Trivia / Thesunalsorises

• Write Who You Know: Nearly everyone in the novel is based off of Hemingway's friends at the time. Jake was based on Hemingway himself, Cohn was based on Harold Loeb (whose mother was a member of the wealthy Guggenheim family, and who was a wrestler - not a boxer - at Princeton before founding short-lived literary magazine Broom), Frances was based on Loeb's companion Kitty Cannell, Brett was based on expatriate British aristocrat Mary Duff, Lady Twysden (to whom Hemingway was attracted and with whom Loeb had a fling), Mike was based on "lovable" but "irresponsible" expatriate Pat Guthrie (who also had a relationship with Duff), and Bill was based on two people, writer Donald Ogden Stewart and Hemingway's fishing buddy and boyhood friend Bill Smith. Pedro Romero was based on Cayetano Ordóñez, a crowd favourite in the bullrings of Pamplona. Loeb, Cannell, Duff, Guthrie, Stewart, and Smith all went to Pamplona with Hemingway and his wife Hadley Richardson in the summer of 1925; Ordóñez presented Richardson with the ear of a bull he killed in the ring, while Hemingway and Loeb had a public fistfight over their competition for Duff's attention.

---