The recent essay by Adam Gopnik, "Subject and Object," is a careful dissection of the famous and controversial 1950 New Yorker profile by Lillian Ross, "How Do You Like It Now, Gentlemen?" illustrated, one forgets, with a tiny pen & ink drawing of [Ernest] Hemingway by Reginald Marsh.
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| Ernest Hemingway Reginald Marsh The New Yorker, May 13, 1950, p. 36 |
The long Ross Profile described her encounter with the famous author as he roamed Manhattan with Miss Ross in tow. Merely by quoting him at length (accurately as it turns out), and reporting how he moved through the day, the Hemingway in this profile comes across as a clown and a sad parody of himself. It hasn't been forgotten, as Gopnik makes clear. Published in time for the 100th anniversary issue of The New Yorker, the essay features a full-page color drawing by Barry Blitt, based, we are told in tiny print, on a photograph "courtesy Lillian Ross Estate."
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| Ernest Hemingway and Lillian Ross Barry Blitt The New Yorker, February 17 & 24, 2025, p. 151 |
Perhaps for that reason Blitt didn't sign his drawing, though a proper credit line appears beneath it. The drawing is not especially funny, something rarely said about a Blitt drawing. And to make things more interesting, in-between the Gopnik piece and Ross's original profile, she published "Hemingway Told Me Things" in the May 24, 1999 issue, about his letters and warm advice to her. This piece is illustrated with a caricature by Edward Sorel.
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| Lillian Ross and Ernest Hemingway Edward Sorel The New Yorker, May 24, 1999, p. 71 |
In 1999 Miss Ross wished to present Hemingway in a far more generous light than the 1950 piece, but forty-nine years is a long time to wait before applying damage control. Fortunately, Sorel, quietly ignoring Ross's good cheer, royally allowed himself an artist's fun with a famous author full of himself, and a still rising journalist not quite sure of what she was in for. The small background image of a photographer in the oval mirror with his flash, even reduced on the magazine page, is a masterful touch in a drawing far more elegant, accurate and funny than the Ernest in the Gopnik piece, though in fairness to Blitt, his Hemingway is clearly intended to be more illustration than target. It's unlikely that Sorel's drawing wasn't lodged in Blitt's memory; there was no reason to compete. But both artists are certainly on firmer ground than Reginald Marsh. His portrait of Ernest was left out, unfairly I think, when Simon & Schuster in 1961 reprinted the Ross profile in a very attractive clothbound 65-page book and retitled Portrait of Hemingway, the year of the author's death.
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| Portrait of Hemingway by Lillian Ross |
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| With an illustration by Reginald Marsh and a cartoon by Barney Tobey |
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| With an illustration by Edward Sorel |
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| With a header by Timo Kuilder and an illustration by Barry Blitt |
Note: My thanks to David from Manhattan for surprising me with today's piece. This is his sixty-sixth contribution to Attempted Bloggery.
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| "Notice the little ruffle, which gives it that feminine touch." Barney Tobey The New Yorker, May 13, 1950, p. 37 |
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| The Critics Timo Kuilder The New Yorker, February 17 & 24, 2025, p. 150 |
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