Oscar de la Renta these French women came waltzing in up the white reflective marble steps, into a grand room where chandeliers hung and where ball gowns circulated the room on wafer like mannequins. Thru the glittered shoes, sparkling jewelry, and café au lait holding waiters, amongst the petite French ladies with there mysterious air, passionate discussions, and vibrant red nails with cigarette stained fingers, stood a tall leggy woman, with large eyes, coloured with turquoise makeup and pointy shoes. She whispered to a small hairless man with a New York accent.  She had wanted some ordeuvres for the young entrepreneurs who had just flown in from Spain. She had an air of power, and stern in her ways yet very amiable. Her flaming red hair, and elongated body with delicate hands, motherly hands reminded me of Hadley, Hemingway’s first wife, his second love but first true partner.

She captures that perfect domestic, conservative woman “she was an oddity in the age of the flapper”(McLain). Just like the woman at Oscar de la Renta, intelligent, frank and had warmth about her, Hadley illustrates the same qualities as described in McLain’s novel bringing light to the character that of Mrs. Hemingway the first. Not only does she show how a bourgeois upper class household is like in Paris but one in “St Louis with dark undercurrents of alcoholism and suicide”(McLain). She grew up was with an alcoholic father and saw the darkness of what that brings, she was a strong woman, and had seen things. The eyes of her father had resembled those of Hemingway’s, “So lost, he’d said, and I could see it in his eyes, which reminded me of my father’s” (68). Much like Hemingway who embarked on such drinking activities with various authors of that time, she also had needed him for her life, to take a life where she could escape her past, as he needed someone to feel secure. Hadley was a beautiful red headed, curvaceous woman, six years senior she had an intelligence and kindness that was very different from his later wives, she owned ethical and gendered values yet had to embrace the modernizing world of Paris that surrounded her. She held a tradition haven waited to give herself away before the age of twenty-eight she remained true to her values, very rare for this time of the flapper. Despite the two lovers being complete opposites they both needed one another, Hemingway needed Hadley “to provide the emotional structure necessary for him to write and translate into aesthetic rhythm the explosiveness of those dark memories” and she had needed “him to help her exit the safe but lifeless cocoon that is her family existence in St. Louis.”( McLain).

Hemingway was this passionate, eager, adventurous man who had seen a lot and witnessed a lot of life changing things, that effected the way he acted and saw life. He held a passion and love so strong for literature that he could and wanted to express what he was feeling to anyone and everyone, Hadley was quieter about that. This perception of Hadley shows that she might be on the shier side and the more reserved side but that nonetheless she was a twinkle in Earnest’s eyes.

It’s interesting to see how Hadley is represented in the New Reading of an American expat in Paris; McLain really paints a picture of a woman who wishes she’s something more than she was. In the text Hadley described “His preoccupation with his work made me (her) sharply aware that I (she) had no passion of my (her) own” (70). Later in the novel, she muses, “I wasn’t at all convinced I was special, as Ernest was. He lived inside the creative sphere and I lived outside” (107).” This idea that she’s with someone so outgoing and so alive- just like the photos taken and showed at Shakespeare and Company’s bookstore, Hadley seemed to lack such charisma. Leading to often insecurities about herself, and the new modernist woman that shadowed her. Despite the perception of herself as this monotonous individual she shared something truly special with Hemingway, even though him leaving her for one of her friends Pauline Pfeiffer, that devastatingly hurt, he has always referred to her in his writings. She was seen as a muse of Paris, she had inspired him to see the modernism against the antimodernist perceptions and ways of life. “McLain brilliantly fleshes out these tensions between the modern and the anti-modern, with the result that her book allows us to understand Hemingway’s ultimate mourning for “the wife” he had lost—and came to venerate as a Paris memory and muse in his late work.”(McLain). It shows just how much he wishes he had been with her more, that he cherishes her, she inspired the sparkles in his eyes, they both shared traumatic experiences in their separate past lives that in the end brought both of them closer together, allowed their attractions for each other to reach new heights. They were at one with each other, perhaps opposite but a muse is a muse and nothing can escape the artist’s mind of that of his muse.

Thinking of that idea of a muse, and what it means, and what it means to be a muse, or to have a ONE, is something that bookstore and publisher Sylvia Beach understood. Sylvia Beach owned Shakespeare and Company; she was a witty woman, with a boundless amount of love and passion for writers and their art. She opened this store that Hemingway described as warm, cheerful and with a big stove. This representing her big heart and her warm and cheerful personality, of someone that was “No one that I ever knew was nicer to me”.

She was a respectful lady, with a generous heart, that’s seen in the letters to Joyce got often taken advantage of. That her kindness could be seen as a weakness, however in the letters passed between Joyce and herself, she stands up for herself, she has the unconditional passion and respect for the artist and their writings and would do everything in her power to do as much as humanly possible for them. Yet Joyce seemed to have taken her as a convenience in several situations, these letters “reveal much about his intellectual landscape Indeed, Joyce's letters, however much they might be couched in politeness, in camaraderie, in wheedling, in downright begging, are the stuff of which task- masters are made. One request follows the other, rather like beads on an endless string.”(Sylvia & Joyce). This shows that she was a courageous lady, standing up for herself against famous authors, these letters show the story between James Joyce and Beach, a tale more than just ingratitude or “submission sacrifice” or “egotism”.

This masked courage that Beach had inherited is shown in her memoir or her time in Paris during the Nazi occupation. This idea of a strong woman is evident in these pages, however there is still an air of lightness and wit about her. Despite a High ranked German officer coming to take away her books and belonging, Sylvia manages to protect her love and transport all her affairs to a third floor studio. The fact she tricked this officer and succeeded to hide her precious books and that notable Finnegan’s Wake shows tremendous bravery and humour that has been so noticeable throughout the various descriptions of her. There is one sentence that she mentions in her memoir “Shakespeare and company remained open. The war went on” almost shows her ignorance to the war around her. Perhaps not ignorance but shows what is priority to her, shows her views about the subject matter, and where her heart and spirit is. She had thought about leaving back to America but decided to remain in the reality that of Paris with her friends. She let the fiction of her books; overrule the reality of her war.  

The two women discussed in this blog post shows that there are different types of American women coming to Paris as expatriates. Some are looking for that love to share with someone “and we’ll never love anyone else but each other. ‘No never.’ As Hemingway once said to Hadley, they may be after a long awaited dream such as opening a little bookstore like Sylvia Beach. The modernist times perceived women different dependent on their background and attitude towards the modernist world. Hemingway describes both these women always to the highest regard, but Hadley to the highest. Hemingway demonstrates throughout his career just how much Hadley had impacted him and allowed him to be a writer. It was a love that he would have always kept and still remains in the roots and depths of his pages. Just like the love that Sylvia Beach would have cherished and remembered forever down the little road to her bookstore Shakespeare & Company.

Henry James An old man at a Market

“Distance enforces a romantic view”-Gopnik Expatriates

For centuries Paris has been known as the central of the world, where writers, musicians, dancers, and painters have roamed the streets as expatriates. They embrace this idea of being a cosmopolite, living in a place where one is always in a continuous comparative state of mind. This meaning of being a cosmopolite, one of “That uncomfortable consequence of seeing many lands and feeling at home in none” (128,James). This idea of feeling at home in a land to the unknown is something that tends to lead to great discoveries, being in a place where one is not familiar allows for new perspectives on their life or others. It gives them a chance to truly see, allowing them conjure up dreams and illusions of themselves being in a home that only they can create and allude to. Having read Expatriates by Gopnik one can see how Paris has become a home away from home for many writers and artists during the 19th century. Including the three main writers we have been studying so far, Hemingway, Stein and James.

“The Parisian achievement was to have made, in the nineteenth century, two ideas of society: the Haussmannian idea of Bourgeois order and comfort, and the avant-garde of la vie bohème”(Gopnik 13)

Gopnik explains how there are two ways of living in Paris, one being la vie bohème this idea of eccentricity, of danger of passion, one of drinking, being shocked and teased by the devilish delights. The other Haute Bourgeoisie, they live for the sophistication and elegance this city embraces, they taste the food, they view the arts, and embrace the true beauty that is Paris. Throughout the 19th to 20th century artists full of hunger with their cravings of new outlooks on life, they yearned for new eccentric characters to meet, and sights to see.  “From then on, for almost a century, Paris remains a kind of literary laboratory, where American style gets made and proffered in refined form, form the curlicues of James and Wharton to the baroque comedy of Liebling and the sudden simplifications of Gertrude stein and Ernest Hemingway”(Gopnik 14). As seen Paris became this ideological place for lost souls and rich beauties to parade the streets together. 

Hemingway's style of writing is with a certain air of economical and understated perception with tight prose and avoidance of complicated syntax. However with these seemingly 'basic' stylized writing techniques he masters perfectly that of ‘art narrative’, he manages to use words to create emotions instead of describing the feelings to illustrate the picture. He is known to simplify that of Gertrude Stein’s poetic writings and overlay them with narrative and straightforwardness to his technique; it's almost like a documentary style of writing. This idea of taking what things are is apparent in James's writing as well, the way Henry James approaches Occasional Paris is with that direct view of Paris, and distinguishes how he feels about Paris and how a foreigner interacts or connects with this mystical place. He seems rather cynical about the ways others see this place, or how he himself see's Paris and relates to it. James describes like Hemingway the bluntness of what is this infatuating city; they both in different styles maintain the simplicity of the truth. In James Occasional Paris he sees “that simple foreigners may it make the picturesque; for certainly the elements in the picture" he had "just sketched" were "not especially exquisite"(James, Henry). This idea of reality in the eyes of tourist or a simple foreigner is not as so dazzling as it seems, that there are in fact claws underneath the velvet glove. However James allows time for romance and beauty to seize the complex sentences on his pages, unlike Hemingway but similar to Stein. Stein permits humour and playfulness along with poetic proses to illustrate the dreams and reality she finds within her stay. Gertrude Stein, a symbol of a modernist literate and literary innovator, works with this linear temporal conventions, she uses her inspiration within the modern arts to inspire and motivate fascinating and lyrically written pieces. Thus all three writers have similarities wither it be in the themes of their writing or in the style used, each philosophy evidently alters with each perception of the artist. However with that said each one of them appreciate and love Paris in a way that can be seen in their pieces, they may not illustrate it in the same façon, but they allow for one another to venture into their own personal worlds of the Parisian life they lived and experienced.

An experience of mine when once strolling around with my basket in the closest market in the Marais, a man with a long white beard and all in white began to talk to me, he was an author from California Lunar was his name. Walking thru the market with time to spare, he politely asked if he could accompany me in my stroll around the little enchanting market. We began to discuss the arts of Paris compared to the arts in LA, he began analyzing me as a person and artists and built up his own perception. His tired eyes, and string like lines slightly covered by his grey haired beard, I saw he was an old man with many stories and many experiences to share. He came to Paris to find peace and an embracement that Paris can only do so well, we stumbled upon the topic of the Eiffel tower, for he was on his way to see it for the first time in 4o years. He had a glistening in his eyes as he said it, and with a curling grin marking each side of his cheeks his whispered to me in his low rough voice, "the Eiffel tower is meant to be a famous piece of lingerie on a leg of a woman". It had amazed me for I never though of the Eiffel tower as a woman in lingerie before, but to me it seemed very clear once he said it. Paris is very feminine, with all its secrets and talents, along with simplistic beauty but sinister ways; it reminds me of how Henry James describes the "mystery" of Paris. 

Like that old man in the market, James also describes Paris to be a woman, with her secrets and seductive ways. Paris represented 'life' in James's The Velvet Glove; Paris represented the Princess in his story, the Olympian like wonder in his romance-illustrated version of this city. He creates this character that symbolized what Paris is to him, this dangerous woman, who can ignore one at any moment or day and destroy one without any guilt, or tempt you the next second. Paris has very much influenced James in how he writes in the Velvet Glove, as Gopnik says that “For James, Paris is romance itself, that is to say, approachable but unobtainable, to be wooed but possibly never won.”(Gopnik 18) Just like the last scene in his Velvet Glove he passionilly places his lips onto hers, and sighs, "Princess, I adore you" for he knows he has fallen in love with the princess’s embodiment. Even though this city to him is exuberant with vitality and with its intensity and passion towards everything of the arts and of the relishes of ones mind, it can be seen in his Occasional Paris, that he sees the darker shadows within the mesmerizing streets, hiding sinister stories.

After reading some ideas of a Belgian author who's studied James work, Jeanne Delbaere-Garant managed to encapsulate what Henry James felt Paris embodied and that of which "The only life that matters and that dangerous fascinating creatures might attempt to kill is the life of the soul, the profound integrity of the individual and the artist’s unflinching faithfulness to his art. But between the French bourgeoisie—whom James’s prejudices at the time prevented him from liking—and the Princess—whom he likes—there has been the experience of Paris, of which the Princess is the living embodiment. " (Delbaere-Garant, Jeanne). Meaning that the story of The Velvet Glove hides through words the way James feels about Paris and what it represents, he explains in his own way through the characters interactions with one another that the rich and beautiful cannot live without the melancholy artists who use the characters they meet in places such as Glorioani's Olympian like studios to inspire their fantasies.

 The haute bourgeoisie must mingle with the Avant grade bohemians and vise versa for both societies view the others in awe and wonderment, the Olympians get a thrill to be written about to be talked about, to see the arts that of modernism. Whilst the poet, the painter, the writer amused by the escapades of the wealthy feed on their natures or perhaps envy their lifestyles and fabricate their personal illusion of their reality. Thus the way Henry James perceives Paris’s mystery is one of a tempting woman, whose eyes lingers but never tells, who tease but never stay. He allows for the reader to embark on a tale of a Parisian night, where the thrill of it all comes into play. Even though in the Velvet Glove, he describes this romance inspired love story based on his personal experiences. There are still things about Paris that do remain a mystery for him, for which he does not want to ponder upon, Paris is a place for freedom and wonderment, a place where you can laugh the night away on wine, and listen to musicians or artists talk about the depths of their soul, you see writers narrating the night, and the dancers moving lyrically as day light gets brighter.

The way James illustrates Paris in Occasional Paris he is weary of the darker sides Paris has, he takes Paris for what it really is, not the fictitious image that all foreigners see. However the experiences he has demonstrated in a fantasy like scenario in the Velvet Glove demonstrates his love for it. There is always good and bad in a place and the way James seems to tie everything together in when in his story “he kissed the Princess’s hand with all the intensity of his passion, aware all the time, however, of the threatening claws inside the velvet glove.” (Delbeanne-Garant, Jeanne).