Years before he became a literary icon of 20th-century fiction, with novels such as The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway worked as a journalist. In 1922, on assignment in Switzerland for the Toronto Daily Star, the young foreign correspondent met up with Lincoln Steffens, editor of The American Magazine, who told the 23-year-old that he liked his work, and asked to see more. Hemingway immediately contacted his wife, Hadley, back in Paris, and asked her to gather up all of his manuscripts and bring them to Switzerland. While waiting for the train in Paris, Hadley briefly left the suitcase containing Hemingway’s work unattended. When she returned, it had vanished and was never seen again.
"Papa" finds his literary voice:
- Hadley had packed everything that her husband had written during the past three years, including copies and first drafts. Hemingway was devastated, and turned to drinking and other diversions.
- Nevertheless, he was determined to become an accomplished novelist and learned to accept the loss. His new motto: “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
- Hemingway found his voice back in Paris, influenced by friends like Gertrude Stein and F. Scott Fitzgerald. “The world breaks everyone,” he’d say, “and afterward, many are strong at the broken places.”