2.2 From Boy to Man: Life in World WarⅠ
After graduating from high school, Hemingway got a job with The Kansas City Star, then one of America’s best newspapers. America had entered World WarⅠ, but his parentswishes and his poor eyesight kept him out of the army. Important for his development as a writer, the Star had a style insisting that reporters use "short sentences, short first paragraphs, and vigorous English.(Hays, 1990: 18) This plain style would soon change the face of American literature and help Hemingway a lot in his later writing. At work, Hemingway covered the police and hospital beat often, but enraged his boss by failing to keep in touch with the newsroom. His being drawn to action inevitably took him overseas. At the end of six months in Kansas City he volunteered for duty as a Red Cross ambulance driver in Europe. He was assigned to Italy, and his first duty in Milan was carrying the dead victims of a munitions plant explosion.
His next assignment was in the Dolomite Alps, east of Milan, driving ambulances, but there was little fighting there. Not enough for a romantic young man. Hemingway volunteered for Italy’s eastern front. One midnight he crawled in front of the Italian listening post on the banks of the Piave River; there he was hit by an exploding trench mortar shell and badly wounded. He was the first American to be wounded in Italy and survive. American newspapers made him a hero and Italy awarded him two medals.
From July to October, he met and fell in love with Agnes von Kurowsky, an American Red Cross nurse. In January 1919, he left Italy without Agnes, but believed she would follow him to America. The result was that Agnes fell in love with an Italian officer. Hemingway knew this fact in March, and was ill in bed for several days. He was deeply hurt, mourning the loss of his first love for a long time, but he was not defeated. He was not so handsome or lucky a boy any more. War had made him a man. He began trying to write stories for magazines, but none were published.
2.3 From a Famous Writer to a Master
What failure gave Hemingway was not depression, but courage. He began understanding life in depth. In the summer of 1920, Hemingway moved to Chicago, and became a writer for the Cooperative Commonwealth, a monthly magazine. That autumn he met Hadley Richardson, whom he married a year later. He also met and was befriended by short story writer and novelist Sherwood Anderson.
Ernest and Hadley lived briefly in Chicago and then sailed for Paris, following the advice of Anderson. Anderson wrote a letter of recommendation to Gertrude Stein, who became Hemingway’s mentor and opened the door for him to the Parisian Modern Movement. Ezra Pound, the founder of Imagism, was his other mentor. Hemingway once said, "Ezra was right half the time, and when he was wrong, he was so wrong you were never in any doubt about it. Gertrude was always right.(Lynn, 1987: 13) At that time the Paris crowd interacted on both a personal and professional level. They were friends and artists who pushed one another towards excellence. Paris became the best place for Hemingway to develop his literary skills. Besides Stein and Pound, Hemingway also made friends with other excellent persons such as James Joyce and Ford Madox Ford. Influenced by these masters, Hemingway started a successful beginning.
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