The Breaking Point

The Breaking Point: Hemingway, Dos Passos and the Murder of Jose Robles by Stephen Koch

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This is part of my “Red Decade” reading project, which is apparently growing out of my reading of Eugene Lyon's “The Red Decade” and “Assignment in Utopia,” Bella Dodd's “The School of Darkness,” Lionel Trilling's “The End of the Journey,” and other books from and about the period. Actually, I received this book as a gift back in 2010 but never got around to reading it until just now.

As an insider's look into the culture of the left during the Red Decade (the 1930s), this book is delightful. It is equally delightful in providing an overview of the lives of John Dos Passos and Ernest Hemingway and the literary world they inhabited. It is another book that startles me with the realization of how small the world is at some levels. In this book, for example, Dos Passos and Hemingway were friends in Paris in the 1920s when they were starting out as writers in the “Lost Generation.” Both had been ambulance drivers during World War I in different theaters. Eric Blair (George Orwell), who had been fighting for POUM in Catalonia, was staying at the same hotel in Barcelona, where Blair made a point of speaking to Dos Passos about Communist tactics and machinations in Spain.

This book follows Dos Passos and Hemingway from their early lives through the height of their fame in the Spanish Civil War to an epilogue that describes their eventual fates. Hemingway is the heavy in this book. Hemingway comes across as egotistical, shallow, cruel, and vicious, all of which may have been true. As I am writing this review, I am watching the Nicole Kidman/Clive Owens 2013 film “Hemingway and Gelhorn” with one eye. I am finding it difficult to watch this movie after having just finished “The Breaking Point” as every lie about Dos Passos is presented as true and Gelhorn's self-serving fantasies are presented in her favor. It is as able a piece of propaganda as anything done to Dos Passos in Spain.

Jose Robles is set up as the fulcrum of this book. Robles was a Spaniard and a friend of both Hemingway (“Hem”) and Dos Passos (“Dos”) in the 1920s. Like Dos, Robles was a committed Leftist. As Dos climbed to the heights of literary and Leftist acclaim with his USA trilogy; Robles worked in America as a professor of Spanish at Columbia. When Franco's rebellion was launched, Robles returned to Spain to take a role in the Republican (Leftist) government against the Nationalists (Rightist) forces. Robles was appointed to act as the liaison for the Soviet general leading Communist forces in Spain, where presumably he learned quite a bit about Soviet control over the Republican government.

This information seems to have made him a danger to the Communists. An extra-legal police force arrested and shot Robles with due process or acknowledgment of his murder.

Meanwhile, Dos Passos was being set up by Communist agents of influence to produce a propaganda film in Spain about the Republican cause. Hemingway was essentially apolitical but was brought along.

Author Stephen Koch is very good at explaining how the intricate relationship between Communist politics and the biographical development of his subjects. For example, at the same time that Dos Passos was being romanced to produce the film for the Spanish cause, Communism was rejecting modernism for “Socialist Realism.” Since Dos Passos was the model of modernistic literature, he fell out of favor with Communists and their fellow travelers, which explains his mistreatment in Spain.

In Spain, Dos Passos could not find his friend, Robles. His inquiries were met with inconsistent lies. His friends, including Hemingway and Josephine Herbst – who was a witness in HUAC hearings that tied Alger Hiss to Whittaker Chambers (Small world) – were told that Robles had been executed and they were told that the cover story was a lie that Robles had been executed as a fascist spy. Herbst lied and gaslit Dos Passos as a good Communist apparatchik and Hem took a malicious delight in presenting Dos as a coward who had a fascist friend.

Koch blames the ideology of the “Popular Front,” which was purely a Communist effort to subvert leftists to the service of Communism. Communists followed orders; fellow travelers followed the party line. Hemingway followed some kind malicious drive to power over his rivals, including his friend Dos, when egged on by Spanish officials appealing to his vanity.

The chief virtue of this book was to expose the deceit of the Red Decade. Koch illustrates how Spain was simply a tool for Russian interests. Stalin was hoping to start a war between Germany and the West in Spain while not ramping up a hostility between Germany and Russia that would stand in the way of a German-Russian Peace Treaty. In fact, Stalin never wanted the Republicans to win. All of the Spaniards who died on both sides of the war, all of the soldiers of the International Brigades who were killed, all of the leftists who donated time and money to the Republican cause were fools duped by Stalin. Stalin liquidated the Popular Front when he had his deal with Hitler, withdrew the International Brigades, and executed the Russian heroes of the Spanish Civil War. Kortsev, a Russian propagandist who was Stalin's contact in Spain, was called back to Moscow, given a medal for a job well done, and, then, shot the next day. The general who Robles worked for met a similar fate.

The Republican side of the Spanish Civil War is often the only side we hear about, and that side is told through the romantic lens of leftists for whom it was their defining fight against fascism. The modern trope of “Antifa” grows out of the Popular Front movement of the 1930s, but we should never forget that “Antifa” was only popular as long as the Communists wanted to use “Antifa” as a slogan to increase their power. Once they had milked it for all it was worth, they became very much pro-Fascist and the “Antifa” slogan was dropped like moldy bread.

This book is also very good as an introduction to the writings of Hem and Dos. It situates their novels – many of which contained autobiographical elements – within their time and lives. Koch explains the relationship between Hem's strategic infidelities and his need for a muse to nurture his gift.

The story is well-told and moves the reader along. Koch has an informal style at times, which can be jarring, and yet does help to provide an electrical jolt of energy. I found the book quite enjoyable.