Interview with Nancy Sindelar, Part 1

Nancy Sindelar is the author of a new biography, Hemingway's Passions: His Women, His Wars, and His Writing. (Watch a preview here.)  Through quotations from his works and personal letters, as well as more than sixty photographs—many of which have not been previously published—Hemingway scholar Sindelar captures Hemingway’s life and adventures, revealing his own feelings about his romantic relationships and the ways his experiences with women appear in his literary works. She is the author of several other books, including Influencing Hemingway: People and Places that Shaped His Life and Work. Nancy also sits on the Board of the Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park, which oversees the Hemingway Birthplace Museum.

Q: What inspired you to write this book?

Nancy: After Influencing Hemingway was published, I had the opportunity to give a series of book talks. I quickly learned that audiences wanted to know more about the women in Ernest’s life. My subsequent talks on Hemingway’s women were well received and motivated me to research and write a second book that included the details of his relationships with women.

I truly believe writing was Ernest’s greatest passion—it brought him great happiness and also great sadness. Wars, too, were important to him because they allowed him to study men facing dangerous situations—even death. His heroes all exemplified what he called “grace under pressure.” As I drafted the chapters, the title became obvious. Hemingway’s passions were women, wars, and writing.

Q: How does your book address gaps in existing Hemingway biographies?

Nancy: As I researched the women in Ernest’s life, I was amazed at the extent to which they influenced the plot and the characters in his novels and short stories.  They all showed up—though not necessarily in a positive light. I believe the examination of his romantic relationships and the influence they had on his writing has not been discussed in previous biographies.

Q: You focus quite a lot on how Hemingway’s real-life interactions—especially with women—ended up appearing in his novels. Can you say something about that?

Nancy: My research revealed insights into the process he used to transform his everyday experiences and relationships into content for his writing. It was fascinating to see how dangerous it was to be Ernest’s friend, lover, or even his wife because you’d show up in one of his novels or short stories.

For example, the character, Brett Ashley in The Sun Also Rises is closely based on a woman in Ernest’s expatriate circle in 1920’s Paris. Lady Duff Twysden was known for her charm and multiple romantic entanglements, and many men, including Ernest and his friend Harold Loeb, pursued Lady Duff. Interestingly, it was Loeb who was apparently successful in that endeavor, and Ernest was jealous and never forgave Loeb. Ernest retaliated by casting Loeb as the character, Robert Cohn. When Brett flirts with other men Cohn acts like a lovesick crybaby, and the expatriate crowd mocks and abuses him. Ernest thus succeeded in giving Loeb cruel fictional immortality though Cohn’s actions and by the utter disdain expressed by the other characters in the novel.

Q: Stepping back in time we find Hemingway, at 19, going off during World War I to be an American Red Cross ambulance driver in Italy. There he is severely wounded and ends up in a hospital, where he meets an important woman in his life, the nurse, Agnes von Kurowsky. How does this relationship affect Hemingway?

Nancy: This was Ernest’s first romantic relationship. He was young, inexperienced and totally taken with her beauty and attentiveness. They didn’t consummate their relationship, but Ernest was confident enough to expect they would marry when they returned home. Later, when he received her Dear John letter, his heart was broken. Agnes, seven years older than Ernest, joined the American Red Cross because she was looking for an adventure and later admitted that she led him on.

Q: But then, as you write in your book, she shows up in Hemingway’s novel, Farewell to Arms, as Catherine Barkley, nurse to the Hemingway stand-in character, Frederic Henry.

Nancy: Yes, here one can really see Hemingway’s creative process—transforming Agnes into Catherine as a kind of wish fulfillment for what he hoped his relationship with Agnes might have been. Though the book doesn’t have a happy ending. Frederic and Catherine have an affair in the hospital, she becomes pregnant, and they run off to Switzerland together. In writing A Farewell to Arms, Ernest followed the advice he later gave to F. Scott Fitzgerald.  “When you get the damn hurt, use it.”

Q: Nancy, thank you. On that note, we’ll conclude this part of the interview but will keep exploring Hemingway’s wars and women in upcoming blogs.