The Ambulance Drivers

Hemingway, Dos Passos, and a Friendship Made and Lost in War

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Pub Date 28 Mar 2017 | Archive Date 30 Mar 2017

Description

After meeting for the first time on the front lines of World War I, two aspiring writers forge an intense twenty-year friendship and write some of America's greatest novels, giving voice to a "lost generation" shaken by war.

Eager to find his way in life and words, John Dos Passos first witnessed the horror of trench warfare in France as a volunteer ambulance driver retrieving the dead and seriously wounded from the front line. Later in the war, he briefly met another young writer, Ernest Hemingway, who was just arriving for his service in the ambulance corps. When the war was over, both men knew they had to write about it; they had to give voice to what they felt about war and life.

Their friendship and collaboration developed through the peace of the 1920s and 1930s, as Hemingway's novels soared to success while Dos Passos penned the greatest antiwar novel of his generation, Three Soldiers. In war, Hemingway found adventure, women, and a cause. Dos Passos saw only oppression and futility. Their different visions eventually turned their private friendship into a bitter public fight, fueled by money, jealousy, and lust.

Rich in evocative detail -- from Paris cafes to the Austrian Alps, from the streets of Pamplona to the waters of Key West -- The Ambulance Drivers is a biography of a turbulent friendship between two of the century's greatest writers, and an illustration of how war both inspires and destroys, unites and divides.
After meeting for the first time on the front lines of World War I, two aspiring writers forge an intense twenty-year friendship and write some of America's greatest novels, giving voice to a "lost...

Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9780306823831
PRICE $29.00 (USD)
PAGES 336

Average rating from 18 members


Featured Reviews

I received a free electronic copy of this biographical history from Netgalley, James McGrath Morris, and Da Capo Press in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for sharing your very hard work with me.

And there was a great deal of incredibly hard work involved in compiling this history. There is so much out there about Hemingway, and so little about Dos Passos that finding truth imbedded in the legends must have been difficult indeed. I came away from this with the same ideals I brought into the quest - I have adored Dos Passos all my adult life, just as my Dad worshipped at the feet of Hemingway. The major truth I was able to add to my preconceived notions is that both Hemingway and Dos Passos were mere men facing difficult times. It was their reactions to the whims of fate that bound them together as friends while young, and inevitably separated them into armed retreat toward the end of their lives. How human. And how tragic.

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Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos met on the battlefields of WWI when Dos Passos was 22 and Hemingway not quite 19. Both were volunteer ambulance drivers, both later became war correspondents and both later became novelists. A close friendship developed between them and for many years their lives moved in tandem along very similar trajectories. But the friendship became - mainly on Hemingway's side – more and more volatile and increasingly the rivalries and jealousies between them – again mainly on Hemingway’s side – forced them apart. In this well-researched and engaging dual-biography, Morris explores this personal and literary friendship in a lively and well-written account, from which Hemingway doesn’t come out at all well. It must have been very difficult to sustain any sort of friendship with him. What a pity that he is now the best-remembered writer and Dos Passos far less well known. Perhaps this book will revive interest in him.

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Confirms what we already knew - that Hemingway was a total ass.
In all seriousness though, I loved this book. Morris writes beautifully, weaving the stories of these two very different men - differences that both assured and ultimately ended their friendship - together.

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