Everybody Behaves Badly

The True Story Behind Hemingway's Masterpiece The Sun Also Rises

By: Lesley Blume

Narrated by: Jonathan Davis

Length: 11 hrs and 12 mins

Publisher's summary

The making of Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, the outsize personalities who inspired it, and the vast changes it wrought on the literary world.

In the summer of 1925, Ernest Hemingway and a clique of raucous companions traveled to Pamplona, Spain, for the town's infamous running of the bulls. Then, over the next six weeks, he channeled that trip's maelstrom of drunken brawls, sexual rivalry, midnight betrayals, and midday hangovers into his groundbreaking novel The Sun Also Rises. This revolutionary work redefined modern literature as much as it did his peers, who would forever after be called the Lost Generation.

But the full story of Hemingway's legendary rise has remained untold until now. Lesley Blume resurrects the explosive, restless landscape of 1920s Paris and Spain and reveals how Hemingway helped create his own legend. He made himself into a death-courting, bull-fighting aficionado; a hard-drinking, short-fused literary genius; and an expatriate bon vivant. Blume's vivid account reveals the inner circle of the Lost Generation as we have never seen it before and shows how it still influences what we read and how we think about youth, sex, love, and excess.

©2016 Lesley M. M. Blume (P)2016 Recorded Books

great insightful literary bio

learned a lot about a subject of great interest. made me extremely jealous of Hemingway as things Hemingway do.. why is it so impractical to live like Hemingway again? he was truly of man of his time and place, he got right in there. ya know?

Looking back is a pain some can't endure.

A wonderful account of a time a man and told with great care. Truth is great for a biography, but fiction is better.

A fascinating time

Would you consider the audio edition of Everybody Behaves Badly to be better than the print version?

I didn't read it in print.

Who was your favorite character and why?

It's really Hemingway's story, but there is a lot of backstory and inside scoop about a lot of well known people that were in Paris at the same time.

Which character – as performed by Jonathan Davis – was your favorite?

All were well performed.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

No it was longer.

Any additional comments?

Be sure to read and/or watch The Sun Also Rises. Then this backstory is simply fascinating.

Hemingway was rather a jerk

I didn't think I was going to like this book when it started, and it took me awhile to get into it. I don't know that much about Hemingway, I've read a few of his books and that's about it. I haven't read The Sun Also Rises, and I'm still not sure I want to (but probably will, just out of curiosity). The author obviously admires Hemingway's talent, as do I, but the backstory shows a man with a huge ego, a thin skin, and not much of a conscience. It was an interesting trip back to the 20's and early 30's, and really evokes the interconnectedness of the literary community of the day.

Hemingway: a flawed genius.

This biography of Hemingway focuses on how he started out as a writer and how he developed his unique writing style with his first book The Sun Also Rises. Writers like Hemingway only come along once in a generation. My favorite Hemingway novel was The Old Man and the Sea. He eventually became phenomenally successful, but he also was a flawed genius. I suspect that Hemingway was narcissistic, and possibly suffered from Type one Bipolar disorder. He left a trail of bodies on his way to the top as he used and discarded people like his underwear. Overall I felt as though the book was average for the genre and was a bit too long and verbose.

Excellent

Well written, informative history of Hemingway and the time he lived in, narration is superlative, extremely well modulated and phrased,

Fun Literary Gossip

As a fan of The Sun Also Rises but not especially of Hemingway in general, I found this book a treat. Hemingway comes off as an arrogant bully, blessed with talent but feverish with ambition. His envy of other writers was staggering, and led him to mercilessly parody or outright trash those who helped him--Dorothy Parker, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and--most ruthlessly--Sherwood Anderson, he who singlehandedly got "Hem" entree into the Paris literary scene while he was little more than a kept husband with a dream. Later he disavowed the importance of Gertrude Stein although her influence is in every sentence. One wonders what Hemingway was compensating for with his infantile macho posturing and caddish behavior.

This book is not an indictment of Hemingway. Lesley Blume lays out the well-documented facts and lets them speak for themselves. Just as Hemingway's undeniable talent and staggering influence on literature speak for themselves. Along the way, there are portraits of literary greats and the whole world of ex-pat Paris in the 1920's. Not that you haven't heard it all before, but it's a world that's worth revisiting with new insights and details here and there.

Jonathan Davis reads with clarity, strong pacing, and restraint. His French accent could be a lot better, but who am I to talk?

Excellent

It’s been a while since I traveled to the past Paris, all but gone, thanks to Disneyland, in my opinion.

How a writer and his debut novel came together

Very enjoyable description of Ernest Hemingway's journey from being an ambitious journalist with dreams of fiction writing in Canada through the living through, writing and publication of his debut novel, *The Sun Also Rises*. The writer and reader both do a great job of telling the story.

My one complaint is the amount of time spent on Hemingway's complicated romantic and family life, without enough information on the people attaching themselves to Hemingway -- especially his first and second wives. A more thorough portrayal of these characters or a snappier description of their role in his story would have been nice. Apart from this, five stars all around.

Great Author, Terrible Friend

I loved it and thought it was well-written and narrated. A big bonus for me was the historical background of the time. Like many young and I'll-informed young men, I admired Hemmingway for both his writing and his life. Now, it's clear to me that he was a troubled soul and a terrible friend. This is a great book and a cautionary tale about the pursuit of fame. Collateral damage indeed abounded when the "sun sat" on this book.