He returns here to the last days of the writer. “In your opinion, what happens when a writer who is over sixty realizes that he will never again be able to write the books he swore to write? Or accomplish what he promised himself he would accomplish when he was twenty?” This is the central question of the novel which takes place from July 12, 1960 to July 1, 1961. Did he love women? He loses his libido. Did he live to write? He can't do it anymore. Was he drinking heavily? Alcohol is forbidden to him.
The novel begins in Cuba. Hemingway is looking for his dog Black dog. He looks for it everywhere and his wife very thoughtfully reminds him that the animal has been dead for three years. This is the beginning of mental disorders.
A fairly erudite novel about Ernest Hemingway?
At first we fear a Wikipedia novel, that is to say full of biographical details which would slow down the action. Cortanze does not fall into this trap although he knows the twists and turns of his subject on the purpose of the fingers. He has the good idea to tighten the novel, to concentrate it on two characters: Ernest and his wife, Mary Welsh. She protects him, follows him, admires him, loves him, endures Homeric shouting matches and endless despair. They leave Cuba to return to the United States and try to treat the writer who sees FBI agents everywhere: in bars, in the streets, in the garden of their house, in the house itself. They come in the form of characters from novels. And come to taunt Ernest and spy on him.
And he takes care of himself?
He is interned at the Mayo Clinic in Rochestera psychiatric clinic, under a false name because there is no question of revealing to the press that the Nobel Prize winner for Literature has gone mad. There, he suffered electroshocks (the description given by Cortanze is striking). And Mary is still there. This love story is a great success of this novel, not a fleeting passion but a deep, sincere, whole love. Mary is much younger than Ernest and she follows his follies, his depressions, his movements of enthusiasm.
We are dealing with a bipolar person who is increasingly paranoid, sick therefore, and furiously endearing. Another important character is Hodward Home, the chief medical officer of the Mayo Clinic. He's a bit like a mad scientist, harsh with his patient, considerate with Mary. Is he an FBI agent as the writer believes? But his presence allows for good dialogues on writing, criticism (they take it for granted) and art in general.
Heal from his “ failure to write »
He only needs one chapter to complete Paris is a party. The Ink Outage obsesses him and Gérard de Cortanze (I said it: 90 books under his belt) describes the dismay. It starts with an increasing difficulty in finding the right word, the perfect synonym. A work of memory, therefore. Then this continues with a loss of resistance. Writing is a physical activity. Ernest got up at five in the morning and wrote every day from six to noon. It is discipline that must sharpen talent. The discipline of the writer, perfectly described here. However, for several months, Ernest no longer wakes up and drags himself around. It's a vicious circle.
Too tired to worry about the rest of life, he had no more emotion, no more perspective; he had overcome the suffering
It's a novel as strong as a glass of whiskeyhard as an abandonment, overwhelming as a solid love and exciting as a fictionalized biography. A success.
