For those readers who would prefer a nonfiction version of THE PARIS WIFE, this readable narrative might just do the trick. Written by a journalist, children’s author and “cultural historian,” EVERYBODY BEHAVES BADLY chronicles the Hemingways’ life from 1921, when the 21-year-old Hemingway was engaged to Hadley Richardson, through the publication and initial extravagant success of THE SUN ALSO RISES. This book’s title comes from that novel’s protagonist Jake Barnes’ comment that “Everybody behaves badly. Give them the proper chance.”

Though there is a coda to this story explaining what happened to the various characters portrayed in the novel, the focus here is squarely on the Hadley years. (Her divorce from Hemingway came through in January 1927, just as THE SUN ALSO RISES was about to go into its fifth printing; her settlement was the royalties from the book.)

"What’s satisfying about EVERYBODY BEHAVES BADLY is that it doesn’t pretend to be more than it is --- a well-researched, accessible look at Hemingway’s meteoric rise to the pantheon of American literature, the mayhem it caused and the toll it took on those around him."

Lesley M. M. Blume is not unsympathetic to Hadley, but this story is about Hemingway as he begins his five-year climb to successful author and international celebrity. At the end of 1921, when the Hemingways first moved to Paris, the chances of him supporting them as a writer --- as opposed to the journalist he had become --- seemed remote. Nevertheless, he would soon gain the support of his first friends and mentors, Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound, to whom he was introduced via Sherwood Anderson. F. Scott Fitzgerald would join that cadre eventually, and his unwavering support of Hemingway would prove to be critical. 

There are many stories in these pages of the bacchanalian trips to Pamplona and the South of France, the dark months in Toronto, and Hemingway’s messy affairs, but his obsession with writing, and success, is always front and center. What is hard to grapple with are the ways in which he seemed to jeopardize the potential for success, especially with his attempts to caricature and belittle his most loyal mentors. In his book, THE TORRENTS OF SPRING, which some suggest he wrote to get out of his original publishing contract but which he insisted his next publisher acquire, he parodied Sherwood Anderson, his first major supporter. In THE SUN ALSO RISES, barely any of his friends survived skewering --- and some never talked to him again. Hemingway’s need for discord to feed his creativity seems likely, but Blume dwells more on how the victims responded than on Hemingway’s psychological impetus. She does, however, quote Fitzgerald, who anticipated then that each major novel would require that Hemingway find a new wife to spur him to create. He was right.

It would be easy to say that, following Hemingway’s introduction to Maxwell Perkins at Scribner’s, “the rest is history,” but Blume actually makes the navigation through the shoals of publication pretty compelling. Her journalism background gives her license to use terms that would make more academic biographers flinch: at one point, she refers to Hemingway being on a “gossip-lit bender,” a very apt description. At another point, she mentions that the ads from Scribner’s to entice prospective readers relied on “what today would be called “FOMO” --- or fear of missing out.”

What’s satisfying about EVERYBODY BEHAVES BADLY is that it doesn’t pretend to be more than it is --- a well-researched, accessible look at Hemingway’s meteoric rise to the pantheon of American literature, the mayhem it caused and the toll it took on those around him. Ultimately, we know what it would cost the writer himself, but this book is about THE SUN as it rises.