"None Are to Be Found More Clever than Ernie"

Abstract

T HE recent collection of Hemingway's early journalism the best seller, By-Line: Ernest Hemingway, takes us to the beginning of the professional career of that great writer. There is no doubt that Hemingway's work on the Kansas City Star and the Toronto Daily Star was the training ground for the novelist that was to emerge. Yet, the story of Hemingway the writer does go back farther. During most of his busy high school days, writing for Hemingway was already an important activity from which he received significant recognition and a deep sense of accomplishment. As early as his freshman year, the young Hemingway began to take an eager interest composition and related activities. Frank Platt, his freshman English teacher at Oak Park and River Forest High School, recently recalled that in 1913, when Ernest Hemingway was a freshman my class English, we had only two grades: A and D, acceptable and deficient. He was an A student; he was a good student. As advisor to the boy's honorary debating society, Platt further remembers Hemingway as a handsome, good-natured fellow. He stood up on his hind feet and defended his points very well, but he was not a debater. He did not like