Audio: The audio version of this episode includes news about my pending travels to the east coast of the USA to promote my latest novel (Brooklyn + Provincetown, MA + Durham & Chapel Hill, NC) + a musical rendition (vocals + piano) of The Beatles’ “She’s Leaving Home.” Thank you to my 79 paying subscribers for making this kind of multimedia work possible; I’ll share the exclusive “She’s Leaving Home” recording with you this Sunday.
Video: I’ve included a video of my discussion with
at the bottom of this post for all of my visual learners out there.1
On April 8, 2024, I received a request on my website for a literary walking tour. This is what it said:
Name: Evelyn Skye
Subject: Hemingway and Lost Generation walking tour
Message: Hi Samuél, I'm an author who will be participating in Le Festival du Livre de Paris, and I have a free day in the city. JoJo & Barrie from
mentioned that I ought to connect with you.1 Are you free for a Hemingway walking tour, or alternatively, to grab a coffee?
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It’s not often that authors request a walking tour, and I couldn’t help but look up
in hopes of learning more about her work before our Parisian stroll.At first—I admit it—I was just a tad intimidated: Evelyn had recently celebrated a writing partnership with Netflix and was the author of multiple NY-Times bestsellers … what could I possibly teach a Harvard graduate in Russian literature who was living the kind of literary life I could only fantasize about?
It turns out all I had to do was trust Evelyn’s honest words on her website:
“Evelyn believes in the complexity and essential goodness of people, and tries to savor small moments of stillness and joy every day. This–she hopes–is what you’ll find in her books.
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During our walk from Place Monge up to Place de La Contrescarpe, where Hemingway places his legendary in media res beginning to A Moveable Feast (“And then there was the bad weather”), out behind the Pantheon and down into the Luxembourg Gardens and the heart of Saint Germain, Evelyn and I discussed Hemingway’s journey from lovesick war veteran with a proclivity for romance to disillusioned author celebrity with a drinking problem.
Curious, we both agreed over a post-walk drink along the nestled alleyway of Cour du Commerce St. André, that during the last years of his life, Hemingway chose not to write about all of his life’s many financial and celebrity successes but rather those early years in Paris, before anyone knew his name, when he wrote for writing’s sake.
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What touched me most about meeting
, who is certainly one of the most traditionally successful authors I’ve ever met, was how humble and kind she was in sharing her own story and wisdom during our walk. She was also genuinely curious about my writing and my life as a writer in Paris.In a world wherein literary success is defined by best-seller lists, hefty advances, and silver screen adaptations—all of which Evelyn has experienced multiple times—speaking with Evelyn in Paris about fame and wealth and the disillusionment that can come with society’s definition of “success’ revealed just how much of a true writer she is, a specialist in Russian literature who was as skeptical as I am about how much any writer should look towards the tragic personalities of the Roaring Twenties as the types of writers humans worth emulating.
As I proceeded to tell Evelyn, I’ve lived in Paris as a working novelist for my entire adult life, but I have yet to be published by a major publisher, which means sometimes when I tell a stranger what I do, the stranger—usually an American—blurts out, “So, you, like, want to be the next Ernest Hemingway?”
To which I respond, “Well, he was a legendary alcoholic, burned most of the bridges anyone ever helped him cross, suffered multiple traumatic brain injuries, was married four times, and blew his head off in a field in Idaho. So no, actually. I don’t want to be like Ernest Hemingway.”
Far from being aspirational, Evelyn and I both agreed that the cult of celebrity and wealth that has permeated so many people’s definitions of success since Ernest Hemingway’s meteoric rise and tragic ending—a quintessentially American capitalistic story—is best interpreted not as something to strive for but as a cautionary tale.2
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And so, in this week’s episode of Finishing the Hat, Evelyn and I discuss her journey from law firm extraordinaire to mother to bestselling author to a newfound venture on Substack, which is the clearest proof of just how generous she is.3 In her own words, Evelyn’s Substack,
is:“a friendly, vibrant community of thousands who believe that EVERYONE can spark creativity and build an inspired, happier life.”
All of the proceeds from Evelyn’s paid subscriptions go directly to scholarships for Substack writers, teenagers, and adult writers who know just how much a few extra dollars can help in carving out a few days to write (shout out to my 79th paying subscriber this week,
).As Evelyn and I discuss in Episode 2 , she wrote nine novels before publishing a book that she knew nobody else could write she wrote without hope or despair of publication, The Crown’s Game, a historical fantasy set in imperial Russia and based on her particular interest in 19th-century Russian literature.
The tenth try’s the charm, according to someone, surely.
Since then, Evelyn has published nine more books ranging from YA to Middle Grade to Adult fiction (none of these books, by the way, were reworked manuscripts; Evelyn simply kept on keeping on writing onwards and upwards). Perhaps most impressively, Evelyn even recently partnered with Netflix to write a novel for the Damsel series, and here’s a badass photo that can serve as some kind of proof:
Evelyn’s trajectory is a metamodern version of the American Literary Dream, and while I have no illusions that it’s a rare example of traditional literary success, I think we can all learn something from Evelyn’s tenacity and character.
What inspires me even more than Evelyn’s work ethic is that her definition of success has also changed since she began, which is why all of the money she makes on Substack goes to providing scholarships for writers like you and me (anyone can enter and it’s straightforward; next deadline for a $500 scholarship is August 22; also, it’s free; also, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take, so here goes mine: if you think I deserve a scholarship, I’ll use it to go on a miniature writing retreat, and all you have to do to give me a shot at the prize is like my comment I wrote in the comments section of the scholarship page).
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If last week’s episode of Finishing the Hat with
was about how indie authors can subvert the publishing industry, this week’s conversation is with an objectively successful, traditionally published author who hasn’t lost sight of the importance of honoring personal definitions of success in the metamodern age … whether that means achieving Netflix specials and bestseller lists or taking French classes at the end of the call, so that one day, once again, we can sit down again on a cobblestoned street in Paris to chat about life, literature, and all the rest of it over a glass of wine.A few weeks ago, I wrote about how I met Jojo and Barrie in a Substack comments section and how it led to a recent two-week vacation in their glorious French countryside home. Thank you,
, for introducing me to ; I can already see us back in Paris together, sharing a bottle of wine.
In Paris Was Yesterday: 1925-1939, the author and New Yorker legend Janet Flanner explained it this way: “Our talk ended with the mutual declaration that if either of us ever killed ourself, the other was not to grieve but to remember that liberty could be as important in the act of dying as in the acts of living […] I had automatically recognized that fatal gunshot as his mortal act of gaining liberty. But I grieved deeply when the pitiful facts of his final bondage were made public […] At Ernest’s death, I grieve most because he died in a state of ruin.”
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