THE GLORY YEARS: CANADIANS ABROAD
Luckily, Torontonian Morley Callaghan worked as a reporter for the Toronto Star in the summer of 1923; on that same staff was the young Ernest Hemingway. The American writer had read some of Callaghan’s stories and urged the younger Callaghan to continue writing. In 1928 Callaghan graduated in law at the University of Toronto, although he never practiced. However, that same year Scribner’s in New York published his first novel, Strange Fugitive. Callaghan and his new wife Loretta sailed for Paris in 1929.
On his return a few years later, he wrote about the events of that summer. He talked about the expatriates he met and those he didn’t. He chummed around with Ernest – his old office mate – and Hem’s friend F. Scott Fitzgerald. (Hemingway had helped to get some of Callaghan’s stories published.) Callaghan also met James Joyce and his family.
He devoted many pages to the meetings he had with such eminent expatriates as Maxwell Perkins, Sherwood Anderson, Ford Maddox Ford (the publisher), Sinclair Lewis, Robert McAlmon, Sylvia Beach, Pauline Hemingway, Michael Arlin, Joan Miro and Zelda Fitzgerald. But in his notes we learn nothing new about these people.
But Callaghan does record an incident that would make him famous. Hemingway was interested in boxing and was always looking for a sparring partner. Little did he know that Callaghan, a much smaller man, had taken boxing training while at the university. Hem was four inches taller and forty pounds heavier. True, he was interested in boxing, but more as a fan than as a talent. Hanging around gyms doesn’t make you a boxer.
With F. Scott Fitzgerald as the timekeeper, Hem & Morley began to go at it. Fitzgerald was awed by the smaller man’s dexterity; Morley had Hemingway in trouble. Fitzgerald let the round go longer than it should have and Hemingway was knocked down, a blow to Hemingway’s macho vanity. The friendship with Fitzgerald ebbed from that moment and never recovered. Callaghan later felt he was better known for the event than the work he produced. It is a classic story worthy of being retold, as it says so much about Hemingway and Fitzgerald.
Aside from That Summer in Paris, where he said he learned to ‘tell the truth cleanly,” Callaghan went on to write literary classics and potent short stories. Hemingway,
who seemed to be jealous of Callaghan’s talent, did not help him. They lost touch with each other, although Callaghan spent the rest of his life writing. Callaghan’s books were best-sellers, and he was one of the best known writers in Canadian literary history.
Recommended reading includes:Such is My Beloved (1934)They Shall Inherit the Earth (1935)A Time for Judas (1983)A Wild Old Man on the Road (1988); he was 85 when this book was published.
Callaghan’s work won him many prizes. He was, in his time, the most acclaimed writer in Canada.
John Glassco was born in Montreal in 1909. He attended the best schools but before graduating from McGill University decided to complete his education in Paris, spending three years there (1925-1928) before returning to Canada, suffering from tuberculosis. When he returned, and while awaiting a critical operation, he wrote what critics later claimed was the best work of Canadian autobiography; the book appeared 40 years later under the title Memoirs of Montparnasse. He wrote, “This young man is no longer himself: I hardly recognize myself.” Memoirs tells what it was like to be young in magical Paris. Glassco talked of those he met and recorded tidbits from Oscar Wilde, Frank Harris, George Moore, Joyce, and Hemingway. As a result, we learn a great deal more from Glassco about the times than from most expatriates. Others say his book is the most accurate, freshest record of Paris at that time. I totally agree.
Aside from writing his memoirs, Glassco worked as a poet and, some say, as a pornographer. Glassco never denied these allegations, but he did set the era in a strong framework: we get the picture of both his inner conflicts and sexual perversity. He posed for artists, lived in the seedier parts of Paris, and did what he had to do in order to survive. Some references to affaires with Jean Cocteau and A.E. Hausmann are said to be untrue. They are simply stories about these people told in Glassco’s Memoirs as part of a story.
They were called “lies” by some critics, written only to embellish the book. He also never had a discussion with Joyce about Ulysses and never discussed Jane Austen with Man Ray. Then again, in Steve Martin’s play “Picasso at The Lapin Agile,” Pablo never really talked to Freud over drinks in a bar. What comes out of the writing is what might have been said if these people met.
He did complete his education and later returned to a rural life in Canada. He lived in a tiny community and wrote poetry, his first love. He was neither decadent nor a dandy. He died in 1981.
Double Deception is work of fiction recently published in serialization on the web. It is a story through the memories of Dr Robert Bartlett Haas, a close friend of Gertrude’s,about the portrait of Gertrude Stein that had been done by Picasso before WWI. This portrait is now on view in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. The story unfolds when Gertrude decides that she would like a copy of the painting done so she can keep a similar image in her summer home in Bilignin, near Belley not far from Aix Les Bains. She engages the copyist Morevna Vorobiev to do the job and when it is delivered…
THE GLORY YEARS: CANADIANS ABROAD
Luckily, Torontonian Morley Callaghan worked as a reporter for the Toronto Star in the summer of 1923; on that same staff was the young Ernest Hemingway. The American writer had read some of Callaghan’s stories and urged the younger Callaghan to continue writing. In 1928 Callaghan graduated in law at the University of Toronto, although he never practiced. However, that same year Scribner’s in New York published his first novel, Strange Fugitive. Callaghan and his new wife Loretta sailed for Paris in 1929.
On his return a few years later, he wrote about the events of that summer. He talked about the expatriates he met and those he didn’t. He chummed around with Ernest – his old office mate – and Hem’s friend F. Scott Fitzgerald. (Hemingway had helped to get some of Callaghan’s stories published.) Callaghan also met James Joyce and his family.
He devoted many pages to the meetings he had with such eminent expatriates as Maxwell Perkins, Sherwood Anderson, Ford Maddox Ford (the publisher), Sinclair Lewis, Robert McAlmon, Sylvia Beach, Pauline Hemingway, Michael Arlin, Joan Miro and Zelda Fitzgerald. But in his notes we learn nothing new about these people.
But Callaghan does record an incident that would make him famous. Hemingway was interested in boxing and was always looking for a sparring partner. Little did he know that Callaghan, a much smaller man, had taken boxing training while at the university. Hem was four inches taller and forty pounds heavier. True, he was interested in boxing, but more as a fan than as a talent. Hanging around gyms doesn’t make you a boxer.
With F. Scott Fitzgerald as the timekeeper, Hem & Morley began to go at it. Fitzgerald was awed by the smaller man’s dexterity; Morley had Hemingway in trouble. Fitzgerald let the round go longer than it should have and Hemingway was knocked down, a blow to Hemingway’s macho vanity. The friendship with Fitzgerald ebbed from that moment and never recovered. Callaghan later felt he was better known for the event than the work he produced. It is a classic story worthy of being retold, as it says so much about Hemingway and Fitzgerald.
Aside from That Summer in Paris, where he said he learned to ‘tell the truth cleanly,” Callaghan went on to write literary classics and potent short stories. Hemingway, 
who seemed to be jealous of Callaghan’s talent, did not help him. They lost touch with each other, although Callaghan spent the rest of his life writing. Callaghan’s books were best-sellers, and he was one of the best known writers in Canadian literary history.
Recommended reading includes:
Such is My Beloved (1934)
They Shall Inherit the Earth (1935)
A Time for Judas (1983)
A Wild Old Man on the Road (1988); he was 85 when this book was published.
Callaghan’s work won him many prizes. He was, in his time, the most acclaimed writer in Canada.
John Glassco was born in Montreal in 1909. He attended the best schools but before graduating from McGill University decided to complete his education in Paris, spending three years there (1925-1928) before returning to Canada, suffering from tuberculosis. When he returned, and while awaiting a critical operation, he wrote what critics later claimed was the best work of Canadian autobiography; the book appeared 40 years later under the title Memoirs of Montparnasse. He wrote, “This young man is no longer himself: I hardly recognize myself.” Memoirs tells what it was like to be young in magical Paris. Glassco talked of those he met and recorded tidbits from Oscar Wilde, Frank Harris, George Moore, Joyce, and Hemingway. As a result, we learn a great deal more from Glassco about the times than from most expatriates. Others say his book is the most accurate, freshest record of Paris at that time. I totally agree.
Aside from writing his memoirs, Glassco worked as a poet and, some say, as a pornographer. Glassco never denied these allegations, but he did set the era in a strong framework: we get the picture of both his inner conflicts and sexual perversity. He posed for artists, lived in the seedier parts of Paris, and did what he had to do in order to survive. Some references to affaires with Jean Cocteau and A.E. Hausmann are said to be untrue. They are simply stories about these people told in Glassco’s Memoirs as part of a story.
They were called “lies” by some critics, written only to embellish the book. He also never had a discussion with Joyce about Ulysses and never discussed Jane Austen with Man Ray. Then again, in Steve Martin’s play “Picasso at The Lapin Agile,” Pablo never really talked to Freud over drinks in a bar. What comes out of the writing is what might have been said if these people met.
He did complete his education and later returned to a rural life in Canada. He lived in a tiny community and wrote poetry, his first love. He was neither decadent nor a dandy. He died in 1981.
Double Deception is work of fiction recently published in serialization on the web. It is a story through the memories of Dr Robert Bartlett Haas, a close friend of Gertrude’s,about the portrait of Gertrude Stein that had been done by Picasso before WWI. This portrait is now on view in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. The story unfolds when Gertrude decides that she would like a copy of the painting done so she can keep a similar image in her summer home in Bilignin, near Belley not far from Aix Les Bains. She engages the copyist Morevna Vorobiev to do the job and when it is delivered even Picasso cannot tell the paintings apart since he sees them in a gas lit room.
After Gertrude dies, the painting is sent to New York where it is deemed a copy. Has the wrong painting been delivered? Through the work of two master art detectives it is determined that Miss Vorobiev, the lover of Diego Rivera, has copied the painting twice and has kept the original. The remainder of the story deals with the uncovering of the original, the solution of the mystery and the final hanging of the right painting at the Met.
It is, as Gertrude might have said, “a mystery with an ending”.
