Customer Reviews (5) 
History?
Written by a young Hemingway living in Europe...You can realize by reading this book that the social problems in Europe today are similar than those of 90 years ago.
To capture the essence of these problems as he did a writer has to be as wise and sharp as Hemingway was.
To summarize a time travel guided by one of the most important writers of the 20th century...but if you are living in Europe you will feel like Bill Murray in the movie The Groundhog Day
Forgotten History by a Writer in Training
I have enjoyed reading Ernest Hemingway over the years.I've read all his published works except "Death in the Afternoon".Some of his books have greatly impressed me ("The Sun Also Rises" and "For Whom the Bells Tolls") and some have disappointed me ("Across the River and into the Trees" and "Green Hills of Africa").
I came across "Dateline: Toronto" and decided to snack on a few articles at a time.The gifted writer is not quite there yet (although I was pretty sure I discovered him in "Christmas on the Top of the World").However, I found myself engrossed in the dispatches from Europe in the early 1920's.This was like a history lesson about Europe after Versailles and before the name Hitler ever appeared in a German newspaper.The politics, the conferences, the leaders, the revolts and the people were worth the price of admission.
Throughout the 130+ articles I was able to detect a journalist with a very good insight and a better method of communicating in print.Hemingway always went beyond the who, what, when, and where.He excelled in the how and why.Sometimes a string of dispatches bogged me down as I was reading them one after another instead of days apart as they appeared in the newspapers.As the chronological articles neared the last 100 or so pages, some very interesting topics appeared (and the writing was getting a bit better all the time).Of particular note for the Hemingway aficionados was an article about the first bullfight he attended in 1923 and an article about the 1923 Nobel Prize for Literature awarded to William Butler Yeats (and Hemingway's thoughts about the prize and the selection process).
I didn't underline anything in the book except for one sentence in which Hemingway described a special concoction in France called "marc".It got my award for the best discription in the collection when he wrote "...and three drops of it on the tongue of a canary will send him out in a grim, deadly, silent search for eagles." There's not a lot of that quality of writing in "Dateline: Toronto" but there is plenty to learn about; Canada, Europe, and Hemingway.
"Dateline: Toronto" is a refreshing read
This book contains all 172 dispatches Hemingway wrote for the Toronto Star from 1920 to 1924. It is a fascinating account of the time and also of Hemingway's development as a first-rate writer. Any Hemingway reader will do well to get his hands on this book as quickly as possible. It has been a breath of fresh air for this reader after years of indulging in the brew of current bestsellers, many of which say less in 200 pages than some of Hemingway's dispatches say in 2. For the lover of literature, "Dateline: Toronto" will be like striking a vein of the real thing after years of mining fool's gold. Enjoy your soujourn back into the twenties with Hemingway as your guide; hang onto your hats though because at times the ride gets wild, but it is a swell and exciting ride and finely crafted at every turn.
the making of the writer
In 1920 an unknown young American landed a reporting assignment with The Toronto Star. He moved to Paris, and over the next four years wrote 172 mostly by-lined pieces, and incidentally established his place as a professional writer.
That young man was Ernest Hemingway.
"Dateline Toronto" is a collection of all 172 of his pieces for The Star.There is serious reportage on conditions in postwar Europe and Turkey, on public figures and social events; the value of the franc, Prohibition, inflation, tourism and sports, but what shines through all of it is the human element, the conversations with the man on the street, dialogues overheard on the bus or in the shops, the point of view of the average Joe or Pierre.
Hemingway made the news comprehensible to everybody. For example, a difficult subject like Canada's participation at the Genoa conference of 1922 is distilled to two sentences from a politician's mouth: "Canada's chief interest is the recognition of Russia...Canada has much harvest machinery for Russian export..." A report on a prizefight in Toronto is seen through the comments of the women spectators.
Most surprising is the humour. Who knew Hemingway was a wit? Sometimes it appears in a wry turn of phrase or exaggerated description as in "Ted's Skeeters", an account of a fishing trip in a mosquito infested forest north of Toronto.:
"The mosquitoes were coming through the netting as though it were the bars of a cage."
In "A Free Shave" Hemingway parodies his own future work as he describes a visit to the barber college which "requires the cold, naked valor of the man who walks clear-eyed to death...."
"I said, `I'm going upstairs.' Upstairs is where the free work is done by the beginners.
A hush fell over the shop. `He's going upstairs'..."
Torontonians who recall the Mel Lastman years will appreciate "Trading Celebrities", wherein Hemingway asks why not trade public figures among the nations as the big leagues do baseball players, and gives some ridiculous examples like this one.
"What a boon to a community like Toronto, which doesn't know what else to do but elect officials who will keep on running. As in this case:
Toronto, Feb 16.--Unnamed parties have completed negotiations between the Toronto City Council and... Hamburg, Germany for the exchange ofMayor Thomas Church in return for 20,000 tons of German shipping..."
Well, you get the idea.
If you wonder how Hemingway changed the art of literature, how he cut through the Victorian verbosity, straight to the heart of the matter, it's all here in his reporting.
Dateline Toronto has been out of print for some time.If you can beg, borrow or buy a copy second hand, do not wait another minute. It's a rare look at the early twentieth century from the youthful eyes and mind of a man who would become one of its giants.
Young Hemingway
Hemingway was 20-24 yrs old when he wrote these dispatches for the Toronto newspapers.He already had journalism experience in Kansas City and war experience in Italy.He had experienced his first broken heart.The work is fresh and clean and much of it could be printed in this morning'snewspaper and it would be considered good.He covered the day-to-day andalso peace conferences in Europe.He later said some of this is"juvenilia" and should not be included in his life's work.Thewriting is very good even at this young age.
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