Up
in
Hedonistic
Michigan
with
Hem
Susan
Swartzlander
Professor
of
English
Grand
Valley
State
University
swartzls@gvsu.edu
In
the
1980's,
before
I
finished
my
Ph.D.
at
Penn
State
and
emigrated
to
Michigan,
I
watched
a Sixty
Minutes segment
in
which
Mike
Wallace
interviewed an
elderly
and
colorful
Janet
Flanner
about
lost
generation
Paris.
Intrigued
by
her
pronouncement
that
Hemingway
was "hedonistic
in
his
Michigan
manner," I
wondered
just
how
hedonistic
Michigan
could
be
and
what
role
this
place
played
in
Hemingway’s
development
(I
always
associated
him
with
more
exotic
locales
like
Paris
and
Pamplona,
Key
West
and
Cuba).
In
the
90’s,
I
traced
Hemingway’s
footsteps
through
Paris,
with
the
help
of Noel
Riley
Fitch’s Walks
in
Hemingway’s
Paris,
and
my
partner,
a
French
historian
who
happily
indulged
me,
joining
in
my
Hemingway
and
Joycean
treks
(leading
us
to
many
memorable
adventures
in
dining).
As
we
lunched
at
a
much
more
upscale
Café
des
Lilas
than
Hemingway
ever
knew,
I
puzzled
over
the
incongruity
of
his
writing
about
fishing
in
rural
Michigan
while
downing
café
cremes
on
the
Left
Bank.
Perhaps
his
choice
of
an
apartment
above
a
lumber
mill
was
an
attempt
to
bring
a
little
bit
of
Michigan
to
his
Paris
life.
Ernest
Hemingway
lived
in
northern
Michigan
as
a
boy
and
young
man
every
summer
save
one
between
1899
and
1921.
When
he
needed
to
recuperate
from
his
war
wounds
and
a
broken
romance,
he
went
north.
When
he
married
for
the
first
time,
he
chose
Horton
Bay
for
the
setting.
When
he
first
went
to
Paris,
Hemingway so
convincingly
played
the
northern
Michigan
persona
that
in
a
letter
home
while
on
a
U.S.
tour,
Ford
Madox
Ford
recounted
his
shock
in
discovering
upon
meeting
Hemingway’s
father,
a
physician,
that
Hemingway
comes
not
from
the
backwoods,
but
from
“a
ridiculous
suburb.”
Ford
concludes
that
Hemingway
would
be
furious
if
any
of
their
mutual
friends
knew
his
true
origins
in
Oak
Park,
a
toney
Chicago
suburb.
Although
little
about
Michigan
could
be
called
hedonistic,
the
wild
beauty
of
northern
Michigan
landscapes
and
the
down
to
earth
people
who
became
Hemingway’s
summer
family
did
indeed
shape
his
writing
and
his
life.
James
Joyce
wrote:
''There
was
an
English
queen
who
said
that
when
she
died
the
word
'Calais'
would
be
written
on
her
heart.
'Dublin'
will
be
found
on
mine.''
Like
his
early
mentor,
Hemingway
left
his
place
of
inspiration,
but
the
place
never
left
him.
This
website
is
the
joint
effort
of
HNR
312
(a
Frederik
Meijer
Honors
College
junior
seminar
at
Grand
Valley
State
University),
developed
as
nine
students
and
I
embarked
on
a
search
to
discover,
in
a
very
short
six
weeks,
as
much
as
we
could
about
Horton
Bay
and
Petoskey,
summer
life
on
Walloon
Lake
and
Lake
Charlevoix,
from
roughly
1899
to
1920.
We
wanted
to
know
what
it
was
like
in
the
time
Hemingway
summered
here
and
how
his
Michigan
experiences
shaped
his
work,
even
his
writing
set
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