Scott Donaldson: Hemingway vs Fitzgerald - The Rise and Fall of a Literary Friendship

John Murray

$69.95

Donaldson is the biographer of both Hemingway and Fitzgerald, and his familiarity with and empathy for them makes this a rich, satisfying read.

Not surprisingly, the friendship between the two expatriates, which began in Paris when Fitzgerald was in the ascendancy and Hemingway was but a novice, was intense, mercurial, complex and alcohol-soaked.

To tell the story is to revisit the colourful life of each man, and to dip yet again into the glamour and excess of 1920s Paris.

Donaldson is always insightful. "Those two brought out the worst in each other," one friend notes, and Donaldson is able to show how this was so - in Hemingway's need to strike out and hurt and be dominant; and Fitzgerald's need to be hurt and insulted and self-abasing.