The breaking point : Hemingway, Dos Passos, and the murder of Jos e Robles / Stephen Koch.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Koch, Stephen, 1941-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Hemingway, Ernest, 1899-1961--Homes and haunts--Spain.

Hemingway, Ernest.

Dos Passos, John, 1896-1970--Homes and haunts--Spain.

Dos Passos, John.

Hemingway, Ernest, 1899-1961--Friends and associates.

Dos Passos, John, 1896-1970--Friends and associates.

Robles Pazos, José--Friends and associates.

Robles Pazos, José.

Robles Pazos, José--Death and burial.

Robles Pazos, José.

Dos Passos, John, 1896-1970.

Hemingway, Ernest, 1899-1961.

Authors, American--20th century--Biography.

Authors, American.

Americans.

History.

Friends and associates.

Spain.

Americans--Spain--History--20th century.

Spain--History--Civil War, 1936-1939--Biography.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xi, 308 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Counterpoint, [2005]

Summary:

When John Dos Passos walked into Ernest Hemingway's room in the Florida Hotel in Madrid, the air was thick with tension. Hemingway was fuming; Dos Passos was caught off guard. They were there to witness the Spanish Civil War firsthand, but something more personal was going on: as Spain was unraveling thread by thread, so was their friendship.

Dos Passos was widely regarded as the literary voice of America's new socially engaged generation-his face had been on the cover of Time the week the war broke out. And he had long considered Hemingway one of his best friends. Yet they were completely opposite in personality, with Dos Passos's calm temperament and mild manner standing in stark contrast to Hemingway's machismo. Dos Passos was probably oblivious even to Hemingway's envy of him-an envy that was soon to erupt into full-blown resentment.

They had arrived in Spain as comrades, leftist writers-in-arms. But when Dos Passos went looking for his close friend Jose Robles-a Spanish-born Johns Hopkins professor who had moved back to Spain to help save the Spanish Republic-Robles was nowhere to be found. Dos Passos's search for Robles would eventually take his literary career and his friendship with Hemingway to the breaking point.

In this stunning historical narrative, acclaimed writer Stephen Koch explores the short time the two men shared in Spain, and how their split changed the life and work of each man-and changed the course of American literature itself. A real-life literary mystery written with a novelist's eye for detail, The Breaking Point is the story of two lives at the intersection of friendship and murder, of love and death, and of literature and history.

Contents:

Part I The Good Times

1 When a Man Makes Friends 2

2 The Last Good Time 27

3 The Apparatchik Appears 44

4 Departure 63

Part II The Theater of War

5 The Capital of the World 84

6 Fonseca, 25 106

7 The Air of Menace 123

8 Bombardment 134

9 Fiesta 147

10 Hemingstein's Dynamics of Dying 161

11 Barcelona on the Verge 178

12 Flight 199

Part III The End of the Affair

13 Spanish Realism, Spanish Romance 208

14 The Necessary Lie 220

15 The Necessary Murderer 236

16 Singing "Giovinezza" for Free 247

17 The Spoils of Defeat 263.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 283-308).

ISBN:

1582432805