Read the beginning of Chapter 1, "The Bull" from Double-Edged Sword: The Many Lives of Hemingway's Friend, the American Matador Sidney Franklin byBart Paul:

"He was born Sidney Frumpkin on July 11, 1903, one of nine surviving children to Abram and Lubba Frumpkin of Minsk and Kazan, respectively. His parents, both Orthodox Jews, emigrated from Imperial Russia in 1888. After eight years in this country and the birth of his first few children, Abram joined the New York City Police Department, eventually working out of Brooklyn’s Seventy-Eighth Precinct. The borough of Brooklyn was completing the transition from a semirural community of farms, shade trees and backyard gardens to a noisy city, becoming further transformed by the new immigrants from eastern and southern Europe. The city had been an independent municipality until just five years before Sidney’s birth, when it was incorporated into New York City. The Brooklyn Eagle, the paper that would eventually chronicle the rise of its hometown matador, was for a time edited in the late 1840s by Walt Whitman, another homeboy whose private life was also best kept from the public eye.

By the time the Frumpkin’s fifth child Sidney arrived, the family was living at 14 Jackson Place in a district known as Park Slope. They were just three blocks west of Prospect Park and five blocks north of Greenwood Cemetery, the two huge green patches left in the center of Brooklyn.

Most of what is known of Sidney’s childhood a century ago comes from two sources, both over half a century old. Each, although covering many of the same events, are quite different: parallel yet only partial narratives in very dissimilar voices, although the source for the mingled (and occasionally mangled) facts and fictions in both is Sidney himself. The first was a profile of Sidney by Lillian Ross that appeared in the New Yorker magazine under the title “El Único Matador” in 1949. The young writer traveled with Sidney for a time in Mexico as he toured with an American protégé. She extensively interviewed Sidney’s former friend Ernest Hemingway in Ketchum, Idaho, in December 1947 for the article—the first that would appear in the magazine under her own byline. The persona of Sidney that comes through in “El Único Matador” is brash, confident, slangy, eccentric, and boastful—a true American character. He also occasionally appears, if not foolish, at least lacking in self-awareness. After the article appeared, Sidney remarked of Ross: “She sits there like a little mouse, looking so cute, but there’s nothing but vitriol in her typewriter.”

Decades after meeting Sidney, Miss Ross’s memories of him remained vivid, full of detail and anecdote that did not make it into her profile. Her article, despite Sidney’s grumbling, kept him in the public eye, perpetuating his rather singular celebrity. Having been befriended by Hemingway and his fourth wife, Mary, while researching the article on Sidney, Lillian Ross would go on to write “How Do You Like It Now, Gentlemen?” a famous piece on the author that appeared in the New Yorker in 1950. Many of Hemingway’s friends shared Sidney’s complaint about Ross: her extensive use of the subject’s quotes without sufficient context made Hemingway look foolish. Unlike Sidney, Hemingway remained Ross’s friend and defended her and her work for the rest of his life. For her part, Miss Ross returned the favor, remaining a Hemingway stalwart, her fondness and respect for him undiminished. If there are any sides to be taken in the subsequent falling out between Sidney Franklin and Ernest Hemingway, for Ross there is no contest."

Bart Paul has been a critic for the Los Angeles Times Book Review, a writer of documentaries on subjects as diverse as President Truman, Masada, and Nazi atrocities in Poland, and an anthologized writer of short fiction. He lives outside Los Angeles where he raises horses and children.

To read a longer excerpt or to purchase Double-Edged Sword, visit http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Double-Edged-Sword,674156.aspx.

Happy Friday, UNP blog readers. Two items of note today:

First of all, the University of Nebraska Press Hurt Book Sale is tonight from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Swing by our warehouse (on R Street between 8th and 9th streets, in the Lincoln Haymarket) for cheap, cheap books ($2 paperbacks and $4 hardcovers) on the following topics: history and literature of the American West, Indigenous studies, translated literature, literary fiction, classic works by Nebraska authors including Willa Cather, Mari Sandoz, Ted Kooser, Bill Kloefkorn and others, sports history (particularly baseball) and much more. More information on this sale is available on our Web site.

Secondly, UNP author Robert Fitts (who also posted a guest blog earlier this week) was interviewed on CNN yesterday. In the interview, which is posted online, Fitts discusses Japanese baseball, Hideki Matsui, Babe Ruth, and how the three are related (among other topics). Fitts is the author of Wally Yonamine, and has another book, Banzai Babe Ruth, forthcoming from the University of Nebraska Press. 
 

Rob Fitts, author of University of Nebraska Press title Wally Yonamine, is our guest blogger today, posting about the 75th anniversary of the 1934 All-American tour of Japan. Additional posts will appear on Fitts’ personal Web site throughout the week:

Seventy-five years ago yesterday, nearly 500,000 Japanese had lined the streets of Ginza to welcome Babe Ruth and the All American ballplayers to Tokyo.  Rows of fans, often ten to twenty deep, crowded into the road to catch a glimpse of Ruth and his teammates.  The pressing crowd reduced the broad streets to narrow paths just wide enough for the limousines to pass.  Babe Ruth rode in the first open limousine.  At 39, he had grown rotund and just weeks before had agreed to part ways with the New York Yankees.  His future in professional baseball was in doubt but his god-like charisma remained intact.  To the Japanese he still represented the pinnacle of the baseball world.  Millions followed his exploits in baseball magazines such as Yakyukai and Asahi Sports.  Sharing the car was his former teammate Lou Gehrig—The Iron Horse—now the world’s greatest player. 

The rest of the entourage, distributed 3 or 4 per car, followed: Connie Mack, the venerated 71-year old manager of the Philadelphia Athletics;  Jimmie Foxx, the Athletics burly third baseman known as “The Beast;” Earl Averill, the Snohomish, Washington native who had been the first American Leaguer to homer in his debut at bat—sportswriters tagged him the Earl of Snohomish when he played well and Big Ears on his off days; the slick fielding, power hitting second baseman Charlie Gehringer of the Detroit Tigers; Yankees goofy ace Lefty Gomez, who claimed to have invented a rotating goldfish bowl to ease the pain of tired fish, and his Broadway actress wife June O’Dea; former batting champion Lefty O’Doul, who had fallen in love with Japan during a 1931 tour; and a gaggle of lesser-known stars.   Only one player didn’t seem to belong—a journeyman catcher with a .238 career batting average named Moe Berg.  Although he was not an all-star caliber player, his off-the-field skills would explain his inclusion on the team.  Berg was a Princeton and Columbia Law School graduate with a gift for languages (causing a teammate to quip that Berg could speak a dozen languages but couldn’t hit in any of them) who had already visited Japan in 1932.  Berg would eventually become an operative for the OSS, the forerunner of the CIA, and many believe that his tour of Japan was his first mission as a spy.

Confetti and streamers fluttered down from well-wishers leaning out of windows and over the wrought- iron balconies of the avenues’ multi-storied office buildings.  Thousands waived Japanese and American flags and cheered wildly.  Cries of “Banzai!  Banzai, Babe Ruth!” echoed through the neighborhood.  Reveling in the attention, the Bambino plucked flags from the crowd and stood in the back of the car waiving a Japanese flag in his left hand and an American in his right.  Finally, the crowd couldn’t contain itself and rushed into the street to be closer to the Babe.  Downtown traffic stood still for hours as Ruth shook hands with the multitude. 

Ruth and his teammates stayed in Japan for a month, playing 18 exhibition games against Japanese opponents in 12 cities.  But there was more at stake than sport.  Japan and the United States were slipping towards war as the two nations vied for control over China and naval supremacy in the Pacific.  Politicians on both sides of the Pacific hoped that the goodwill generated by the tour and the two nations’ shared love of the game could help heal their growing political differences.  Many observers, therefore, considered the all stars’ joyous reception significant.  The New York Times, for example, wrote: “The Babe’s big bulk today blotted out such unimportant things as international squabbles over oil and navies.”  Connie Mack added that the tour was “one of the greatest peace measures in the history of nations.”  But the shared love for a sport would not be enough to overcome Japan’s growing nationalism and fanatics’ desire for war.

To celebrate the 75th anniversary of the 1934 All American tour of Japan, over the next month I will post daily updates on this remarkable event.  Follow Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Moe Berg and their teammates as they travel through Japan, China, and the Philippines.   The story contains international diplomacy, espionage, attempted murder and, of course, baseball.  See updates on my personal blog. For more information on my upcoming book, Banzai Babe Ruth! Baseball Diplomacy and Fanaticism in Imperial Japan, forthcoming from the University of Nebraska Press, click here.  

atrick Dobson, author of Seldom Seen, which is new this fall from the University of Nebraska Press, was interviewed in the Kansas City Star earlier this week. The book, for blog readers who are unfamiliar, recounts a trip that Dobson took 15 years ago, on foot, across the Great Plains. The article, a Q&A with the author, deals with how (and why) Dobson came to quit his job at a Kansas City hotel, say goodbye to his beloved young daughter, pack a backpack and set out for Helena, Montana. That trip changed Dobson, and he said he views the Patrick Dobson who walked across the Great Plains more as a character in a book than a version of himself. Another nice detail: Since the trip, Dobson has taken his daughter, now 18, on several vacations to the parts of the country he became acquainted with as he walked from Kansas City to Montana. The full interview is on the Kansas City Star Web site.

Read from the Foreword of The Exquisite Corpse: Chance and Collaboration in Surrealism's Parlor Gameedited by Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren, Davis Schneiderman, and Tom Denlinger: