Literary Luminaries

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30342, 18 January 1964, Page 3

Literary Luminaries

That Summer in Paris. By Morley Callaghan. MacGibbon and Kee. 200 pp. The chief impression to be derived from these literary reminiscences is that creative artists should be best judged by their work. Morley Callaghan, whose own reputation in the literary field is unassailable, brings a touch of sanity into certain human relationships which were bedevilled by the sort of absurd misunderstandings, sensitivity and wounded pride that would seem to be more appropriate to life in a girls’ boarding school than to a circle containing such eminent names as those of the! late Ernest Hemingway and! F. Scott Fitzgerald. In his early days as a! struggling writer and journalist in Toronto, the author had reason to be grateful to both these men for their interest in his work, and the timely help they had given him in getting recognition. It was therefore with the keenest pleasure that he looked forward to joining their coterie in Paris, whither he and his wife repaired towards the end of the ’twenties. The Hemingways and Fitzgeralds lived fairly near each other, but while Fitzgerald passionately admired Hemingway the latter appeared to have some unexplained animosity

towards him which was brought to a head during a boximg bout with refereed by Fitzgerald, in' which Hemingway imagined that he had been humiliated. Much later he was to turnagainst the author also ort the strength of a ridiculous and mendacious article ap- f pearing in a New York paper purporting to show that Callaghan had knocked him out first round in another boxing' bout. The two men were never to meet again. Apart from these "tangled friendships,” the picture of Paris in the 'twenties, with its odd characters, cafe society" and historic associations is (pleasantly evoked, though the, ! references to James Joyce I (the literary lion of the 1 period) are not specially, illuminating The author's own narrative power i» well exemplified in the Callaghans’ brief acquaintance with “Father Tom,” an. American prison chaplain whose addiction to quiet tippling, and almost doglike devotion to themselves pro*--vides a pleasantly human touch in an otherwise rather monotonous record of hurl susceptibilities and hysterica) huffs among the literary luminaries The basis of friendship must sure rest on a mutual tolerance in which, these great men seem t<». have been sadly lacking.