The attraction of writers and artists to Paris throughout the 1920s resulted in some of the most important and influential works of contemporary culture. This time between the World Wars became a significant period of writing for Ernest Hemingway, which would set the foundation for his illustrious and now legendary career.
Celebrating the author's life in Paris, the third annual Ernest Hemingway Festival in Sun Valley will bring together Hemingway scholars, writers, professors and admirers to peruse and muse his Paris years from Thursday, Sept. 20, through Sunday, Sept. 23.
The festival will open with Ernest's grandson John Hemingway as keynote speaker at Carol's Dollar Mountain Lodge in Sun Valley on Thursday, Sept. 23, at 5 p.m. with a reception to follow. John's speech, "Hemingway in Paris: The Crazy Years," will touch upon the influence of Parisian life and the many expatriates who kept company with Ernest as he developed his writing.
On Friday, Sept. 24, a full day of talks, a book fair, tours and slide show presentations will take place in and around Ketchum and Sun Valley ending with a café soiree at the nexStage Theatre in Ketchum.
Author Noel Riley Fitch, who wrote "Hemingway in Paris" and "The Literary Cafés of Paris," will share her experiences and expertise as a Hemingway historian in a talk titled "Hemingway in Paris and Idaho: Immoveable Feasts," at 9 a.m. on Friday, Sept. 24, at Carol's Dollar Mountain Lodge.
"I am going to talk about both Idaho and Paris, which is what I share with Hemingway," Fitch said. "I love both places. The immoveable feasts are Paris and Idaho because they don't change."
Fitch is also known for her Hemingway walking tour of Paris, which began as a class assignment that eventually became a must-have book for getting to know Hemingway's Paris.
"I tried it on my students because I consider Paris part of my text," Fitch said. "They had to go out and see the places he talks about. His home and the bar where he and Fitzgerald met."
Following Fitch, Susan Beegel, scholar and editor of the award-winning "The Hemmingway Review," will give a talk on "America in the 1920s: Why Hemingway Went to Paris."
"We get to celebrate food and wine, which Hemingway wrote so eloquently about in 'A Moveable Feast.' Rena Sanderson will really shoot from the hip and we have great people on Hemingway in Idaho," Beegel said. "I think the interesting things that John Hemingway has to tell that he gives up generously is the correspondence with his father, Gregory, that we haven't seen before."
Beegel has been a part of the festival since it's beginning and is especially proud to have developed a connection with the National Pen Award, established by Mary Hemingway.
"I like the opportunity that the festival has to be very select about who is speaking, and that the organizers go after the best people in their field," Beegel said. "'Hemingway in Paris,' I love because in the 20s it was such an incredibly rich cultural place, and his early short stories, 'Our Time' and the 'Sun Also Rises,' and his last book, 'For Whom the Bell Tolls,' is looking back at the most important time in his life. Idaho was a place for peace and quiet where he could write."
Beegel also hopes that festival goers will also take the time to hear the University of Idaho student readings at 4 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 21, and especially this year's winner of the 2007 Hemingway Foundation/Pen Award, Ben Fountain, who will read on Saturday, Sept. 22, at 7 p.m. Both readings will take place at the Community Library in Ketchum.
J. Gerald Kennedy will discuss "Hemingway's Paris and the Geography of Otherness," Saturday, 9 a.m. Sept. 22. Kennedy, an English professor at Louisiana State University, is the author of "French Connections: Hemingway and Fitzgerald Abroad," "Imagining Paris: Exile, Writing, and American Identity" and "American Letters and the Historical Consciousness."
Rena Sanderson, associate professor of American literature at Boise State University, will talk on "Hemingway's Depiction of Women in 'A Moveable Feast'" 10:45 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 22, at Carol's Dollar Mountain Lodge.
There will be a book chat at 3 p.m. at the Community Library with Professor Ron McFarland on "The Sun Also Rises." In addition, the book fair and Hemingway Hangouts Guided Tour, at 1 p.m., are both on Friday and Saturday.
On Saturday evening, Buffalo Bites will cater an open-mic night at the Coffee Grinder in Ketchum that will include readings by University of Idaho literature students. These masters program students wiill also read 4 p.m. Friday at The Community Library.
Organizer and hostess Tibby Plasse encourages all festival attendees to read their favorite Hemingway passages or "The Lost Generation" literature. There will be an appetizer prix-fixe menu available. In addition, area musicians will participate.
The classic film "A Sun Also Rises" will screen at the Sun Valley Opera House at 10 a.m. Sunday.
A festival pass is $35 and includes the keynote address, which is $15 separately. In addition, the Paris Café Soiree is $35 and is not included in a festival pass.
For more details and a complete schedule of events, visit erenesthemingwayfestival.org.
Ernest Hemingway outside of his residence at 13 rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, Paris, ca. 1924. Photograph in the Ernest Hemingway Photograph Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.
