Unbelievable Happiness and Final Sorrow

Book excerpt: It was the glittering intellectual world of 1920s Paris expatriates in which Pauline Pfeiffer, a writer for Vogue, met Ernest Hemingway and his wife Hadley among a circle of friends that included Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, and Dorothy Parker. Pauline grew close to Hadley but eventually forged a stronger bond with Hemingway himself; with her stylish looks and dedication to Hemingway's writing, Pauline became the source of "unbelievable happiness" for Hemingway and, by 1927, his second wife. Pauline was her husband's best editor and critic, and her wealthy family provided moral and financial support, including the conversion of an old barn to a dedicated writing studio at the family home in Piggott, Arkansas. The marriage lasted thirteen years, some of Hemingway's most productive, and the couple had two children. But the "unbelievable happiness" met with "final sorrow," as Hemingway wrote, and Pauline would be the second of Hemingway's four wives. Unbelievable Happiness and Final Sorrow paints a full picture of Pauline and the role she played in Ernest Hemingway's becoming one of our greatest literary figures.