Paris in the 1920s: Hemingway’s city of sport

ABSTRACT

Hemingway’s representation of Paris in A Moveable Feast has enthralled many a reader. It steers clear of traditional description as the author prefers to ‘create’ the city rather than ‘describe’ it. The narrator presents streets, cafés and restaurants as familiar places, thus imparting greater immediacy to his sense of the city. It is the same for the sports venues he frequented and idealised. Indeed, Ernest Hemingway was an enthusiast of horse racing at the Enghien-les-Bains hippodrome, the six-day bicycle races at the Vél’ d’Hiv’, and boxing matches at Stade Anastasie in Ménimontant, etc. This paper aims to present Hemingway’s interest in Parisian sports. It should be considered as an opportunity in his development as a writer. In this way, he was able to step into French cultural life, meet modern and sporting poets, box with his American counterparts as they talked about literature, and define the character of his figures while he polished his writing style.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Scott Donaldson, By Force of Will: The Life and Art of Ernest Hemingway (New York: The Viking Press, 1977), 256.

2 David C. Ward, ‘Poor Sports: Hemingway, Jake Barnes and the Sporting Life in The Sun Also Rises’, Aethlon 6, no. 2 (1989): 21–5.

3 J. Lawrence Mitchell, ‘Ernest Hemingway: In the Ring and Out’, The Hemingway Review 31, no. 1 (2011): 7–23.

4 Michael J. Martin, Stephen F. Austin, ‘In the same corner of the prize ring: Jack London, Ernest Hemingway and Boxing’, Studies in American Naturalism 11, no. 1 (2016): 69–83.

5 Robert W. Cochran, ‘A Second Cool Papa: Hemingway to Kinsella and Hays’, ARETE: The Journal of Sport Literature 4, no. 2 (1987): 27–40.

6 H. R. Stoneback, ‘On Bobsledding, Lugeing, Skiing, Tobogganing, Skis Leaning Against Alpine Inn Walls, Frozen Carcasses, Death, Glory, and Transcendence: Winter Sport in Hemingway’s Journalism and Fiction’, Aethlon 11, no. 2 (1994): 117–29.

7 H. R. Stoneback, ‘Fishing with John Burroughs and Ernest Hemingway: “Mere Wormers”? “Trout-Hogs”? or Aficionados with A Code?’, Aethlon 9, no. 2 (1992): 53–65.

8 H. R. Stoneback, ‘Holy Cross33 – Yale 6: Sport, Ritual, and Religion in Hemingway’, Aethlon 6, no. 2, (1989): 11–9.

9 Tim Summerlin, ‘Baseball and Hemingway’s The Three-Day Blow’, ARETE: The Journal of Sport Literature 4, no. 2 (1987): 99–102.

10 David L. Vanderwerken, ‘Another Fix on Hemingway, Sport, and the Twenties’, Aethlon 6, no. 2 (1989): 5–10.

11 Serge Doubrovsky, Autobiographiques: de Corneille à Sartre (Paris: PUF, 1988), 6.

12 We use in part the methodology of Bertrand Westphal. See for example La Géocritique, Réel, Fiction, Espace (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 2007).

13 For example, those written, between 1921 and 1929, to Sherwood Anderson, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, William Horne, Robert McAlmon, etc. See Ernest Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway, Selected Letters, 1917–1961 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1981).

14 Jean-Paul Crespelle, La Folle Époque (Paris: Hachette, 1968), 6.

15 Maurice Sachs, Au temps du Bœuf sur le toit (Paris: Grasset, coll. ‘Les Cahiers Rouges’, 1987).

16 While there were 8,000 Americans in 1919, there were 32,000 in 1923. See Mary McAuliffe, When Paris Sizzled. The 1920s Paris of Hemingway, Chanel, Cocteau, Cole Porter, Josephine Baker, and Their Friends (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), 22.

17 Vincent Bouvet, La Génération perdue. Des Américains à Paris 1917–1939 (Paris: publisher Cohen & Cohen, 2016).

18 Jean-Paul Caracalla, Montparnasse : l’âge d’or (Paris: Denoël, 1997).

19 Carlos Baker, Hemingway: The Writer as Artist (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972), 46.

20 Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast (1964), The Restored Edition (New York: Scribner, 2009), 72.

21 Ibid., 73.

22 Blaise Cendrars, Blaise Cendrars vous parle … , Texts presented and annotated by Claude Leroy (Paris: Denoël TADA 15, 2006), 139.

23 According to writer Olivier Rolin. Comments made during the 11th Chaminadour Literary Meetings, Guéret, from September 15 to 18, 2016: ‘Mathias Énard sur les grands chemins de Blaise Cendrars’.

24 Thomas Bauer, ‘Cendrars footballeur ou l’“homme caoutchouc”’, Continent Cendrars 14 (2010): 18–35.

25 The first issue was published on 20 June 1914, followed by two further issues on 5 and 20 July, publication was then stopped as a result of the war. In 1921, Géo-Charles and Paul Husson resumed publication until 1930. It was a bimonthly with drawings and wood engravings illustrating the activities of the Parisian art scene. It lived off subscriptions and advertising, café and restaurant owners, and other traders of the boulevards; it could be found in bookshop windows and was shouted out at sidewalk cafés. See Thomas Bauer, ‘Montparnasse’, Dictionnaire des revues littéraires au XX^e siècle. Domaine français, under Bruno Curatolo (Paris: Honoré Champion, tome II, 2014), 989–91.

26 René Bourgeois, Géo-Charles : un poète de la vie moderne (Echirolles: Editions Galerie-Musée Géo-Charles, 1985).

27 Jean-Yves Guillain, ‘Quand la capitale des Arts et des Lettres accueille la troisième édition des concours d’art olympiques’, in Thierry Terret (Ed.), Les Paris des Jeux olympiques de 1924 (Biarritz: Atlantica, 2008), 993–1029.

28 Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970), 236–7.

29 Ernest Hemingway, The Snows of Kilimajaro and Other Stories (New York: Scribner, 1995), 20.

30 David L. Vanderwerken, ‘Another Fix on Hemingway, Sport, and the Twenties’, 5.

31 William E. Cain, ‘Hemingway Presents Himself: The Writer in Green Hills of Africa’, Prose Studies 37, no. 2 (2015): 129.

32 Tony Fong, ‘The Fictional Selves of A Moveable Feast’, a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 31, no. 2 (2016): 269.

33 Alain Corbin, Le Monde retrouvé de Louis-François Pinagot. Sur les traces d’un inconnu (Paris: Flammarion, 2008), 8.

34 Serge Doubrovsky, Autobiographiques, 7.

35 Michel Beaujour, Miroirs d’encre. Rhétorique de l’autoportrait (Paris: Seuil, coll. ‘Poétique’, 1980).

36 Ibid., 113.

37 Henry Decoin, La Ronde infernale, L’Auto, February 15, 1928.

38 Frédéric Monier, Les Années 20 (Paris: Le Livre de poche, 1999), 131.

39 Géo-Charles, Six-Jours (Echirolles : Musée Géo-Charles d’Échirolles, 1932), 40.

40 Michel Collomb, La Littérature Art Déco. Sur le style d’époque (Paris: Méridiens, Klincksieck et C^ie, 1987).

41 Hemingway, A Moveable Feast, 54.

42 Harry Levin, Observations on the Style of Ernest Hemingway, in Robert P. Weeks, Hemingway: A collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1962), 82.

43 Hemingway, Letter to William Horne (July 17–18, 1923), Selected Letters, 88.

44 Baker, Hemingway: The Writer as Artist, 31.

45 Ernest Hemingway, The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway (New York: The Finca Vigía Edition, Scribner, 1987), 532–3.

46 Hemingway, A Moveable Feast, 88.

47 Hemingway, Letter to Sherwood Anderson (March 9, 1922), Selected Letters, 62.

48 J. Lawrence Mitchell, ‘Ernest Hemingway: In the Ring and Out’, 9.

49 Ibid., 13.

50 See Ernest Hemingway, Le Soleil se lève aussi, (Paris: Gallimard, coll. ‘Blanche’, 1933, réédition Gallimard, coll. ‘Folio’, no. 221, 2014), 10–11.

51 Donaldson, By Force of Will: The Life and Art of Ernest Hemingway, 242.

52 Hemingway, A Moveable Feast, 102.

53 Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises, 5.

54 Pascal Marin, ‘Un récit de vie peut-il est vraiEléments de critique du témoignage’, Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 95, no. 3 (2011), 603.

55 H. R. Stoneback, ‘On Bobsledding, Lugeing, Skiing, Tobogganing, Skis Leaning Against Alpine Inn Walls, Frozen Carcasses, Death, Glory, and Transcendence’, 118.

56 Ernest Hemingway, My Old Man (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970), 119.

57 Hemingway, Letter to William Horne (July 17–18, 1923), Selected Letters, 86.

58 Hemingway, A Moveable Feast, 79.

59 Ibid., 51.

60 Hemingway, My Old Man, 117.

61 Hemingway, A Moveable Feast, 42.

62 Ibid., 179.

63 Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises, 41.

64 Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (New York: Scribner, 1997), 127.

65 Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1968), 16.

66 Hemingway, My Old Man, 125.

67 William Humber, A Sporting Chance: Achievements of African-Canadan Athletes (Toronto: Natural Heritage, 2004), 137.

68 The Stade was situated at 136 bis de la rue Pelleport in Paris’s 20th arrondissement.

69 Hemingway, A Moveable Feast, 193.

70 L’Auto, August 3, 1923.

71 Hemingway, A Moveable Feast, 194.

72 Baker, Hemingway: The Writer as Artist, 50.

73 L’Auto, May 21, 1921.

74 L’Auto, October 9, 1921.

75 Hemingway, A Moveable Feast, 193.

76 Donaldson, By Force of Will: The Life and Art of Ernest Hemingway, 245–6.

77 Claude Leroy, ‘Preface’, in Philippe Soupault, Les Dernières nuits de Paris (Paris: Gallimard, coll. ‘L’Imaginaire’, 2001), IV.

78 J. Lawrence Mitchell, ‘Ernest Hemingway: In the Ring and Out’, 10.

79 David C. Ward, ‘Poor Sports: Hemingway, Jake Barnes and the Sporting Life in The Sun Also Rises’, 22.

80 Hemingway, A Moveable Feast, 198.

81 See, on the subject, Myriam Boucharenc, L’Écrivain-reporter au cœur des années trente (Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, coll. ‘Objet’, 2004), 122.

82 Harry Levin, Observations on the Style of Ernest Hemingway, 80.

83 Dave Zirin, A People’s History of Sports in the United States (New York: The New Press, 2008).

84 Claude Meunier, Ring noir. Quand Apollinaire, Cendrars et Picabia découvraient les boxeurs nègres (Paris: Plon, 1992).

85 Elizabeth Dewberry, Hemingway’s Journalism and The Realist Dilemma, in Scott Donaldson, The Cambridge Companion to Hemingway (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 16.

86 Hemingway, The Snows of Kilimajaro and Other Stories, 20.

87 Edouard Seidler, Le Sport et la presse (Paris: Colin, 1964), 29–59.

88 Thomas Bauer, ‘Le quotidien sportif L’Auto : un objet romanesque ?’, The French Review 84, no. 3 (2011): 74–84.

89 Donaldson, By Force of Will: The Life and Art of Ernest Hemingway, 249.