The Thirteenth International Hemingway Society Conference Hemingway's Early Years: War + Ink Kansas City, Missouri 9-15 June 2007

For the most up-to-date information on the Hemingway Society's international conference in Kansas City, visit our web site at http://hemingwaysociety.org/#KansasCity.asp or contact any member of the conference planning team: Steve Paul (paul@kcstar.com), Gail Sinclair (gsinclair@rollins.edu), and Steven Trout (strout@fhsu.edu).

Hemingway and Kansas City

When Ernest Hemingway arrived in Kansas City for the first time, he was eighteen years old, fresh out of high school in Oak Park and just past his last boyhood summer up in Michigan. It had been a summer of indecision regarding his future, but he finally took what seemed like an easy and exciting option. An uncle in Kansas City knew an editor at The Kansas City Star, and the introduction could land him a job. Besides, his new summer friend Carl Edgar was also working in Kansas City, and Ernest was eager to have his older buddy as another escape route from family.

Kansas City was a crossroads town, where East and West, North and South collided, not only geographically but culturally as well. It was a bustling and gritty urban gateway to the West. In the Hemingway world, it typically represents the brief hinge between Oak Park and Italy. Kansas City gave Hemingway his apprenticeship in the writing business, and a launching pad to Europe and beyond. No looking back.

A closer look can reveal a different story about Hemingway's relationship to Kansas City. And that closer look could yield a rich new lode of scholarly attention.

Hemingway's six and a half month apprenticeship at The Kansas City Star has been well documented, especially by Charles Fenton, and his newspaper writing from that time has been collected and treated briefly, if at all, by most biographers. But, as always, there is more to know and more to learn about Hemingway and the scenes that shaped him.

The downtown streets of Kansas City have been evolving in recent decades, yet much of the red-brick texture of Hemingway's world remains, notably the Italianate newspaper building at 18th and Grand. The Muehlebach Hotel, Southwest Boulevard, and other remnants from 1917–18 can help fill in the visual record of Hemingway's distant past. The old Police Station No. 4 is on the verge of becoming a Cuban restaurant. Three houses where Hemingway lived still stand, though all are in private hands. Other landmarks, including locations associated with later visits and extended stays, can be compiled into a compact bus or trolley tour of Hemingway's Kansas City, similar to one The Kansas City Star presented to the public at the time of the Hemingway centenary in 1999.

The vast train terminal, Union Station, was restored and reopened in 1999 and appears today much as it did when Hemingway walked its marble halls in search of news bits. In 1936, Hemingway's Kansas City friend, Theodore Brumback, recalled a striking moment of Hemingway's youthful bravado and earnestness, which took place in Union Station: a man suffering from small pox collapsed and gathered a crowd of onlookers. Hemingway approached, assessed the situation, and scolded the onlookers for doing nothing to help. He picked up the ill man, carried him outside, and commanded a cabbie to take them to the hospital. Hemingway wrote a news story about the incident, but did not mention his own role.

Across from Union Station, a World War i monument and museum, the Liberty Memorial, was built in the early 1920s and still stands as one of the nation's most important public depositories related to Hemingway's war. Anyone with an interest in that important period will not want to miss the new National World War I Museum. The gorgeous auditorium will also provide a vibrant place for special lectures and other programs during our conference.

Hemingway returned to Kansas City over the years at several key moments. Because he neither trusted the doctors of Piggott, Arkansas, nor wanted his own father to deliver his first child with Pauline Pfeiffer, the Hemingways came to...