F. SCOTT HEMINGWAY

Regarding Scott Collins’ article “The Real ‘Farewell to Arms’ ” (Aug. 11), about the World War I romance between Ernest Hemingway and nurse Agnes von Kurowsky that is believed to have inspired his classic novel:

Collins writes that “scholars have suggested, for example, that Catherine is probably not a mere stand-in for Von Kurowsky but rather a composite of her and other women Hemingway knew, including the second of his four wives, Pauline Pfeiffer; British nurse Elsie Jessup; and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s wife, Zelda.”

As something of a Fitzgerald scholar, it’s my understanding that Hemingway didn’t write composite characters and was opposed to the technique, which Fitzgerald employed. In a letter to Fitzgerald reacting to his “Tender Is the Night,” Hemingway wrote, “. . . if you take real people and write about them you cannot give them other parents than they have (they are made by their parents and what happens to them) you cannot make them do anything they would not do.”

In Fitzgerald’s letter responding to Hemingway’s, he wrote, “You can’t say accurately that composite characterization hurt my book, but that it only hurt it for you.” (Both letters are found in the book “Fitzgerald and Hemingway,” by Matthew J. Bruccoli.)

DOUGLAS WYMAN

Studio City