The Breaking Point: Hemingway, Dos Passos, and the Murder of José Robles

The thrilling story of friends Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos in the Spanish Civil War, an ideological adventure that brought their friendship-and their literary rivalry-to the breaking point. The Spanish Civil War was a flashpoint for many artists of the era, and the political left's romance with its cause led many creative luminaries to Spain, perhaps most notably Ernest Hemingway. John Dos Passos, widely regarded at the time as the literary voice of America's new socially engaged generation-his face was on the cover of Time the week the war broke out-was also among the important writers to make the trip to Spain. Dos Passos and Hemingway were longtime companions, and it is likely that mild-mannered Dos was oblivious to Hemingway's obsessive resentment of him. Anyway, the two men arrived in Spain as comrades of a sort. The Breaking Point reveals that both Hemingway and Dos were in Spain as part of a group sponsored by Stalin's propaganda ministry. Then Dos's close friend Jose Robles Pazo was killed as a purported fascist spy. Dos could never accept Robles's guilt, putting him at odds with Hemingway and placing his politics (and literary reputation) into question. history-in-miniature, The Breaking Point explores the time the two men shared in Spain, and how it affected each man, his work, and American literature as a whole.