Ernest Hemingway at 26 - his first major book deal in hand, the book that would become 'The Sun Also Rises' - returns to Paris from NYC to face his soon-to-be ex-wife and soon-to-be new wife.
Dark in Schruns and dark across the channel where the
Roosevelt, that very moment, was making its way slowly toward a berth at Cherbourg. Ernest, watching the rolling swells from the railing, was less happy than he should have been. Like an Alger story, it was all coming true: hard-working kid rises in the world through pluck and luck. Add a few good friends. Add much talent and the ability to lie when he had to. It was contemporary Alger, where steps up the ladder were not without grave costs: burned bridges and broken promises which he preferred not to think about. At twenty-six, he had become the writer he set out to be, but the seven-year apprenticeship had changed him. Old friends saw it clearly. He was harder now, less simple, his moods deeper, their shifts more sudden. His genetic inheritance was beginning to expose itself, and his sexual needs left him either restless or guilty. He loved Hadley, and he loved Pauline, who was, in bed, a different, eager experience for him. He wanted them both: wifely mother and exciting lover. With a new contract in his valise, advance money in his pocket and two women waiting for him, he was a man riding dilemma's horns. As the lights of Cherbourg began to brighten in the night, he went back to his cabin; the face in the mirror seemed, for a moment, to be a stranger's.
- Michael Reynolds, 'Hemingway: The Paris Years'
