So at first, they started out as friends, and Loeb was worshipful of Hemingway - I mean, just completely adored him, even though there were tensions between the two. And for me, that always seemed like a little bit of foreshadowing, considering what Hemingway was about to do to Loeb on paper. Amusingly, they used to play tennis in a part of Paris that was, quote, 'close to the guillotine,' as Harold Loeb required. Was really Harold Loeb, who had been Hemingway's tennis friend. People who constantly point out that he's Jewish often turn out to be hateful about something. 'Cause his presence in the book becomes a kind of litmus test. Robert Cohn - I'll refer to him as the Jewish character.

(Laughter) Let's not delay at least a few of the others. SIMON: So - all right - we've identified Lady Brett Ashley. And she turned out to be the real-life inspiration behind Lady Brett Ashley, and I wanted to learn more. And she was a dissolute but sublime creature who was over in Paris, waiting out a divorce from her aristocratic husband. And I was immediately drawn her, and apparently half of Paris was drawn to her at one point, also.īLUME: I investigated a little bit, and it turns out her name was Lady Duff Twysden. And the woman sitting next to Hemingway had a very beguiling look about her. A few years ago, I saw a picture of Hemingway with an entourage of attractive and rather mischievous looking people sitting around a cafe table in Pamplona in 1925. SIMON: The book began in your mind with a picture.īLUME: Yes. LESLEY BLUME: Thank you so much for having me. Blume joins us from NPR West in Culver City, Calif. Blume, a contributor to Vanity Fair, Vogue and The Wall Street Journal, has written the story of the actual trip that led to the literary one - 'Everybody Behaves Badly: The True Story Behind Hemingway's Masterpiece The Sun Also Rises.' Lesley M. But the characters he brought to life were already alive - people close to Hemingway who made that trip to Spain just the year before. It's the novel that made Ernest Hemingway a huge literary force, admired, mocked and imitated to this day.

They spend the road trip getting drunk, seeing pointless gore, sleeping with and turning on each other to become symbols of what Hemingway's friend Gertrude Stein christened the lost generation that found no meaning in life after the mass losses of World War I. A few Americans and British ex-pats take a trip to Spain to see the bullfights. Earnest Hemingway's 'The Sun Also Rises' has never been out of print since it was published in 1926 and is universally acclaimed a masterpiece.

The sun also