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 Yet, even with all that, there's no denying that his fame and its very nature superseded even that literary legacy.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 manner strikingly resembling the way that rock and roll captured the rebellion and idealism of the educated and materially privileged baby boomers, Hemingway's fiction captured the existential disquiet of the post-WWI lost generation.
Meteoric success at a young age, though, poses its challenges: how does one repeat the feat? What do you do for an encore? He did have some modest "hits" in the 30s, capped off with the success of For Whom the Bell Tolls in 1940. Perhaps not a work equal to what he'd accomplished previously, but it sold. The 40s dragged out though as long a decade in which Hemingway's publications became less and less impressive and relevant.
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.
Rather far ahead of his time, he was the pitchman for a number of consumer goods, including a pen, airline and a beer. Additionally there was a regular supply of letters from Hemingway to literary and other publications in which he contributed to the continual building and shaping of his persona and mystique as man's man and anti-intellectual 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.
In Hemingway's case, however, one last triumph was still awaiting. Imagine those hanging-on senior citizen rock bands that, instead, of just endlessly playing the feel good greatest hits, actually had the brashness to insist on playing new material. And, to everyone's amazement, produced yet one more gold record.
When it appeared to all-the-world that Hemingway had nothing original or important left to say, the literary world was swept away with the 1952 publication of his heartbreaking novella, The Old Man and the Sea. Amazingly, he had done it again; once more Hemingway had become artistically relevant. No doubt largely a function of this last great hurrah, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature, perhaps adding the final piece to the Hemingway legend.
Yet, in that tragic way in which Hemingway's work always told more about him than perhaps he realized, one can't help noting the theme of this last great novella. It tells the story of an elderly man who sees his last hope for greatness slip away out of his grasp. The moment of its apparent possession revealed as but a mirage. By the 50s, there was something tragically broken in the heart of Hemingway.
And of course he molded that template for 20th century artistic celebrity right to the end. Anticipating all the tragic rock star youths which would follow the path he'd beaten, in 1961, in an isolated home, Hemingway succumbed to his own misdoing, in a suicidal fog of depression and substance abuse. The world lost one of the most important artists of the 20th century. In the process, the template of artistic celebrity which Hemingway made, received its finishing touch. And it would be a mold, simultaneously triumphant and tragic that informed the aspirations of dreamy youth throughout the rest of the 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 manner strikingly resembling the way that rock and roll captured the rebellion and idealism of the educated and materially privileged baby boomers, Hemingway's fiction captured the existential disquiet of the post-WWI lost generation.
Meteoric success at a young age, though, poses its challenges: how does one repeat the feat? What do you do for an encore? He did have some modest "hits" in the 30s, capped off with the success of For Whom the Bell Tolls in 1940. Perhaps not a work equal to what he'd accomplished previously, but it sold. The 40s dragged out though as long a decade in which Hemingway's publications became less and less impressive and relevant.
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.
Rather far ahead of his time, he was the pitchman for a number of consumer goods, including a pen, airline and a beer. Additionally there was a regular supply of letters from Hemingway to literary and other publications in which he contributed to the continual building and shaping of his persona and mystique as man's man and anti-intellectual 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.
In Hemingway's case, however, one last triumph was still awaiting. Imagine those hanging-on senior citizen rock bands that, instead, of just endlessly playing the feel good greatest hits, actually had the brashness to insist on playing new material. And, to everyone's amazement, produced yet one more gold record.
When it appeared to all-the-world that Hemingway had nothing original or important left to say, the literary world was swept away with the 1952 publication of his heartbreaking novella, The Old Man and the Sea. Amazingly, he had done it again; once more Hemingway had become artistically relevant. No doubt largely a function of this last great hurrah, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature, perhaps adding the final piece to the Hemingway legend.
Yet, in that tragic way in which Hemingway's work always told more about him than perhaps he realized, one can't help noting the theme of this last great novella. It tells the story of an elderly man who sees his last hope for greatness slip away out of his grasp. The moment of its apparent possession revealed as but a mirage. By the 50s, there was something tragically broken in the heart of Hemingway.
And of course he molded that template for 20th century artistic celebrity right to the end. Anticipating all the tragic rock star youths which would follow the path he'd beaten, in 1961, in an isolated home, Hemingway succumbed to his own misdoing, in a suicidal fog of depression and substance abuse. The world lost one of the most important artists of the 20th century. In the process, the template of artistic celebrity which Hemingway made, received its finishing touch. And it would be a mold, simultaneously triumphant and tragic that informed the aspirations of dreamy youth throughout the rest of the 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 site Famous American Authors . He also follows the hottest shows in sophisticated television: catch his insightful articles at the Don Draper Haircut site.
