An early draft of Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises focused on Brett Ashley, the woman who serves as a love interest to protagonist Jake Barnes and others. The revised manuscript owes much to F. Scott Fitzgerald, who wrote a letter filled with withering criticism of the earlier version, leading Hemingway to edit out much of the original manuscript. That early draft also included something of a manifesto outlining a novel with “greater intellectual and artistic ambitions than Hemingway ever produced,” Ian Crouch declares, over at the New Yorker, where he explores the evolution of the novel.
How Fitzgerald Shaped Hemingway
Ian MacAllen
Ian MacAllen is the author of Red Sauce: How Italian Food Became American (Rowman & Littlefield, April 2022). His writing has appeared in Chicago Review of Books, Southern Review of Books, The Offing, 45th Parallel Magazine, Little Fiction, Vol 1. Brooklyn, and elsewhere. He tweets @IanMacAllen and is online at IanMacAllen.com.