The reader may feel a bit incredulous at suggesting an early 20th century writer be memorialized by a term which only came into common usage a number of years after his death. However, I hope to demonstrate that Hemingway was indeed the template replicated by such a large number of the rock stars who crashed and burned after meteoric ascents, in the decades just subsequent to Hemingway's death in 1961.
We've placed Hemingway high on our list of top 20 most famous American authors . He earned that rank on the strength of his contribution to English language literature. Yet, even with all that, there's no denying that his fame and its very nature superseded even that literary legacy. He made the mold for artistic celebrity that defined the 20th century.
Hemingway would still have qualified for registration at most youth hostels when his brooding and anguished novella of restless ennui, The Sun Also Rises, became an instant darling of the literary critics. Then, miraculously, only three years later, still soaking up the glow of critical acclaim, his novel, A Farewell to Arms, became a popular best seller. And this new best seller status was backed by a pair of short story collections, in the years just prior and subsequent to the novel that revealed Hemingway as nothing less than the re-inventor the short story form. Such stories as A Day's Wait, A Clean and Well-Lighted Place and Hills Like White Elephants were heartbreaking glimpses into mundane injuries that leave ordinary people scarred and broken.
An infinitesimally small number of artists ever achieve such heights and even fewer in the first decade of adulthood. Many things contributed to this sensation that was the young Hemingway.
To begin with, similarly incidentally to many of the iconic rock stars of the 70s-80s - think of David Bowie, David Byrne and Madonna - Hemingway had an astute aptitude for co-opting tropes and techniques of avant garde and experimental artists. He learned important lessons about language and narrative from those experimenting outside the mainstream. Yet, like Bowie or Madonna, had a knack for understanding how to apply those insights while maintaining an appeal to a mass audience. Ezra Pound, James Joyce and Gertrude Stein, were among the experimental writers Hemingway learned from, but managed to capture in a way domesticated for popular tastes.
And capture it, he did. In a way quite similar to how rock and roll captured the rebelliousness and idealism of the highly educated and materially privileged 1960s baby boom generation, Hemingway's stories captured the sullen ennui and restlessness of the post-WWI cohort that came to be known as the lost generation.
Like, though, any artist who has such early meteoric success, replicating it can be a difficult thing to do. Though he had some modest "hits" along the way, it is not unfair to say he never quite reached the same heights literarily again after the early 30s. Probably only For Whom the Bell Tolls approached his early breakthrough works.
Nonetheless, his name never ceased being on the tips of people's tongues and his private life was a source of seemingly endless fascination in the popular press. And Hemingway clearly was aware of this fascination and took no small effort in nurturing it along. He sought out and maintained cordial associations with influential gossip columnists of the time. And his much celebrated exploits in the hunting or fishing of big game never failed to produce photographic fodder for the pages of the era's glossy magazines.
It might come as a surprise for many people today to know this, but Hemingway was endorsing commercial products, such as pens, airlines and beer, long before the actors and athlete's with whom we associate such activity today. Additionally, Hemingway was a frequent source of letters to both literary and other publications, providing him the occasion to refine his well honed image as the proverbial man's man and the anti-intellectual's intellectual.
Many accused Hemingway by the middle of the century of having become a kind of parody of himself. Indeed, one can't help thinking of all the 60s and 70s rock and pop bands, grey and flabby, who continue to rake in the dough on the nostalgia circuit of casinos and community halls.
If Hemingway's story had ended there, it would still have been the template for the future rock star, but it turned out he had one more moment of greatness in him - and thereby raised the bar to a mythical height for those who would follow him. It was almost as if one of those geriatric rock bands had the audacity to insist on doing original material though they were being booed off every stage when refusing to just play oldies and goldies. Then, remarkably, they had a new platinum record.
Just when it seemed that the world had seen all the original and powerful work an elderly Hemingway had to offer, suddenly, in 1952, he did it again. The Old Man and the Sea took the literary world by storm and once again made Hemingway artistically relevant.
That it was a story of an elderly man, with one last chance at greatness, who sees it slip away between his fingers, never quite really within his grasp, may remind us that his most successful works were those with a vaguely autobiographical flavor - and a sense of inexorable tragedy.
As if adding the finishing touch to that template of the tragic rock star, which he created for subsequent generations, in 1961, in an isolated home, Earnest Hemingway's final chapter came to an end in a suicidal fog of depression and substance abuse. The literary world lost one of its giants and artistic aspiring youth for decades to come inherited the model for tragic artistic genius which would endure throughout the 20th century.
And it still does.
We've placed Hemingway high on our list of top 20 most famous American authors . He earned that rank on the strength of his contribution to English language literature. Yet, even with all that, there's no denying that his fame and its very nature superseded even that literary legacy. He made the mold for artistic celebrity that defined the 20th century.
Hemingway would still have qualified for registration at most youth hostels when his brooding and anguished novella of restless ennui, The Sun Also Rises, became an instant darling of the literary critics. Then, miraculously, only three years later, still soaking up the glow of critical acclaim, his novel, A Farewell to Arms, became a popular best seller. And this new best seller status was backed by a pair of short story collections, in the years just prior and subsequent to the novel that revealed Hemingway as nothing less than the re-inventor the short story form. Such stories as A Day's Wait, A Clean and Well-Lighted Place and Hills Like White Elephants were heartbreaking glimpses into mundane injuries that leave ordinary people scarred and broken.
An infinitesimally small number of artists ever achieve such heights and even fewer in the first decade of adulthood. Many things contributed to this sensation that was the young Hemingway.
To begin with, similarly incidentally to many of the iconic rock stars of the 70s-80s - think of David Bowie, David Byrne and Madonna - Hemingway had an astute aptitude for co-opting tropes and techniques of avant garde and experimental artists. He learned important lessons about language and narrative from those experimenting outside the mainstream. Yet, like Bowie or Madonna, had a knack for understanding how to apply those insights while maintaining an appeal to a mass audience. Ezra Pound, James Joyce and Gertrude Stein, were among the experimental writers Hemingway learned from, but managed to capture in a way domesticated for popular tastes.
And capture it, he did. In a way quite similar to how rock and roll captured the rebelliousness and idealism of the highly educated and materially privileged 1960s baby boom generation, Hemingway's stories captured the sullen ennui and restlessness of the post-WWI cohort that came to be known as the lost generation.
Like, though, any artist who has such early meteoric success, replicating it can be a difficult thing to do. Though he had some modest "hits" along the way, it is not unfair to say he never quite reached the same heights literarily again after the early 30s. Probably only For Whom the Bell Tolls approached his early breakthrough works.
Nonetheless, his name never ceased being on the tips of people's tongues and his private life was a source of seemingly endless fascination in the popular press. And Hemingway clearly was aware of this fascination and took no small effort in nurturing it along. He sought out and maintained cordial associations with influential gossip columnists of the time. And his much celebrated exploits in the hunting or fishing of big game never failed to produce photographic fodder for the pages of the era's glossy magazines.
It might come as a surprise for many people today to know this, but Hemingway was endorsing commercial products, such as pens, airlines and beer, long before the actors and athlete's with whom we associate such activity today. Additionally, Hemingway was a frequent source of letters to both literary and other publications, providing him the occasion to refine his well honed image as the proverbial man's man and the anti-intellectual's intellectual.
Many accused Hemingway by the middle of the century of having become a kind of parody of himself. Indeed, one can't help thinking of all the 60s and 70s rock and pop bands, grey and flabby, who continue to rake in the dough on the nostalgia circuit of casinos and community halls.
If Hemingway's story had ended there, it would still have been the template for the future rock star, but it turned out he had one more moment of greatness in him - and thereby raised the bar to a mythical height for those who would follow him. It was almost as if one of those geriatric rock bands had the audacity to insist on doing original material though they were being booed off every stage when refusing to just play oldies and goldies. Then, remarkably, they had a new platinum record.
Just when it seemed that the world had seen all the original and powerful work an elderly Hemingway had to offer, suddenly, in 1952, he did it again. The Old Man and the Sea took the literary world by storm and once again made Hemingway artistically relevant.
That it was a story of an elderly man, with one last chance at greatness, who sees it slip away between his fingers, never quite really within his grasp, may remind us that his most successful works were those with a vaguely autobiographical flavor - and a sense of inexorable tragedy.
As if adding the finishing touch to that template of the tragic rock star, which he created for subsequent generations, in 1961, in an isolated home, Earnest Hemingway's final chapter came to an end in a suicidal fog of depression and substance abuse. The literary world lost one of its giants and artistic aspiring youth for decades to come inherited the model for tragic artistic genius which would endure throughout the 20th century.
And it still does.
About the Author:
To stay in the know on all the news about U.S. writers, dead or alive, check out Mickey Jhonny's work at the blog Famous American Authors . He also follows the hottest shows in sophisticated television: catch his insightful articles at the Don Draper Haircut blog.
No comments:
Post a Comment