Hemingway at Eighteen: The Pivotal Year That Launched an American Legend

by Steve Paul, Paul Hendrickson (Foreword by)

Overview

George Ehrlich Award Recipient

In the summer of 1917, Ernest Hemingway was an eighteen-year-old high school graduate unsure of his future. The American entry into the Great War stirred thoughts of joining the army. While many of his friends in Oak Park, Illinois, were heading to college, Hemingway couldn’t make up his mind and eventually chose to begin a career in writing and journalism at the Kansas City Star , one of the great newspapers of its day.

In six and a half months at the Star, Hemingway experienced a compressed, streetwise alternative to a college education that opened his eyes to urban violence, the power of literature, the hard work of writing, and a constantly swirling stage of human comedy and drama. The Kansas City experience led Hemingway into the Red Cross ambulance service in Italy, where, two weeks before his nineteenth birthday, he was dangerously wounded at the front.

Award-winning writer Steve Paul takes a measure of this pivotal year when Hemingway’s self-invention and transformation began—from a “modest, rather shy and diffident boy” to a confident writer who aimed to find and record the truth throughout his life. Hemingway at Eighteen provides a fresh perspective on Hemingway’s writing, sheds new light on this young man bound for greatness, and introduces anew a legendary American writer at the very beginning of his journey.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781613739716
Publisher:	Chicago Review Press, Incorporated
Publication date:	10/01/2017
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	656,211
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Steve Paul is an award-winning writer and editor who worked at the Kansas City Star for more than 40 years, including stints as book critic, arts editor, restaurant critic, and—before his retirement in early 2016—editorial page editor. He is a former board member of the National Book Critics Circle and the author (and photographer) of Architecture A to Z, the editor of Kansas City Noir, and coeditor of War + Ink: New Perspectives on Ernest Hemingway’s Early Life and Writings.

Table of Contents

Foreword Paul Hendrickson vii

Introduction xi

Prologue xv

1 Summer of Indecision 1

2 Creative Cauldron 12

3 "The Morally Strenuous Life" 24

4 "The Insignificance of Self" 35

5 A Lack of Vices 46

6 The "Great Litterateur" 58

7 A Suicide, a Flea, a Vile Place 68

8 The Ambulance Run 84

9 Crime and Punishment 94

10 The War Beckons 105

11 "Snap and Wallop" 120

12 "You See Things" 131

13 At the Piave 148

14 Lies and Disillusionment 163

Coda 177

Acknowledgments 183

Appendix 187

Notes 197

Bibliography 215

Credits 219

Index 223

Editorial Reviews

"A remarkably fine, absolutely illuminating book." —Scott Donaldson, author of Hemingway vs. Fitzgerald: The Rise and Fall of a Literary Friendship


“Do we need another Hemingway biography? Absolutely, if it’s as intelligent, insightful, and big hearted as Hemingway at Eighteen. This is a Hemingway few of us know—dazzlingly talented but still young, pulsing with ambition, and searching for his place in the literary world. Steve Paul has given us the origins of a legend.” —Candice Millard, author of The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey


“In Hemingway at Eighteen, Steve Paul has given us an engaging and insightful work that shines a light on that crucial year in Hemingway’s life, when he first tasted the world raw and the foundation of the famous prose style was laid at the Kansas City Star.” —Daniel Woodrell, author of The Maid’s Version and Winter’s Bone


“A delightful book, about a boy becoming a man, and a newspaper hack becoming one of our finest writers. Steve Paul’s biography will surprise even those who thought there was nothing new to know about Ernest Hemingway.” —Rick Atkinson, author of An Army at Dawn


"[A] clear, concise, sympathetic account of a gifted young man discovering who he is-and what he can do." —Kirkus Reviews



“Steve Paul, a master hand at the venerable newspaper where the young cub Ernest Hemingway got his start, here gives us a lively and fascinating account of a formative year in the life of a great writer.” —Richard Rhodes, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Making of the Atomic Bomb


“Paul, a veteran of the Kansas City Star’s editorial staff, provides generous insight into the paper and the city, and his expert interest in Hemingway parallels his fond appreciation for the newsroom’s “clack of typing mills and the smoke of countless cigars.” —Booklist


“Beginnings are important in literature and life. Steve Paul, one of the Kansas City Star’s own, has given us a thoughtful and lively account of a seminal year for Ernest Hemingway.” —Seán Hemingway, editor of The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: The Hemingway Library Edition

From the Publisher

10/01/2017
Paul (coeditor, War + Ink: New Perspectives on Ernest Hemingway's Early Life and Writings), who worked as a writer and editor at the Kansas City Star for more than 40 years, focuses on a significant period in Ernest Hemingway's life, a year that began with his debut as a cub reporter for the Star and ended with his being wounded while serving as a Red Cross ambulance driver in Italy during World War I. This book draws on Paul's knowledge of the Star's history, Hemingway's correspondence, and earlier scholarship, including Charles A. Fenton's The Apprenticeship of Ernest Hemingway and Ernest Hemingway, Cub Reporter, edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli. Paul brings to life the tyro-writer's adventures as he covers a wide variety of news assignments, including stories on vice, crime, and political corruption. Hemingway's apprenticeship at the Star, Paul argues, had a strong influence on the development of the author's major themes as well as his prose style. A generous selection of rarely seen photos enliven the text; an appendix reprints a selection of Hemingway's articles from the Star. VERDICT Written in clear, graceful prose, Paul's book reads like a novel. It should please Hemingway enthusiasts of all stripes, from general readers to scholars.—William Gargan, Brooklyn Coll. Lib., CUNY

Library Journal

2017-07-17
Yes, there is more to learn about the man who remains one of America's most iconic writers.Paul, who for decades wrote for the Kansas City Star and, with several others, has co-edited a previous work on Papa (War + Ink: New Perspectives on Ernest Hemingway's Early Life and Writings, 2014, etc.), shares some history with Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), who began his professional writing career at age 18 at the Star, where he worked for more than six months before enlisting in the ambulance service for World War I. Paul focuses on this single year, and we learn about how Hemingway acquired the Kansas City gig, where and how he lived in the city, the sorts of stories he covered, his reputation among his colleagues, his decision to apply for the ambulance service (he failed the military physical), his journey to Europe, and his severe wounding in Italy—an experience that would lead, as the author points out, to A Farewell to Arms. Paul notes that during Hemingway's tenure at the paper, there were no bylines, but he occasionally sent home clippings, and Paul mined the young man's letters as well to pin other pieces to the novice writer. He also points out the connections between the Kansas City stories he covered and his fiction (as Paul does as well with the ambulance service). The author, like previous biographers, whom he generously mentions, struggles to separate fact from fiction in the life of Hemingway, who could be a fabulist. Paul also traveled to key sites, including the spot where Hemingway was wounded, to enrich his account. He says several times that Hemingway learned to write in Kansas City—a genial exaggeration, of course. Near the end, he reveals a key discovery about Papa and a grand jury. A clear, concise, sympathetic account of a gifted young man discovering who he is—and what he can do.

Kirkus Reviews