The exhibition provides insight into Ernest Hemingway's early writing process and development as a writer before he became widely famous. It features early manuscripts, letters, and outlines that show Hemingway experimenting with different story and novel titles, receiving feedback from F. Scott Fitzgerald, and making numerous revisions to his writing. The documents highlight Hemingway's evolution from an unsure young writer in Paris in the 1920s to the iconic author he later became known as. It is the first major museum exhibition focused on Hemingway and draws from the extensive collection of his papers and artifacts housed at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.

1. I
f Oscar Wilde could
opine, in his 1889
essay, The Decay of
Lying, that ‘Life
imitates art more than art
imitates life’, in the case of
writer Cecile Rischmann
(Cecilia is her real name), it
was a bit of ‘both ways’ that
inspired her to write her
debut romantic novel The
French Encounter. Married
to Jean-Paul Rischmann,
Cecile lives in France but
visits Chennai very often to
be with her siblings. In 2014,
Cecile Rischmann’s short
story Jilted was chosen in a
nationwide contest and
published in an anthology,
An Atlas of Love. She talks
about her aversion to
French and about how her
book came into being.
When did you meet
Jean-Paul Rischmann?
I was working at the
Honorary Consulate of
France at the time when
Saint Gobain France
decided to build a glass float
in Chennai. Jean-Paul and
five other expatriates were
sent for the project. His best
friend came over to the
Consulate to announce their
arrival and invite me to their
party. I met Jean-Paul there
in May 1999. We got married
on March 13, 2004.
Tell us about your life
in Chennai.
I studied in Christ Church
Anglo-Indian Higher
Secondary School up to the
tenth grade and then
switched to St Ursula’s
Anglo-Indian Higher
Secondary School where I
did vocational training. I
joined Stella Maris College
and graduated in Sociology.
But during the first two
years of college, I developed
an aversion to French as I
was terrified of my
professor. It was so bad that
I used to bunk classes to
avoid being put on the spot.
And then one day the
professor brought me up to
the board just as I feared
and asked me a question. I
struggled, looking around
hopelessly, wishing that the
floor would open and
swallow me. I still
remember the look in her
eye and that contemptuous
tone: “Cecilia, you are going
to miss the boat in French.”
After that, I completed five
years of French until my
Diploma Superior and a
Stage Pédagogique at the
Alliance Française and
simultaneously pursued my
M.A in French at the Madras
University.
Then I went on to study
other languages: Italian at
the Indo-Italian Chamber of
Commerce, Spanish in
Mexico, Business English
Higher at Cambridge
University, through the
British Council, Chennai,
Creative Writing at British
Council, Delhi, and finally
MHRM at Annamalai
University, through
correspondence).
When did you leave
Chennai?
We left in 2006 after
Jean-Paul completed a
second project in Chennai
and we headed to Mexico
(two years), Colombia (six
months), Egypt (one year)
and Delhi (three years).
Finally we returned to
Chennai and we now shuttle
between France and India.
When did the idea for
the book emerge and how
long did you take to
complete it?
Although Jean-Paul
wanted to date me, he told
me that marriage was not on
his agenda. And when he
came to know it was on
mine, he was petrified. The
idea began from there.
“What would happen if an
Indian woman fell in love
with Frenchman?” and The
French Encounter emerged.
I didn’t have a timeframe
and worked at my own pace.
In between, I met
Bollywood producer-
director-Editor Subhash
Sehgal and I got interested
in scriptwriting. I worked on
Youth and Visa to Paradise.
Both started as short stories.
But nothing really took off
until I began The French
Encounter. There was some
kind of magic in the story
and I had the time of my life
writing it.
What’s next?
I’m working 24/7
promoting The French
Encounter so that it reaches
its audience and they feel its
impact. My next novel, Visa
to Paradise is taking shape.
An intercontinental
romance
Cecile Rischmann’s novel The French Encounter takes the
underlying idea from her own life
A LIFE IN WRITING Cecile with her husband Jean-Paul Rischmann
NIKHIL RAGHAVAN
CM
YK
CH-CH
MELANGE THE HINDU Saturday, September 26, 2015 P5
CHENNAI
P5books
Ernest Hemingway was not
only a commanding figure in
20th Century literature, but
he was also a pack rat. He
saved even his old passports
and used bullfight tickets,
leaving behind one of the
longest paper trails of any
author.So how is it possible
that Ernest Hemingway:
Between Two Wars that
opened at the Morgan Library
& Museum in midtown
Manhattan, is the first major
museum exhibition devoted to
Hemingway and his work? It
could be simply that no one
thought of it before. Most of
Hemingway’s papers are at the
John. F. Kennedy Presidential
Library and Museum in
Boston. After Hemingway’s
death in 1961, President John
F. Kennedy, a fan, helped his
widow, Mary, get into Cuba
and retrieve many of his
belongings there. Partly in
gratitude, she later donated
Hemingway’s archive to the
new presidential library. But
the Kennedy Library, where
this exhibition will travel in
March, is not accustomed, as
the Morgan is, to putting on
big crowd-pleasing shows.
Even at the Morgan,
Hemingway was something of
an afterthought. Declan Kiely,
the museum’s head of literary
and historical manuscripts
and the show’s curator, said
recently that he and Patrick
Milliman, director of
communications, began idly
talking about Hemingway in
2010, after concluding that an
exhibition about J.D. Salinger,
who had just died, was
probably not feasible. The
Hemingway exhibition,
mounted on walls that have
been painted tropical blue to
suggest his years in Key West
and in Cuba, takes him all the
way from high school (where
one of his classmates
described him as “egotistical,
dogmatic and somewhat
obnoxious”) to roughly 1950,
when he turns up as a self-
caricature in Lillian Ross’
famous New Yorker profile.
But the largest and most
interesting section focuses on
the ‘20s, Hemingway’s Paris
years, and reveals a writer we
might have been in danger of
forgetting: Hemingway before
he became Hemingway.
The exhibition does not fail
to include pictures of the
bearded, macho, Hem, the
storied hunter and fisherman.
He is shown posing with some
kudu he has just shot in Africa
and on the bridge of his
beloved fishing yacht, the
Pilar, with Carlos Gutiérrez,
the fisherman who became the
model for The Old Man and
the Sea. But the first photo the
viewer sees is a big blow-up of
a handsome, clean-shaven,
19-year-old standing on
crutches. This is from the
summer of 1918, when
Hemingway was recovering
from shrapnel wounds at the
Red Cross hospital in Milan
and trying to turn his wartime
experiences into fiction. For
the first time, he tried out the
Nick Adams persona. The
manuscript is at the Morgan,
scrawled in pencil on Red
Cross stationery.
Perhaps because of the
famous For Whom the Bell
Tolls jacket photo (also at the
Morgan), which shows
Hemingway bent over a Royal
portable, or because of the
cleanness and sparseness of
his prose, we tend to think of
him as someone who wrote on
the typewriter. But the
evidence at this exhibition
suggests that, in the early days
anyway, he often wrote in
pencil, mostly in cheap
notebooks but sometimes on
whatever paper came to hand.
The first draft of the short
story Soldier’s Home is
written on sheets he appears
to have swiped from a
telegraph office. The
impression you get is of a
young writer seized by
inspiration and sometimes
barrelling ahead without an
entirely clear sense of where
he is going.
He began the original draft
Hemingwaywasapackrat
MAN FORGOTTEN? Ernest Hemingway and an undated
handout photo of a visa from the War Department issued to
him PHOTO: NEW YORK TIMES
of his first novel, The Sun Also
Rises, which he finished in just
nine weeks during the
summer of 1925, on loose
sheets and then switched over
to notebooks. It wasn’t until
the end of the third notebook
that he wrote a chapter
outline on the back cover, and
some of the pages on display
show him slashing out not just
words and sentences but
whole passages as he writes.
F. Scott Fitzgerald famously
urged him to cut the first two
chapters of The Sun Also
Rises, complaining about the
“elephantine facetiousness” of
the beginning, and
Hemingway obliged, getting
rid of a clunky opening that
now seems almost “meta”:
“This is a story about a lady.
Her name is Lady Ashley and
when the story begins she is
living in Paris and it is Spring.
That should be a good setting
for a romantic but highly
moral story.” In 1929, in a
nine-page pencilled critique,
Fitzgerald also suggested
numerous revisions for A
Farewell to Arms. Hemingway
took some of these, but less
graciously, and soon afterward
his friendship with Fitzgerald
came to an end. At the bottom
of Fitzgerald’s letter he wrote:
“Kiss my ass/E.H.”The papers
at the Morgan show a
Hemingway who is not always
sure of himself. There are
running lists of stories he kept
fiddling with, including one
with his own evaluations:
“Tour de force”, “Pretty good,”
“Maybe good.” And there are
lists and lists of possible titles,
including the 45 he considered
for Farewell (among the
discards, thank goodness,
were “Sorrow for Pleasure,”
“The Carnal Education” and
“Every Night and All”).
Hemingway also tried 47
different endings for that
novel. Those on view at the
Morgan include the “Nada”
ending and the only slightly
more hopeful one suggested
by Fitzgerald, in which the
world “kills the very good and
very gentle and the very brave
impartially. If you are none of
these you can be sure it will
kill you too but there will be
no special hurry.”
NYT