Ernest Hemingway, Cub Reporter: Kansas City Star Stories

by Matthew J. Bruccoli (Editor), Theodore Brumback (Contributor), Ernest Hemingway (Contributor)

It is now generally acknowledged that Ernest Hemingway's short stint as a reporter for the Kansas City Star was an important apprenticeship to his career as a creative writer. Herein is the collection of eleven Kansas City Star stories that editor Matthew Bruccoli has been able to attribute to Hemingway.

80 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1970

About the author

Matthew Joseph Bruccoli was an American professor of English at the University of South Carolina. He was the preeminent expert on F. Scott Fitzgerald. He also wrote about writers such as Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe and John O'Hara, and was editor of the 'Dictionary of Literary Biography'.

Bruccoli's interest in Fitzgerald began in 1947 when he heard a radio broadcast of Fitzgerald's short story 'The Diamond as Big as the Ritz'. That week he tracked down a copy of 'The Great Gatsby', "and I have been reading it ever since," he told interviewers. Bruccoli graduated from the Bronx High School of Science in 1949, and studied at Cornell University where one of his professors was Vladimir Nabokov and at Yale University where he was a founder member of the fledgling Manuscript Society, graduating in 1953. He was awarded a master's degree and doctorate from the University of Virginia in 1960. Bruccoli, who also taught at the University of Virginia and the Ohio State University, spent nearly four decades teaching at the University of South Carolina. He lived in Columbia, South Carolina, where, according to his New York Times obituary, he "cut a dash on campus, instantly recognizable by his vintage red Mercedes convertible, Brooks Brothers suits, Groucho mustache and bristling crew cut that dated to his Yale days. His untamed Bronx accent also set him apart" (Grimes).

Over the course of his career, he authored over 50 books on F. Scott Fitzgerald and other literary figures. His 1981 biography of Fitzgerald, Some 'Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald', is considered the standard Fitzgerald biography. He has edited many of Fitzgerald's works, from 'This Side of Paradise' to Fitzgerald's unfinished final novel, 'The Love of the Last Tycoon'. Bruccoli has also edited Scott's wife Zelda Fitzgerald's only novel 'Save Me the Waltz'.

While studying Fitzgerald, Bruccoli and his wife Arlyn began to collect all manner of Fitzgerald memorabilia. Bruccoli owned the artist's copy of Celestial Eyes, the cover art by Francis Cugat which appeared on the first edition, and most modern editions, of The Great Gatsby. In 1969, Bruccoli befriended F. Scott and Zelda's daughter Frances "Scottie" Fitzgerald. In 1976, Bruccoli and the Fitzgeralds' daughter Scottie (as Scottie Fitzgerald Smith) published The Romantic Egoists, from the scrapbooks that F. Scott and Zelda had maintained throughout their lives of photographs and book reviews. Later in life Bruccoli and his wife donated their collection to the Thomas Cooper Library at USC. The collection is valued at nearly $2 million.

Bruccoli was general editor of the 'Pittsburgh Series in Bibliography', published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. As part of this series, he produced 'F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Descriptive Bibliography' and, with Richard Layman, 'Ring W. Lardner: A Descriptive Bibliography' (1976). A working draft of the Lardner book was prepared in the summer of 1973 by Bruccoli.

Along with Richard Layman, a Dashiell Hammett scholar and former graduate assistant, and businessman C. E. Frazer Clark, Jr., Bruccoli launched the 'Dictionary of Literary Biography'. The 400-volume reference work contains biographies of more than 12,000 literary figures from antiquity to modern times.

Bruccoli continued working at the University of South Carolina until being diagnosed with a brain tumor, and died June 4, 2008.

Reviews

[Gary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extremely interesting, and a great follow up to Steve Paul's book HEMINGWAY AT EIGHTEEN about his working at the Kansas City Star newspaper.

[Erika Powers · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't read this book. I read The Star Copy Style sheet, which is one of the most often requested pieces of memorabilia relating to the history of the Kansas City Star newspaper. It is the document that Hemingway was given during his tenure writing police and emergency room items at the Kansas City star in 1917 and 1918. He said, "the best rules I ever learned in the business of writing."

I don't like Ernest Hemingway's writing. The reason and I picked this up it's because I was looking for information on how to be a good writer and happened upon it. Thats a long and horrible sentence lol. The style guide is 105 years old, it doesn't seem possible!

Most of the guide is obsolete; some of the examples stand; a lot was funny! Here are my favorites:

"The man was sentence to be hanged," not "to be hung."

"The death sentence was 'executed'", not "the man was executed." (I looked this one up and it has changed, today we definitely say the guy was executed).

Do not use picnic as a verb. (Hahaha in 2020 picnicking is a verb:))

Say 'crippled boy', but not 'a cripple'.

'Motorcar' is preferred but 'automobile' is not incorrect.

He died of heart 'disease', not heart failure – everybody dies of 'heart failure'.

Don't say: "Three men put in an 'appearance'". Just let them "appear."

Avoid using 'that' to frequently, but govern use largely by euphony, and strive for smoothness.

Takeaways:

If you know the number, specify.

The verb precedes the time.

"Slang [sic missing commas] to be enjoyable must be fresh." Never use old slang. (Because its boring).

Use vigorous English. Be positive, not negative.

Overall, I found this to be an interesting and a positive challenge; short read that took me two days. Lol

[Jack Granath · Rating 3 out of 5]

The way people claim him, you'd think Hemingway learned his trade at the Kansas City Star, but he actually only worked there for six and a half months (1917-18). If this book contains all his articles, he wrote twelve of them. The first five are pretty good. They give a great portrait of that era in KC (a newsboy-bout boxer, a gun battle at a drug house, the ER, a guy with smallpox found slumped at Union Station, and strikers who shove a laundry van over a cliff), while the balance concerns military recruitment. Even these lean on the human side and are worth reading as character sketches.

I used to live in Oak Park, Illinois, which is another of Hemingway's various homes, and they celebrate him like mad nowadays, even if the library once banned his books (is that true?) and the only thing he ever had to say about the place was to call it a town of "wide lawns and narrow minds."

Key West is crazy about him too, but at least he genuinely liked it there.