THE BREAKING POINT: Hemingway, Dos Passos, and the Murder of Jose Robles

Koch's new biographic history surveys the Spanish Civil War, the decline of literary modernism, the train wreck otherwise known as Ernest Hemingway's love life and the waning career of John Dos Passos—all while plotting the moral highs and lows of 1930s American and European intellectuals, politicos and revolutionaries. This is heady stuff, made headier still by Koch's revelation that the hand pulling each of these narrative threads belongs to no less a villain than Joseph Stalin. Far from spinning conspiracy theories, Koch coolly examines scholarship, memoirs and archival material that place Stalin's propaganda operatives at the heart of almost every relationship, argument and scene rendered in these masterful chapters. Chief among the affairs is the unraveling friendship between Hemingway and Dos Passos, two literary titans who spent the years of the Spanish Civil War in opposing slides toward (Hemingway) and away from (Dos Passos) the ideologies of well-meaning leftists. There may be no "elevator pitch" for Koch's book, no single phrase to utter in the ear of a film producer that would take this story from page to screen, and that's too bad, because Koch (former head of the Writing Division at Columbia) reaps enough death, sex, booze and intrigue from his subject to feed an Oscar contender. But the best part is really Koch himself. Present in the narrative as a historical detective, connecting the dots between his various sources, Koch also excels as a literary critic, one who loves books that are morally nuanced and gets brilliantly angry when the authors he respects ruin their talents by committing themselves to shortsighted ideological points. Agent, Carlisle & Company. (Apr.)