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In April of 1927, Ernest Hemingway traveled to Italy with Guy Hickok, Paris correspondent for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Hemingway's "Che Ti Dice La Patria?" includes Hickok as a character. What is less well known is Hickok's writing on Hemingway. Between 1925 and 1934, Hickok wrote sixteen articles that either mention Hemingway or deal wholly with his life and work. In this essay, six of these dispatches and interviews are reprinted; these include an account of Hemingway's wounding during World War I, descriptions of Hemingway in Pamplona in 1929, and an extensive interview about Hemingway's 1933-34 African safari.
One of the first friendships Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) formed upon moving to Paris in 1921 was with Guy Hickok (1888-1951). A native of Mecca, Ohio, Hickok was Paris bureau chief for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle from 1918 to 1933. In 1935, he left the paper and held a number of writing and editorial jobs until his death in 1951 ("Guy Hickok Dead"). The two journalists covered the Lausanne Peace Conference in December 1922. During a stint as editor of Ford Madox Ford's (1873-1939) Transatlantic Review, Hemingway published Hickok's "Herriot in the States," an account of French Prime Minister Édouard Herriot's (1872-1957) tour of the United States (the article was reprinted by Hickok's paper on September 7, 1924). In March of 1927, the two men made a brief tour of northern Italy in order to gather material for Hickok to "write 'silly stuff about Fascism there'" (Pagnattarro 38), which Hemingway also did in "Che Ti Dice La Patria?" The latter piece, which first appeared as the nonfiction article "Italy-1927" in the May 18, 1927, issue of the New Republic and was reprinted with its new title as a story in Men Without Women in October 1927, recounts Hickok's solicitation by a waitress, the two men's being extorted by a policemen, and the effect of fascism on the attitudes and behavior of the Italian people.
"Che Ti Dice La Patria?" is the most prominent use by Hemingway of his friendship with Hickok. Less well known are the uses Hickok made of his friendship with Hemingway and the ways in which Hemingway used Hickok to generate publicity. Between 1925 and 1934, Hickok wrote sixteen articles for the Brooklyn Daily...