User:JFordyce/sandbox - Revision history

JFordyce at 02:37, 1 March 2021

2021-03-01T02:37:49Z

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	interpret the tragic end of Hemingway? The angst that Hemingway fought against would eventually catch up with him. Yet the demons that Hemingway fought were both part of his humanity and an in- tegral part of his genius. Jackson Benson, ~~referring to the wound that Hem- ingway received on the Italian Front~~, ~~makes this important point,~~		Vladimir Nabokov’s infamous character, Humbert Humbert, suggests that we possess “only words to play with”{{sfn\|Appel\|1972\|p=456}}.Indeed we do—mere words. Yet, using such frail and fallible words, employing flawed humanity and literary genius, these authors transformed personal angst into great art—creating works that shall abide, like Mount Kilimanjaro. In so doing, each has revealed to us genuine truth—a truth that may speak to our flawed but mutual humanity.
	~~{{quote\|It may be~~ that ~~the wounding itself led~~ to the dark thoughts that characterize Hemingway’s best fictions (a canon in which the centerpieces would be “Big Two-Hearted River” and “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”). But the shock of a lost immortality seems to have been magnified by an inherited depressive, paranoid per- sonality. The latter was part of his genius, although it was an in- heritance that at last he could not bear.{{sfn\|~~Benson~~\|~~1989~~\|p=~~352~~}}. }}

	~~I return to my opening thought: it is not easy being a great writer~~. ~~Nor is it easy~~, ~~living with a great writer. There is a profound cost to be paid—by the authors themselves but also by their wives~~, ~~children~~, ~~lovers, and friends. That appears undeniable. In~~ these ~~three works, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Mailer all sought to overcome their~~ angst ~~and translate it~~ into ~~art. The source of~~ that ~~angst was not only an alienation between writer and author {{sfn\|Justice\|2010\|p=260}}, but also—and more profoundly, I suggest—an alienation between us as human beings. Their art~~, like ~~that of all great artists, was a long search to “bridge the gulf,” to overcome the estrangement, to communicate truthfully with other human beings~~. ~~As was said of another great author~~, ~~Vladimir Nabokov: “[I]t is a representative search, a heightened emblem of all our at- tempts~~ to communicate . . . the distance between people, the distance sepa- rating love from love-making, mirage from reality—the desperate extent of all human need and desire” {{sfn\|Appel\|1972\|P=456}}.{{efn\|Nabokov’s search for the language adequate to ~~Lolita is HH’s search for the language that will reach Lolita; and it is a representative search, a heightened emblem of all~~ our attempts to com- municate. “‘A penny for your thoughts,’ I said, and she stretched out her palm at once (p.). It is the almost insuperable distance between those thoughts and that palm which Nabokov has measured so accurately and so movingly in Lolita: the distance between people, the distance separating love from love-making, mirage from reality—the desperate extent of all human need and desire. “I have only words to play with,” says H.~~H., and only words can bridge the gulf sug- gested by Lolita’s palm” {{sfn\|Appel\|1972\|456}} }}~~

JFordyce at 02:34, 1 March 2021

2021-03-01T02:34:28Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 22:34, 28 February 2021
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	interpret the tragic end of Hemingway? The angst that Hemingway fought against would eventually catch up with him. Yet the demons that Hemingway fought were both part of his humanity and an in- tegral part of his genius. Jackson Benson, referring to the wound that Hem- ingway received on the Italian Front, makes this important point,		interpret the tragic end of Hemingway? The angst that Hemingway fought against would eventually catch up with him. Yet the demons that Hemingway fought were both part of his humanity and an in- tegral part of his genius. Jackson Benson, referring to the wound that Hem- ingway received on the Italian Front, makes this important point,
	{{quote\|It may be that the wounding itself led to the dark thoughts that characterize Hemingway’s best fictions (a canon in which the centerpieces would be “Big Two-Hearted River” and “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”). But the shock of a lost immortality seems to have been magnified by an inherited depressive, paranoid per- sonality. The latter was part of his genius, although it was an in- heritance that at last he could not bear.{{sfn\|Benson\|1989\|p=352}}. }}		{{quote\|It may be that the wounding itself led to the dark thoughts that characterize Hemingway’s best fictions (a canon in which the centerpieces would be “Big Two-Hearted River” and “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”). But the shock of a lost immortality seems to have been magnified by an inherited depressive, paranoid per- sonality. The latter was part of his genius, although it was an in- heritance that at last he could not bear.{{sfn\|Benson\|1989\|p=352}}. }}

			I return to my opening thought: it is not easy being a great writer. Nor is it easy, living with a great writer. There is a profound cost to be paid—by the authors themselves but also by their wives, children, lovers, and friends. That appears undeniable. In these three works, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Mailer all sought to overcome their angst and translate it into art. The source of that angst was not only an alienation between writer and author {{sfn\|Justice\|2010\|p=260}}, but also—and more profoundly, I suggest—an alienation between us as human beings. Their art, like that of all great artists, was a long search to “bridge the gulf,” to overcome the estrangement, to communicate truthfully with other human beings. As was said of another great author, Vladimir Nabokov: “[I]t is a representative search, a heightened emblem of all our at- tempts to communicate . . . the distance between people, the distance sepa- rating love from love-making, mirage from reality—the desperate extent of all human need and desire” {{sfn\|Appel\|1972\|P=456}}.{{efn\|Nabokov’s search for the language adequate to Lolita is HH’s search for the language that will reach Lolita; and it is a representative search, a heightened emblem of all our attempts to com- municate. “‘A penny for your thoughts,’ I said, and she stretched out her palm at once (p.). It is the almost insuperable distance between those thoughts and that palm which Nabokov has measured so accurately and so movingly in Lolita: the distance between people, the distance separating love from love-making, mirage from reality—the desperate extent of all human need and desire. “I have only words to play with,” says H.H., and only words can bridge the gulf sug- gested by Lolita’s palm” {{sfn\|Appel\|1972\|456}} }}

JFordyce at 02:31, 1 March 2021

2021-03-01T02:31:15Z

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	=~~== GREAT AUTHORS TRANSFORM ANGST INTO ART ===~~		interpret the tragic end of Hemingway? The angst that Hemingway fought against would eventually catch up with him. Yet the demons that Hemingway fought were both part of his humanity and an in- tegral part of his genius. Jackson Benson, referring to the wound that Hem- ingway received on the Italian Front, makes this important point,
			{{quote\|It may be that the wounding itself led to the dark thoughts that characterize Hemingway’s best fictions (a canon in which the centerpieces would be “Big Two-Hearted River” and “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”). But the shock of a lost immortality seems to have been magnified by an inherited depressive, paranoid per- sonality. The latter was part of his genius, although it was an in- heritance that at last he could not bear.{{sfn\|Benson\|1989\|p=352}}. }}

JFordyce: Replaced content with "=== GREAT AUTHORS TRANSFORM ANGST INTO ART ==="

2021-03-01T01:57:40Z

Replaced content with "=== GREAT AUTHORS TRANSFORM ANGST INTO ART ==="

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	{{quote\|Mailer’s writings explicitly state the terms of the modern revolt against conventional society. It is very different from past liter- ary rebellions: it begins in the instinctual life, and it is free both from established conventions and ideological complications. Sergius O’Shaugnessy, Mailer’s favorite hero, as a personality stands at the opposite pole from Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock. He acts independently of all the inhibitions which allowed Prufrock to postpone action; his major impulse is both to murder and to create, to express passion through instinctive acts. He is the “marginal ego,” the dislocated and “disaffiliated” self, who tries to make a way of life from the energy and strategy of pure re- bellion.{{sfn\|Hoffman\|p=~~12}} }}~~		=== GREAT AUTHORS TRANSFORM ANGST INTO ART ===
	In a recent article, Alex Hicks has made a strong case that we should see Advertisements as Mailer’s Künstlerroman or artist-novel—similar in scope to Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and other examples. His the- sis is “that Advertisements for Myself is better appreciated as a novelistic au- tobiography than as an anthology-like collection of writings,” and he finds support for this view from Bloom, Frye, Jonathan Lethem and many others (Advertisements). The quotation from Lethem is particularly powerful, “Ad- vertisements for Myself is Mailer’s greatest book, simply because it frames the drama of the construction of this voice, the thrilling resurrection of his per- sonality as his greatest asset after the public pratfalls accompanying his sec- ond and third novels”{{sfn\|Lethem\|2013\|p=~~14}}.Lethem saw Mailer “in the late fifties to have become a radar detector for the onset of . . . the post-modern cultural condition generally”{{sfn\|Lethem\|2013\|p~~=13}} I find the arguments of both Hicks and Lethem cogent and persuasive, but I do wonder if elements of this artist-novel mode are not also found in Hemingway’s “Snows” and Fitzgerald’s “The Crack- Up”—albeit in a rudimentary form.

	~~I am also reminded of Burwell’s poignant description, quoted earlier, of the late Hemingway wrestling with the four narratives that he could not complete:~~
	{{quote\|In their totality, the four narratives record Hemingway’s fifteen- year search for a form and style that would express his reflexive vision of the artist. It is a search he had begun as early as the fall of  as he wrote in ‘The Snows of Kilimanjaro’ of a dying writer’s imaginative triumph over the distractions that have lim- ited his art. There is a discernible movement towards what we have come to call postmodern narrative in these works.{{sfn\|Burwell\|1996\|pp=~~1-2}} }}~~

	Whenever we see an author creating as a character within his or her fiction an artist—any kind of artist—we should pay attention. In this literary phe- nomenon, we may see aspects of the Künstlerroman or artist-novel, certainly. But we may also regard it as a skillful use of aesthetic distance—as an ex- ample of Malcolm Cowley’s “double vision”—that is “the ability to partici- pate emotionally in experience while, at the same time, retaining the ability to stand back and view it objectively” {{sfn\|Mangum\|2005\|p=20}}. That ability, Mailer certainly possessed, as did, in an earlier age, Hemingway and Fitzgerald.{{efn\|These two perspectives—Künstlerroman and aesthetic distance—are not incompatible, of course. They are, perhaps, two sides of the same coin, and we should learn from both.}}

JFordyce at 01:53, 1 March 2021

2021-03-01T01:53:05Z

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	I am also reminded of Burwell’s poignant description, quoted earlier, of the late Hemingway wrestling with the four narratives that he could not complete:		I am also reminded of Burwell’s poignant description, quoted earlier, of the late Hemingway wrestling with the four narratives that he could not complete:
	{{quote\|In their totality, the four narratives record Hemingway’s fifteen- year search for a form and style that would express his reflexive vision of the artist. It is a search he had begun as early as the fall of  as he wrote in ‘The Snows of Kilimanjaro’ of a dying writer’s imaginative triumph over the distractions that have lim- ited his art. There is a discernible movement towards what we have come to call postmodern narrative in these works.{{sfn\|Burwell\|1996\|pp=1-2}} }}		{{quote\|In their totality, the four narratives record Hemingway’s fifteen- year search for a form and style that would express his reflexive vision of the artist. It is a search he had begun as early as the fall of  as he wrote in ‘The Snows of Kilimanjaro’ of a dying writer’s imaginative triumph over the distractions that have lim- ited his art. There is a discernible movement towards what we have come to call postmodern narrative in these works.{{sfn\|Burwell\|1996\|pp=1-2}} }}

			Whenever we see an author creating as a character within his or her fiction an artist—any kind of artist—we should pay attention. In this literary phe- nomenon, we may see aspects of the Künstlerroman or artist-novel, certainly. But we may also regard it as a skillful use of aesthetic distance—as an ex- ample of Malcolm Cowley’s “double vision”—that is “the ability to partici- pate emotionally in experience while, at the same time, retaining the ability to stand back and view it objectively” {{sfn\|Mangum\|2005\|p=20}}. That ability, Mailer certainly possessed, as did, in an earlier age, Hemingway and Fitzgerald.{{efn\|These two perspectives—Künstlerroman and aesthetic distance—are not incompatible, of course. They are, perhaps, two sides of the same coin, and we should learn from both.}}

JFordyce at 01:49, 1 March 2021

2021-03-01T01:49:46Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 21:49, 28 February 2021
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	I am also reminded of Burwell’s poignant description, quoted earlier, of the late Hemingway wrestling with the four narratives that he could not complete:		I am also reminded of Burwell’s poignant description, quoted earlier, of the late Hemingway wrestling with the four narratives that he could not complete:
	{{quote\|In their totality, the four narratives record Hemingway’s fifteen- year search for a form and style that would express his reflexive vision of the artist. It is a search he had begun as early as the fall of  as he wrote in ‘The Snows of Kilimanjaro’ of a dying writer’s imaginative triumph over the distractions that have lim- ited his art. There is a discernible movement towards what we have come to call postmodern narrative in these works.{{sfn\|Burwell\|1996\|pp=1-2}}		{{quote\|In their totality, the four narratives record Hemingway’s fifteen- year search for a form and style that would express his reflexive vision of the artist. It is a search he had begun as early as the fall of  as he wrote in ‘The Snows of Kilimanjaro’ of a dying writer’s imaginative triumph over the distractions that have lim- ited his art. There is a discernible movement towards what we have come to call postmodern narrative in these works.{{sfn\|Burwell\|1996\|pp=1-2}} }}

JFordyce at 01:48, 1 March 2021

2021-03-01T01:48:21Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 21:48, 28 February 2021
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	I am also reminded of Burwell’s poignant description, quoted earlier, of the late Hemingway wrestling with the four narratives that he could not complete:		I am also reminded of Burwell’s poignant description, quoted earlier, of the late Hemingway wrestling with the four narratives that he could not complete:
	{{quote\|In their totality, the four narratives record Hemingway’s fifteen- year search for a form and style that would express his reflexive vision of the artist. It is a search he had begun as early as the fall of  as he wrote in ‘The Snows of Kilimanjaro’ of a dying writer’s imaginative triumph over the distractions that have lim- ited his art. There is a discernible movement towards what we have come to call postmodern narrative in these works.{{~~son~~\|Burwell\|1996\|pp=1-2}}		{{quote\|In their totality, the four narratives record Hemingway’s fifteen- year search for a form and style that would express his reflexive vision of the artist. It is a search he had begun as early as the fall of  as he wrote in ‘The Snows of Kilimanjaro’ of a dying writer’s imaginative triumph over the distractions that have lim- ited his art. There is a discernible movement towards what we have come to call postmodern narrative in these works.{{sfn\|Burwell\|1996\|pp=1-2}}

JFordyce at 01:47, 1 March 2021

2021-03-01T01:47:52Z

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	{{quote\|Mailer’s writings explicitly state the terms of the modern revolt against conventional society. It is very different from past liter- ary rebellions: it begins in the instinctual life, and it is free both from established conventions and ideological complications. Sergius O’Shaugnessy, Mailer’s favorite hero, as a personality stands at the opposite pole from Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock. He acts independently of all the inhibitions which allowed Prufrock to postpone action; his major impulse is both to murder and to create, to express passion through instinctive acts. He is the “marginal ego,” the dislocated and “disaffiliated” self, who tries to make a way of life from the energy and strategy of pure re- bellion.{{sfn\|Hoffman\|p=12}} }}		{{quote\|Mailer’s writings explicitly state the terms of the modern revolt against conventional society. It is very different from past liter- ary rebellions: it begins in the instinctual life, and it is free both from established conventions and ideological complications. Sergius O’Shaugnessy, Mailer’s favorite hero, as a personality stands at the opposite pole from Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock. He acts independently of all the inhibitions which allowed Prufrock to postpone action; his major impulse is both to murder and to create, to express passion through instinctive acts. He is the “marginal ego,” the dislocated and “disaffiliated” self, who tries to make a way of life from the energy and strategy of pure re- bellion.{{sfn\|Hoffman\|p=12}} }}
	In a recent article, Alex Hicks has made a strong case that we should see Advertisements as Mailer’s Künstlerroman or artist-novel—similar in scope to Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and other examples. His the- sis is “that Advertisements for Myself is better appreciated as a novelistic au- tobiography than as an anthology-like collection of writings,” and he finds support for this view from Bloom, Frye, Jonathan Lethem and many others (Advertisements). The quotation from Lethem is particularly powerful, “Ad- vertisements for Myself is Mailer’s greatest book, simply because it frames the drama of the construction of this voice, the thrilling resurrection of his per- sonality as his greatest asset after the public pratfalls accompanying his sec- ond and third novels”{{sfn\|Lethem\|2013\|p=14}}.Lethem saw Mailer “in the late fifties to have become a radar detector for the onset of . . . the post-modern cultural condition generally”		In a recent article, Alex Hicks has made a strong case that we should see Advertisements as Mailer’s Künstlerroman or artist-novel—similar in scope to Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and other examples. His the- sis is “that Advertisements for Myself is better appreciated as a novelistic au- tobiography than as an anthology-like collection of writings,” and he finds support for this view from Bloom, Frye, Jonathan Lethem and many others (Advertisements). The quotation from Lethem is particularly powerful, “Ad- vertisements for Myself is Mailer’s greatest book, simply because it frames the drama of the construction of this voice, the thrilling resurrection of his per- sonality as his greatest asset after the public pratfalls accompanying his sec- ond and third novels”{{sfn\|Lethem\|2013\|p=14}}.Lethem saw Mailer “in the late fifties to have become a radar detector for the onset of . . . the post-modern cultural condition generally”{{sfn\|Lethem\|2013\|p=13}} I find the arguments of both Hicks and Lethem cogent and persuasive, but I do wonder if elements of this artist-novel mode are not also found in Hemingway’s “Snows” and Fitzgerald’s “The Crack- Up”—albeit in a rudimentary form.

			I am also reminded of Burwell’s poignant description, quoted earlier, of the late Hemingway wrestling with the four narratives that he could not complete:
			{{quote\|In their totality, the four narratives record Hemingway’s fifteen- year search for a form and style that would express his reflexive vision of the artist. It is a search he had begun as early as the fall of  as he wrote in ‘The Snows of Kilimanjaro’ of a dying writer’s imaginative triumph over the distractions that have lim- ited his art. There is a discernible movement towards what we have come to call postmodern narrative in these works.{{son\|Burwell\|1996\|pp=1-2}}

JFordyce at 01:44, 1 March 2021

2021-03-01T01:44:46Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 21:44, 28 February 2021
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	{{quote\|Mailer’s writings explicitly state the terms of the modern revolt against conventional society. It is very different from past liter- ary rebellions: it begins in the instinctual life, and it is free both from established conventions and ideological complications. Sergius O’Shaugnessy, Mailer’s favorite hero, as a personality stands at the opposite pole from Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock. He acts independently of all the inhibitions which allowed Prufrock to postpone action; his major impulse is both to murder and to create, to express passion through instinctive acts. He is the “marginal ego,” the dislocated and “disaffiliated” self, who tries to make a way of life from the energy and strategy of pure re- bellion.{{sfn\|Hoffman\|p=12}}		{{quote\|Mailer’s writings explicitly state the terms of the modern revolt against conventional society. It is very different from past liter- ary rebellions: it begins in the instinctual life, and it is free both from established conventions and ideological complications. Sergius O’Shaugnessy, Mailer’s favorite hero, as a personality stands at the opposite pole from Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock. He acts independently of all the inhibitions which allowed Prufrock to postpone action; his major impulse is both to murder and to create, to express passion through instinctive acts. He is the “marginal ego,” the dislocated and “disaffiliated” self, who tries to make a way of life from the energy and strategy of pure re- bellion.{{sfn\|Hoffman\|p=12}} }}
	In a recent article, Alex Hicks has made a strong case that we should see Advertisements as Mailer’s Künstlerroman or artist-novel—similar in scope to Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and other examples. His the- sis is “that Advertisements for Myself is better appreciated as a novelistic au- tobiography than as an anthology-like collection of writings,” and he finds support for this view from Bloom, Frye, Jonathan Lethem and many others (Advertisements). The quotation from Lethem is particularly powerful, “Ad- vertisements for Myself is Mailer’s greatest book, simply because it frames the drama of the construction of this voice, the thrilling resurrection of his per- sonality as his greatest asset after the public pratfalls accompanying his sec- ond and third novels”{{sfn\|Lethem\|2013\|p=14}}.Lethem saw Mailer “in the late fifties to have become a radar detector for the onset of . . . the post-modern cultural condition generally”		In a recent article, Alex Hicks has made a strong case that we should see Advertisements as Mailer’s Künstlerroman or artist-novel—similar in scope to Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and other examples. His the- sis is “that Advertisements for Myself is better appreciated as a novelistic au- tobiography than as an anthology-like collection of writings,” and he finds support for this view from Bloom, Frye, Jonathan Lethem and many others (Advertisements). The quotation from Lethem is particularly powerful, “Ad- vertisements for Myself is Mailer’s greatest book, simply because it frames the drama of the construction of this voice, the thrilling resurrection of his per- sonality as his greatest asset after the public pratfalls accompanying his sec- ond and third novels”{{sfn\|Lethem\|2013\|p=14}}.Lethem saw Mailer “in the late fifties to have become a radar detector for the onset of . . . the post-modern cultural condition generally”

JFordyce at 01:44, 1 March 2021

2021-03-01T01:44:21Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 21:44, 28 February 2021
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	{{quote\|Mailer’s writings explicitly state the terms of the modern revolt against conventional society. It is very different from past liter- ary rebellions: it begins in the instinctual life, and it is free both from established conventions and ideological complications. Sergius O’Shaugnessy, Mailer’s favorite hero, as a personality stands at the opposite pole from Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock. He acts independently of all the inhibitions which allowed Prufrock to postpone action; his major impulse is both to murder and to create, to express passion through instinctive acts. He is the “marginal ego,” the dislocated and “disaffiliated” self, who tries to make a way of life from the energy and strategy of pure re- bellion.{{sfn\|Hoffman\|p=12}}		{{quote\|Mailer’s writings explicitly state the terms of the modern revolt against conventional society. It is very different from past liter- ary rebellions: it begins in the instinctual life, and it is free both from established conventions and ideological complications. Sergius O’Shaugnessy, Mailer’s favorite hero, as a personality stands at the opposite pole from Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock. He acts independently of all the inhibitions which allowed Prufrock to postpone action; his major impulse is both to murder and to create, to express passion through instinctive acts. He is the “marginal ego,” the dislocated and “disaffiliated” self, who tries to make a way of life from the energy and strategy of pure re- bellion.{{sfn\|Hoffman\|p=12}}
			In a recent article, Alex Hicks has made a strong case that we should see Advertisements as Mailer’s Künstlerroman or artist-novel—similar in scope to Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and other examples. His the- sis is “that Advertisements for Myself is better appreciated as a novelistic au- tobiography than as an anthology-like collection of writings,” and he finds support for this view from Bloom, Frye, Jonathan Lethem and many others (Advertisements). The quotation from Lethem is particularly powerful, “Ad- vertisements for Myself is Mailer’s greatest book, simply because it frames the drama of the construction of this voice, the thrilling resurrection of his per- sonality as his greatest asset after the public pratfalls accompanying his sec- ond and third novels”{{sfn\|Lethem\|2013\|p=14}}.Lethem saw Mailer “in the late fifties to have become a radar detector for the onset of . . . the post-modern cultural condition generally”