At the end of the book, Michael Ondaatje states that The Cat's Table, although written in the form of an autobiography, is not autobiographical, but glancing at a brief biography from Michael Ondaatje's page on the website of the Postcolonial Studies Department at Emory University shows some parallels in the life events between the fictional Michael and the real one.
Michael Ondaatje was born on September 12, 1943 in Colombo, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). The son of Mervyn Ondaatje, a tea and rubber plantation superintendent and Doris Gratiaen, a part-time dancer inspired by Isadora Duncan. As a result of his father’s alcoholism, Ondaatje’s parents eventually separated in 1954 and he moved to England with his mother.
Ondaatje was educated initially at St. Thomas College in Colombo, Ceylon. After moving with his mother to England, he continued his education at Dulwich College in London. Between 1962-64, Ondaatje attended Bishop’s University in Lennoxville, Quebec. He then went on to obtain his B.A. at the University of Toronto in 1965, and his M.A. at Queen’s University, in Kingston, Ontario, in 1967. Ondaatje began his teaching career at the University of Western Ontario, London between 1967-71. Today he is a member of the Department of English at Glendon College, York University in Toronto, Ontario, a position he has held since 1971.
Ondaatje currently resides in Toronto with his wife, novelist/editor Linda Spalding, where they edit a literary magazine. During his career Ondaatje has received numerous awards and honors. He was awarded the Ralph Gustafson Award, 1965; the Epstein Award, 1966; and the President’s Medal from the University of Ontario in 1967. In addition, Ondaatje was the recipient of the Canadian Governor-General’s Award for Literature in 1971 and again in 1980. Also in 1980 he was awarded the Canada-Australia price and in 1992 he was presented with the Booker Prize for his novel The English Patient. Anil’s Ghost won the 2000 Giller Prize, the Prix Medicis, and the Canadian Governor General’s Award.
In this YouTube video, Ondaatje briefly discusses The Cats Table and the relationship of his own experience to the book.
And for your listening pleasure, the great Sidney Bechet (Mr. Mazappa's favorite jazz musician).
First, another great find from Linda, which she found on the Twitter site of an English book club.
Second, my ongoing doughnut obsession.
I forgot why we got onto the topic of doughnut shops at the last meeting, but here is a link to the article I read in the SF Chronicle called "A doughnut renaissance in Oakland." The shop that I had become obsessed with (triggered by such words as "softball-sized" and "filled") is Donut Dolly, and the shop that Peggy had heard of with the miniature donuts is (from the description in the article) is called Donut Savant. There are several more shops mentioned in the article. Read and resist.
I had resolved to have this background information posted farther in advance than usual to the time for the meeting, but I was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information available about Paris in the 1920s and the diverse cast of expatriate artists and their patrons who made up the circles in which Hadley and "Hem" traveled. I was also fascinated by the subject matter, and I found myself reading for hours without having compiled anything for this blog. As time is getting short, I'm going to go with what I have and hope it is not either too little or too much.
First, an Introduction to the Author
On the Random House official website for Paula McLain’s The Paris Wife, on the author’s page, you can find the same short bio that is printed on the back of the book jacket, along with an interview with Paula McLain about the book. More interesting to me, on that same site, is a page in which McLain discusses the issue of “fact versus fiction” in The Paris Wife. There are also several videos on YouTube of McLain talking about her book.
The Cast of Characters (definitely not all-inclusive)
Hadley Richardson (1891–1979): The protagonist of The Paris Wife, Ernest Hemingway’s wife from 1921 to 1927. Hemingway’s book, A Moveable Feast, was about his life in Paris when Hadley was his wife. Her biography is pretty much as it was presented in the book up until the time she and Hemingway split. In 1933, she married Paul Scott Mowrer (described as "a newspaperman and poet). Her second marriage was, by all accounts, a happy marriage, and Hadley and Paul spent much of their time "fishing and drinking." She did not hold any lasting bitterness toward Hemingway, "It just came to an end."
Ernest Hemingway (1899–1971): One of the United States’ best-known writers, both as a journalist and a creative writer, Hemingway received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954 for his short novel, The Old Man and the Sea. The Nobel site contains a brief biography of Hemingway and a list of his extensive writings and also contains a link to the award speech from when his award was presented, giving the Nobel committee’s rationale for presenting the award to Hemingway. The full text of The Sun Also Rises is available for free download on several different sites on the internet.
John Hadley Nicanor Hemingway (AKA Jack or "Bumby")(1923–2000): The only son of Hadley and Ernest Hemingway is best known to many of my generation as the father of Margaux and Mariel Hemingway, supermodels and actresses, but he also had a very interesting life, having worked for the OSS (the precursor to the CIA) as a liaison to the French resistance and having been captured by the Germans in occupied France. He was an ardent fisherman (as were both of his parents) and eventually became a fishing supplies salesman.
Sherwood Anderson (1876–1941): Best known for his collection of short stories, Winesburg, Ohio, published in 1919 and available for viewing free on the internet. Sherwood Anderson was a mentor to both Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner. It was Anderson who urged Hemingway to go to Paris and sent him letters of introduction to various people in the expatriate literary community there. Hemingway later alienated Anderson when he mocked Anderson’s book, Dark Laughter, in his own book, The Torrents of Spring. Hadley’s disapproval of Hemmingway’s treatment of Anderson was one of the early contributing factors to their estrangement and was probably also the final blow in the rift between Hemingway and Gertrude Stein. More information about Sherwood Anderson’s very interesting life can be found on the website of the foundation that bears his name .
Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) and Alice B. Toklas (1877–1967): Gertrude Stein is an American writer who is better known as the host of a salon in Paris where modern artists in all fields met. A brief bio can be found on the Academy of American Poets website along with links to some of her poems. She grew up in Oakland, and is most famous in these parts for saying about Oakland, "There's no 'there' there," which is often interpreted by people who don't like Oakland as meaning that Oakland is boring, but taken in context, what she really was saying was that having returned after being away awhile, nothing about Oakland seemed familiar to her.
Alice B. Toklas grew up across the bay in San Francisco and met Gertrude Stein in 1907 in Paris on the first day she arrived there. She was with Gertrude Stein up until Stein died in 1946 of cancer. Alice B. Tolkas is more famous among my generation for having written a cookbook containing a recipe for hashish fudge. In the 60's and 70's, any brownie recipe containing cannabis was known as "Alice B. Toklas brownies".
Bumby's godmothers
Dorothy Shakespear and Ezra Pound
Olga Rudge
Ezra Pound (1885–1972), Dorothy Shakespear (1886–1973), and Olga Rudge (1895–1996): Ezra Pound and Dorothy Shakepear were a married couple, an American-born poet and an English-born painter, to whom Hadley and Ernest Hemingway carried a letter of introduction from Sherwood Anderson. During the time the Hemingways lived Paris, Pound was the editor of various literary reviews and published some of Hemingway's early work. Pound and Shakespear had an unconventional marriage. Ezra Pound had numerous affairs and mistresses throughout the marriage, and during the time the Hemingway's were in Paris, Pound met and fell in love with Olga Rudge, an American-born violinist. The affair lasted 50 years, till the end of Pound's life, but Shakespear never divorced Pound. Pound was living in Italy at the outbreak of World War II and embraced the politics of Benito Mussolini. At the end of the war, Pound was imprisoned by the American authorities and charged with treason, later sent to a mental institution. Both women visited him, supported him, and defended him during his confinement.
Harold Loeb and Lady Mary Duff Twysden, and the whole Pamplona party crowd: In 1925, the Hemingway's traveled to Spain along with several of their friends and acquaintances from Paris in order to watch the running of the bulls in Pamplona and the subsequent bullfights. This trip formed the basis for Hemingway's 1926 novel, The Sun Also Rises. The characters of the novel were based on the individuals in the travel party. Publisher Harold Loeb was the model for the character Robert Cohn. The character of Brett Ashely was based on Duff Twysden, with whom Harold Loeb was having an affair. The character of Frances Clyne was based on Kitty Cannell, Harold Loeb's off-and-on girlfriend. Duff Twysden's unhappy fiance, Pat Guthrie, formed the basis for the character of Mike Campbell. Playwright Donald Ogden Stewart was the model for Bill Gorton. No character based on Hadley appears in The Sun Also Rises.
Pauline Pfeiffer (1895–1951): Paula McLain pretty much buys into Hemingway's depiction of Pauline Pfeiffer as conniving woman and home-wrecker, but according to the bio on the website of the Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum (located in Piggott, Arkansas):
"While Hemingway biographers, and even Hemingway himself, often cast Pauline as the aggressor in the breakup of their marriage, there is ample evidence that just the opposite was true. Rather than Hemingway being a great catch when they met, he was a struggling, not-yet-famous writer—and a married man and the father of a son. Pauline was a well-educated, devout Catholic with a great job, a huge trust fund, and countless, more suitable, admirers."
Gerald Murphy, Ginny Carpenter, Cole Porter, Sara Murphy 1923.
Gerald Murphy (1888–1964) and Sara Sherman Wiborg Murphy (1883–1975): A wealthy American couple living on the French Riviera. The Murphys formed the nucleus of a circle of the rich, famous, and soon-to-be famous who found their way to the Riviera at that time. The physical descriptions of the characters Nicole and Dick Diver in F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, Tender Is the Night, are said to be based on the Murphys (though in personality they more closely resemble Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald). Jack Hemingway once told an interviewer that Sara Murphy looked down on Hadley "as "being from a lower class."
Scott, Scottie, and Zelda Fitzgerald
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) and Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald (1900–1948): Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald are considered the iconic Jazz Age couple. Fitzgerald was the chronicler of Jazz Age society in such well-known novels as The Great Gatsby (once a Readers Roundtable selection) and Tender Is the Night, while Zelda assigned herself the role of "the first flapper." Hemingway and Fitzgerald traveled in many of the same circles while they were in France and were even friends for a while, though they later fell out. If I recall correctly, Hemingway had very little nice to say about Fitzgerald in A Moveable Feast (but I have misplaced my copy, so you'll have to take my word for it). In turn, Fitzgerald would say of Hemingway, "Ernest would always give a helping hand to a man on a ledge a little higher up." He also said in 1929, "I have a theory that Ernest needs a new woman for each big book. There was [Hadley] for the stories and The Sun Also Rises. Now there's Pauline. A Farewell to Arms is a big book. If there's another big book I think we'll find Ernest has another wife."
