As one of the first members of the “Literati,” those writers whose personal lives were just as intriguing as their most recently published scribblings, Ernest Hemingway’s divorces and marriages made for scintillating conversation.

His second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer, was the reason his first marriage dissolved. Pauline came from a wealthy family in St. Louis, MO. She attended the University of Missouri School of Journalism and after working at a number of newspapers in Cleveland and New York, she decided to focus on feature writing for magazines.

Pauline and Ernest met in Paris where Pauline was working for Vogue. She became fast friends with the Hemingways and the other members of the “Lost Generation.” 

Pauline and Ernest had two sons, Patrick and Gregory. Pauline and Ernest were in Kansas City waiting for the birth of their first son together while Ernest struggled with the ending to A Farewell to Arms. Hemingway’s observation of Pauline’s troublesome labor provided the inspiration for the tragic ending that befalls Catherine in AFTA.

In 1931, Pauline and Ernest moved to Key West. Their stormy marriage ended in divorce in 1940. Three weeks later, Ernest Hemingway married Martha Gellhorn. 

Today is a holiday known by many names–Remembrance Day, Armistice Day, Poppy Day, Veterans’ Day–and celebrated in many countries. In Canada, Australia and the U.K. Remembrance Day falls on the Sunday before Armistice Day, November 11. For two minutes at eleven o’clock in the morning, silence is observed to honor the almost 8 million casualties of World War I, both civilian and military.

2007 marks the 89th anniversary of the signing of the armistice to end the war on the Western Front. Only a year before, one of the bloodiest battles was being waged on the Austro-Italian border, the Battle of Caporetto or the twelfth battle of the Isonzo. 

In addition to recognizing the many ties Ernest Hemingway had to Kansas City and the ties his novel, A Farewell to Armsalso has to Kansas City, we must pay homage to the connection between Kansas City, World War I and a general in the Italian army at Caporetto.  Armando Diaz, was invited to the groundbreaking ceremony on November 1, 1921 of the Liberty Memorial.

On this somber holiday Sunday when we pay our respects to those who made great sacrifices for their countries during wartime, Kansas City sits up a little straighter. The “War to End All Wars” has a special place in our city’s history and our leaders fought their own battle for the National World War I Museum housed in Liberty Memorial, Kansas City’s premier landmark.

Test your Hemingway Quotient with a ten question quiz on the Kansas City Star’s Hemingway website. You don’t have to be an Ernest Hemingway scholar to answer all the questions, but it may help with some of the tough ones. Kansas City residents should do well with most of the mind benders.

Start now!

In honor of NaBloPoMo, we here at Big Read HQ will strive to post one entry per day to our Big Read Blog for the month. Or until we run out of things to say about Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms, Liberty Memorial, and Kansas City. Or until the Big Read is over.

Feel free to help us in our quest to post for thirty days straight. It’s not as hard as it looks to do something for thirty days. Remember that guy who ate fast food for a month? We are asking for something much healthier and better for your brain.

Let’s get the party started with the woman behind the nurse. Agnes von Kurowsky served as the basis for Hemingway’s British nurse, Catherine Barkley.

She served in the American Red Cross and nursed Hemingway while he convalesced at a hospital in Milan. Ernest Hemingway fell wildly in love with von Kurowsky and wanted to marry her. Hemingway returned to the States after the war was over and expected von Kurowsky to join him there. He wrote her numerous marriage proposals, but not long after his return home, she sent him a letter ending their relationship.

Scholars agree that von Kurowsky’s rejection of Hemingway was a seminal point in his development as a writer and his recurring themes of romantic loss. “In book after book and story after story, lovers are separated by misunderstandings, cooled passions, insanity and death.”

Fun fact about Agnes von Kurowsky: Her very first job out of school was as a cataloguer for the public library in Washington, D.C. She worked there for four years before attending nursing school. In her words, “The library was too slow and uneventful. My taste ran to something more exciting.”

National Blog Posting Month is here.  This is a take-off of the very popular National Novel Writing Month and the premise is simple, every weekday in November you publish one blog entry on your blog and of course, register on NaBloPoMo and meet your fellow bloggers. Or  you can simply use NaBloPoMo as a writing exercise, an easier-to-accomplish alternative to the marathon that inspired it: National Novel Writing Month.

You don’t have a blog but want to see what it is like?  Submit your Hemingway related blog post to us and we will post it on our blog.  You will then have a small taste of what the blogging world is all about.

Well, maybe not quite. But you can certainly improve your own writing style by following some of the guidelines provided in The Star Copy Style sheet.

Ernest Hemingway received a copy of these guidelines during his first days on the job and has credited the Kansas City Star with helping him shape his signature style.

Here are some of the more interesting “rules”:

“Say patrolmen not in uniform, not plain clothes men. Do not use cop.”

“Don’t say ‘He had his leg cut off in an accident.’ He wouldn’t have had it done for anything.”

“He died of heart disease, not heart failure–everybody dies of ‘heart failure.’ “

“The words donate and donation are barred from the columns of The Star. Use give or contribute. The use of raise in the sense of obtaining money has been forced into usge where no other word seems to do as well. But raise is not a noun.”

“A man is not arrested for ‘investigation.’ There is no such charge as ‘investigation.’ “

Sound advice for fledgling writers.

During Hemingway’s lifetime, he was awarded two of the most prestigious books awards for his work.  In 1953, he won the Pulitzer Prize and in 1954 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature.  While almost everyone has heard of these two awards, many people may have no idea what the awards mean and how they are decided.

The Pulitzer Prize (an American award) is the highest national award that can be given for print journalism.  It was established by Joseph Pulitzer and the first prize was awarded in 1917 and is announced each year in April.  Each year, more than 2,400 entries are submitted for consideration for the prize and 21 awards are normally given.   Visit the official Pulitzer Prize website for the complete list of winners.

The Nobel Prize in Literature is the highest international award that can be given for literature and looks at an author’s whole body of work and judges “the most outstanding work of an idealistic tendency”.  Established by Alfred Nobel, the first prizes were awarded in 1901.  Any Academy member, member of a literary society, professor of literature, former winners and the presidents of writers associations are eligible to nominate candidates.  For more information on the Nobel Prize and a complete list of winners, visit http://nobelprize.org/

  Trivia for the day:  Where does the phrase, “grace under pressure” originate?

I have it on the best of authority that if you ever are traveling in Florida a trip to Key West a visit to the Hemingway Home & Museum is a must.  If you do make the journey I hope you like cats because more than 60 descendants of Hemingway’s original pet friends are still living on the grounds, and yes, many of them do have six toes.

Be sure to visit the museum website and make a trip to this interesting museum on your next vacation to the Florida Keys

Ernest Hemingway Foundation

The Hemingway Society

And now for a fun trivia question:  In a 1958 interview with this man, Hemingway claimed to have written the ending of A Farewell to Arms 39 times before being satisfied.  Who was that man?

While Ernest Hemingway was inspired by his time in Kansas City for parts of his novel A Farewell to Arms and wrote parts of it in Kansas City, he also worked on the manuscript while traveling in the West and in Key West, Florida. Fellow writer John Dos Passos urged Hemingway to visit Key West.  Hemingway and his second wife, bought a Spanish Colonial style home, which is now a privately owned and operated museum, the Ernest Hemingway Home & Museum.

No one is quite certain where the precursors to the Hemingway home’s current residents, the six-toed cats came from. They may have been strays or Hemingway’s special pets. These feline descendents prowl the property and are cared for by museum staff.

It was in Key West that Hemingway made friends with some of the locals who dubbed themselves “The Mob.” Many of these working men inspired some of the characters in To Have and Have Not, and they bestowed the nickname “Papa” on Hemingway.

DYN? #35

Many of Ernest Hemingway’s novels have made the leap to the silver screen. A Farewell to Arms has had three versions AND a television miniseries. Catch any of the movies at a number of Kansas City Public Library locations by checking out the schedule here.

One of the most enduring film adaptations of a Hemingway novel features two of Hollywood’s greatest luminaries–Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall sizzled in To Have and Have Not.  But Did You Know that Hemingway’s critically-drubbed-novel-turned-classic-film needed adaptation assistance from another literary lion? William Faulkner tweaked the screen play for To Have and Have Not. Sharp readers and movie goers will know that the two formats bear little resemblance to each other.