What we've all been awaiting: the first of Hemingway's posthumous works he began in 1958 and finished in 1960. This is a memoir of his expatriate days in the twenties, and MacLeish's little poem about the young man with the panther good looks who whittled a style for his times in the sawmill attic in Paris comes to life here. What also comes to light is the "inside story," or the very personal revelations, parts of whicy may become a cause scandale. Not only is the Fitzgerald portrait ungenerous, but the disclosures of his sexual difficulties with Zelda are embarrassing. Miss Stein is also victimized, and there are allusions to puzzling perversities. Pound, Ford, Eliot, Lewis and Joyce are around and they are treated with affection, or affectionate malice. The best passages are the descriptive ones-- fine writing with all the supple surety of Sun-- of bookstalls, cafes, streets, the Seine, race tracks, and travel. And of course there's Hemingway on his wife Hadley, and Hemingway on Hemingway..... Mary McCarthy's famous attack on Salinger scored him for following Papa's special club of OK people (like him) versus the "others" (unlike him). The memoir has something of that snobbery and certain people may go after it accordingly. Still, whatever the indiscretions, it is an important work, a literary source from a master. There can be little doubt of its interest and attraction for many as a reprise of a now legendary time when Hemingway was young and happy and "invulnerable," and a place-- well, "There is never any ending to Paris.
