Everybody Behaves Badly: The True Story Behind Hemingway’s Masterpiece ‘The Sun Also Rises’

In this revealing new study, Blume shows that a series of competing internal and external pressures helped birth Hemingway’s now-legendary debut roman à clef, The Sun Also Rises. Blume begins by tracing Hemingway’s dogged path to becoming a published writer. By the time Hemingway and his first wife, Hadley, arrived in Paris in 1921, he was considered one of the most promising young American authors, though he had published only a few short stories. The particulars of the Hemingways’ epic trip to Pamplona, Spain, with five friends in the summer of 1925—and the romantic entanglements that followed—shed light not only on Hemingway’s early career but also on other stories of the lost generation. After Hemingway refashioned their trip into a novel, he focused on a publishing contract for what he firmly believed would be a blockbuster sensation. In the subsequent negotiations and editing process, Blume reveals, F. Scott Fitzgerald played a surprisingly large role. Blume has carved a mountain of original research into a riveting tale of Hemingway’s literary, romantic, and publishing travails. Agent: Molly Friedrich, Friedrich Agency. (June)