That Summer in Paris by Morley Callaghan

First published: 1963

The Work

That Summer in Paris: Memories of Tangled Friendships with Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Some Others, by Canadian writer Morley Callaghan, recounts his friendships with F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway in Paris in 1929. Callaghan attempts to define his cultural and religious identity and to demonstrate how all writers influence one another.

As a young college student and newspaper reporter in Toronto, Callaghan recognizes that his native city is fundamentally British. He is “intensely North American” because of his love for baseball, women, and family. Intellectually and spiritually, Callaghan feels like an alien in Toronto. While working for the Toronto Star, Callaghan meets Ernest Hemingway, who has served as the newspaper’s European correspondent. Hemingway encourages Callaghan to write fiction, and the two men soon meet in Paris, where they become literary associates and boxing partners.

In Paris, Callaghan observes the contradictory behavior of other North American expatriates like Hemingway and Fitzgerald, who never assimilate completely into French society but who do not return to America to write about their own country. Callaghan concludes that North American writers were attracted to Paris because “French writers stayed at home and exiled themselves in their own dreams.” Callaghan resolves “to forge my own vision in secret spiritual isolation in my native city,” Toronto. He compares his predicament to that of James Joyce, whose time in Paris led him to turn deeply into himself and imagine his native Dublin.

Callaghan observes that many expatriates are as ambiguous in their religious beliefs as they are in their cultural identities. He notices that Hemingway, who converts to Catholicism to appease his second wife, genuflects too frequently when he accompanies Callaghan and his wife to Chartres. Callaghan also questions the sincerity of T. S. Eliot’s conversion to Anglican Catholicism. When Callaghan suggests to Fitzgerald that they enter the St. Sulpice Cathedral just to look at the columns, Fitzgerald adamantly refuses, muttering something about his Irish Catholic background. Callaghan also profiles the religion of miracle seekers at Lourdes, of Jews who convert to Catholicism on aesthetic grounds, and of an alcoholic American priest in Europe on furlough from his depressing assignment as a prison chaplain.

In addition to his search for cultural and religious identity, Callaghan tries to define his identity as a writer in his memoir. He concludes that relationships between writers, like any friendships, are determined not by ideological issues, but rather by little things that are sometimes impossible to articulate. Callaghan never understands why Hemingway reacts as he does to their boxing matches, just as he never understands the tension between Hemingway and Fitzgerald.

Bibliography

Conron, Brandon. Morley Callaghan. New York: Twayne, 1966.

Hoar, Victor. Morley Callaghan. Toronto: Copp Clark, 1969.

Morley, Patricia. Morley Callaghan. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1978.

Staines, David, ed. The Callaghan Symposium. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1981.

Wilson, Edmund. “Morley Callaghan of Toronto.” The New Yorker 26 (November, 1960): 224-237.