Lewis' essay on Hemingway (The Dumb Ox) was the reason why he got such an
exceptionally harsh treatment in Moveable Feast -- even though it was not a
complete put-down Hemingway interpreted it as such and cut Lewis out of his
circle. Up until that time they had been on reasonably friendly terms. Read
Blasting and Bombardiering -- Lewis' account of his early years--you'll see
that the incident in which he describes meeting Hemingway for the first time
while Hemingway and Pound are sparring--was Hemingway's singular source for
describing Lewis in A Moveable Feast.

Lewis' account is fairly neutral--having been written in the 30s -- Hemingway
waited until after Lewis was dead to rewrite the account from his own point of
view in which he describes Lewis as "nasty". You will note that without
exception, everyone Hemingway condemns in his book about Paris is a) depicted
almost cartoonishly b) dead.

Those few who aren't remain cartoonish, thinly disguised and nameless. The
prose in the book is immaculate--perhaps one of the most beautiful of his
books and certainly one of the best of the 20th cent. But it is a fiction.

GAVIN






William Cole wrote:
>

> And while we're talking about Hemingway and savagery, Wyndham Lewis's
> essay "The Dumb Ox" is an interesting critique of Hemingway's work.
> Though laced with Lewis's own brand of vitriol (and inspired, I
> think, by personal animosity toward Stein), it provides an intriguing
> counter-reading of the "Hemingway hero" as a valorization of
> impotence. Might be worth a look.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Bill
>
> At 10:15 AM -0800 1/23/01, Tim Bray wrote:
> >I suppose it may be remotely possible that there are others reading
> >this list who, like me, had never gotten around to Hemingway's "A
> >Moveable Feast."  I just did, and it's an awfully good little book.
> >A couple of very intense portraits of EP, who used to play tennis with
> >EH.  The fact that they had the highest regard for each others' work
> >kind of startles me.  A picture of the two of them playing tennis
> >(EH says EP was good, but not who won) in Paris would have been a suitable
> >icon for 20th-cent EngLit in general, had anyone ever taken it. -T
>
> --
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