User:Sherrilledwards/sandbox: Difference between revisions

These vignettes, a quarter century apart, illustrate the Modernist rhetoric of Hemingway and Mailer. For both authors, they mark a beginning, a revelation, a new Genesis. One thing is clear: unlike the biblical Genesis, there is an absence of traditional concepts of God, a sense of Providence, a rational universe. We have ''left'' the Garden. Many have written on religious themes in Hemingway and in Mailer: certainly, the themes exist and can be discussed.{{efn|Recent articles include Buske,{{sfn|Buske|2002}} Stoneback,{{sfn|Stoneback|2003}} Lewis,{{sfn|Lewis|2004}} Stolzfus,{{sfn|Stolzfus|2005}} Adamowski,{{sfn|Adamowski|2005}} Kroupi,{{sfn|Kroupi|2008}} Bernstein,{{sfn|Bernstein|2008}} Cappell,{{sfn|Cappell|2008}}, Sipioria,{{sfn|Sipiora|2008}} and Whalen-Bridge and Oon.{{sfn|Whalen-Bridge and Oon|2009}}}} But I would like to examine the overall ''matrix'' of Modernity in which those themes are embedded, focusing on the ''disenchantment'' of the world.

=== Modernity and Disenchantment ===

Hemingway did struggle against nihilism, at times teetering on the edge of chaos. Of his writing, Ihab Hassan says, “literary statement approaches{{pg|340|341}} the edge; language implies the abolition of statement."{{sfn|Hassan|1987|p=299}} Yet, Hemingway also redefines the ''sacred,'' reformulating ''grace'' beyond the borders of organized religion. Without ceasing to be a modernist, he is also deeply rooted, as Stoneback claims, “in the incarnational paradigms of Catholic Christianity.”{{sfn|Stoneback|2003|p=50}} Like Kierkegaard, his God-language is covert and subtle; but it does exist.{{efn|“It was long believed in many quarters that Hemingway’s early Protestantism made him a “nominal” Catholic, pressured by Pauline into joining the Church. The opposite may be true: his early experiences led him to embrace Catholicism. He had found his father’s faith cold and unsatisfying; he had known his grandfather’s belief in a God of warmth and trust and now sought it for himself.”{{sfn|Buske|2002|p=85}}}}

=== God-Language in Mailer: Protagonist in the Cosmic Struggle ===

''Harlot’s Ghost''{{sfn|Mailer|1991}} has myriad themes: betrayals ideological and sexual, haunting of sons by fathers, the “compartmentalization of the heart.”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=13}} Using the CIA as a ''synecdoche'' for a world of modernity, Mailer shows the boundary between fiction and non-fiction to be extraordinarily indeterminate. That indeterminacy applies to language but also to the ''realpolitic'' world of intelligence. But perhaps the most fascinating example of God-language appears in the last few pages of ''Harlot’s Ghost.'' It comes from Hugh Montague, codename “Harlot”—a mysterious protagonist loosely based on a real person, the enigmatic onetime poet and chief of CIA Counter-intelligence, James Jesus Angleton (1917–1987).{{efn|There is no consensus on Angleton. Was he the greatest practitioner of counter-intelligence, or, like Kim Philby in British Intelligence, was he a Russian mole? Mailer describes him as “a most complex and convoluted gentleman."{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=1132}}}} Harlot speculates that the whole cosmos revealed in modernity fossils, evolution, solar system—to be God’s “‘majestic cover story,’”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=1280}} an exercise in ''disinformation'' and misdirection from the Lord of Spies, Jehovah.

Mailer presents an astonishing degree of humor, irony, and ambiguity, worthy of Nabokov. Can we take Harlot’s speculation seriously? Mailer provides a complex play of ''metaphor, metonymy,'' and ''metaphysics'' in three arenas—character and plot in the modern novel; theology and cosmology in the universe; and the quest for meaning among the contingencies of life.

Sixteen years later, Mailer returns to these themes in his final book, ''On God.''{{sfn|Mailer|2007}} There, among other topics, he discusses modern science, fundamentalism, and intelligent design, bringing insight into the nature of plot in the novels of Henry James, Hemingway, James Joyce, and others.{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=143-161}} He suggests, for example, that James and Hemingway were “avatars of Intelligent Design”{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=150}} whereas Joyce “plays at the very edge of chaos."{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=151}} It is no coincidence that Mailer moves smoothly between God-language and an analysis of plot in the modern novel—for two reasons.

=== Notes ===

* {{cite book |last=Baker |first=Carlos  |date=1972 |title=Hemingway: The Writer as Artist |location=4th ed. Princeton |publisher= Princeton University Press |ref=harv }}

* {{cite book |last=Berger |first=Peter L.  |date=1969 |title=A Rumor of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural |location=Garden City |publisher= Doubleday |ref=harv }}

* {{cite book |last=Lucáks |first=George |date=1971 |title=The Theory of the Novel: A Historico-Philosophical Essay on the Forms of Great Literature|location=Trans. Anna Bostock. Cambridge |publisher=MIT Press |pages= |ref=harv }}

* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1|date=1948 |title=The Naked and the Dead |location=New York |publisher=Rinehart and Co. |ref=harv }}