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{{Byline|last=Sanders|first=J’aimé L. |abstract=An exploration of Hemingway’s influence on Mailer’s existentialism and his philosophy of art, focusing on the aspects of their commensurate interest in the violent and disturbing as it relates to their philosophies of writing and art, and reveals how both writers put their existentially founded philosophies in motion in order to teach readers how to live in the highly modern and post-modernized consumer culture both authors question and reject throughout their canon of works. |url=http://prmlr.us/mr04san}}


{{Byline|last=Sanders|first=J’aimé L.|}}
{{dc|dc=I|n a 1964 interview published in ''The Paris Review''}}, Norman Mailer cites the authors he has been influenced most by as James Farrell, F. Scott Fitzgerald, E.M. Forster, John Dos Passos, John Steinbeck, Thomas Wolfe, and, of course, Ernest Hemingway (43). Significantly, almost twenty years later, Mailer admits in a 1982 interview for The New York Times that his “ambition” as a writer is no longer to “try to reach Americans with a book the way Hemingway could reach them with a book, because I believe that’s beyond my powers”; “Hemingway’s style” he says, “affected whole generations of us. . . . I don’t have that kind of talent” (3). In these interviews Mailer does not elaborate on how Hemingway’s style and technique “affected whole generations” of writers or his own art, yet a closer look at Mailer’s philosophy of writing and his self-proclaimed American brand of existentialism reveals that Hemingway’s influence on Mailer’s art reaches far beyond the realm of style and technique. In fact, just as Hemingway’s philosophy of writing and art correlates to what has been labeled as Hemingway’s own, self-developed “characteristic philosophy” of life, Mailer’s philosophy of writing and his self-created brand of existentialism are also inevitably intertwined (de Madariaga 18). Yet in order to fully understand the depths and dimensions of Hemingway’s influence on Mailer’s art and thought, it is essential to first examine what founds each author’s philosophy of writing and artistic goals, then examine how they put their philosophy in motion in the form of literary art.{{pg|351|352}}
 
{{dc|dc=I|N A 1964 INTERVIEW PUBLISHED IN THE PARIS REVIEW—}}, Norman Mailer cites the authors he has been influenced most by as James Farrell, F. Scott Fitzgerald, E.M. Forster, John Dos Passos, John Steinbeck, Thomas Wolfe, and, of course, Ernest Hemingway (43). Significantly, almost twenty years later, Mailer admits in a 1982 interview for The New York Times that his “ambition” as a writer is no longer to“try to reach Americans with a book the way Hemingway could reach them with a book, because I believe that’s beyond my powers”; “Hemingway’s style” he says, “affected whole generations of us. . . . I don’t have that kind of talent” (3). In these interviews Mailer does not elaborate on how Hemingway’s style and technique“affected whole generations” of writers or his own art, yet a closer look at Mailer’s philosophy of writing and his self-proclaimed American brand of existentialism reveals that Hemingway’s influence on Mailer’s art reaches far beyond the realm of style and technique. In fact, just as Hemingway’s philosophy of writing and art correlates to what has been labeled as Hemingway’s own, self-developed “characteristic philosophy” of life, Mailer’s philosophy of writing and his self-created brand of existentialism are also inevitably intertwined (de Madariaga 18). Yet in order to fully understand the depths and dimensions of Hemingway’s influence on Mailer’s art and thought, it is essential to first examine what founds each author’s philosophy of writing and artistic goals, then examine how they put their philosophy in motion in the form of literary art.


===='''HONEST, TRUE AND PURE: HEMINGWAY AND MAILER’S ART OF WRITING'''====  
===='''HONEST, TRUE AND PURE: HEMINGWAY AND MAILER’S ART OF WRITING'''====  
At their core, the art of writing both Hemingway and Mailer espouse is founded in their aspirations to, as Hemingway puts it, “tell honestly the things I have found true”(Death 1).Echoing Hemingway’s standards,Mailer believes a writer must write“to the limit of one’s honesty”(“Hazards” 399). But what exactly does this mean? Consider Hemingway’s advice to friend and contemporary writer John Dos Passos in a March  letter. Hemingway writes,“Keep them people, people, people, and don’t let them get to be symbols . . . Keep on showing it as it is. If you can show it as it really is you will do good” (). According to Hemingway’s standards, good writing is achieved by writing honestly and thus capturing life “as it really is” (). Mailer expresses a similar standard for good writing: “It proves amazing,”
At their core, the art of writing both Hemingway and Mailer espouse is founded in their aspirations to, as Hemingway puts it, “tell honestly the things I have found true.”(Death 1) Echoing Hemingway’s standards, Mailer believes a writer must write “to the limit of one’s honesty.”(“Hazards” 399) But what exactly does this mean? Consider Hemingway’s advice to friend and contemporary writer John Dos Passos in a March 1932 letter. Hemingway writes, “Keep them people, people, people, and don’t let them get to be symbols . . . Keep on showing it as it is. If you can show it as it really is you will do good.” (354) According to Hemingway’s standards, good writing is achieved by writing honestly and thus capturing life “as it really is.” (354) Mailer expresses a similar standard for good writing: “It proves amazing,”
Mailer writes,
Mailer writes,
how many evil reviews one can digest if there is a confidence that one has done one’s best on a book, written to the limit of one’s honesty, even scraped off a little of one’s dishonesty. Get to that point of purity and your royalties may be injured by a small welcome, but not your working morale. (“Hazards” )
 
If one achieves this level of honesty Mailer refers to,this“point of purity,”the author succeeds in showing life“as it really is”(“Letter to John”). Significantly, Hemingway also addresses this idea of honest writing reaching a “point of purity”when he defines what he calls“the real thing”in the opening pages of Death in the Afternoon (). Hemingway writes,
{{quote|how many evil reviews one can digest if there is a confidence that one has done one’s best on a book, written to the limit of one’s honesty, even scraped off a little of one’s dishonesty. Get to that point of purity and your royalties may be injured by a small welcome, but not your working morale. (“Hazards” 399)}}
In writing for a newspaper you told what happened and, with one trick and another,you communicated the emotion aided by the element of timeliness which gives a certain emotion to any account of something that has happened on that day; but the real thing,the sequence of motion and fact which made the emotion and which would be as valid in a year or ten years or, with luck and if you stated it purely enough, always, was beyond me and I was working very hard to try to get it. ()
 
Hemingway makes an important distinction between his journalism and his art and suggests that if a writer-artist depicts life honestly, states it “purely enough,”captures the“motion and fact”of life as it really happens,then honest, real, universal, and enduring emotions and experience will be conveyed to the reader (). Yet, for both Mailer and Hemingway, honest writing not only provides the foundation for good writing, but founds the morality of their philosophy of art, a sentiment reflected in Mailer’s statement that“we might quit [this discussion on writing] with the agreeable moral instruction that one must do one’s best to be honest” (“Hazards” ). Similarly, Hemingway tell readers in the opening pages of Death in the Afternoon that although they must create their own standards—ranging from moral to artistic—he strives in his writing “only to tell honestly those things I have found true about it”—it referring to the Spanish bullfight and,correlatively, art and writing,life and death,and the violence,brutality,and cruelty of the bullfight and life ().
If one achieves this level of honesty Mailer refers to, this “point of purity,” the author succeeds in showing life “as it really is.”(“Letter to John” 354) Significantly, Hemingway also addresses this idea of honest writing reaching a “point of purity” when he defines what he calls “the real thing”in the opening pages of ''Death in the Afternoon''. (2) Hemingway writes,
Honest writing is the foundation for good writing by Hemingway and Mailer standards,yet both authors have been accused by critics of being obsessed with death, violence, and the darker aspects of life. Hemingway answers: in order to write honestly and convey life “as it really is”
 
You can’t do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful. Because if it is all beautiful you can’t believe in it. Things aren’t that way. It is only by showing both sides—  dimensions and if possible that you can write the way I want to. (qtd. in Baker )
{{quote|In writing for a newspaper you told what happened and, with one trick and another,you communicated the emotion aided by the element of timeliness which gives a certain emotion to any account of something that has happened on that day; but the real thing,the sequence of motion and fact which made the emotion and which would be as valid in a year or ten years or, with luck and if you stated it purely enough, always, was beyond me and I was working very hard to try to get it. (2)}}
The way he wants to write? Hemingway explains this directly in the following description of his goals as a writer:“I’m trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across—not to just depict life—or criticize it—but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me you actually experience the thing” (qtd. in Baker ). Similarly, Mailer defends his focus on “the bad and the ugly” in his writing as bound to his purpose and goals as an artist. Mailer writes,
 
I suppose that the virtue I should like most to achieve as a writer is to be genuinely disturbing and by this I mean no easy reliance upon material which is shocking or brutal in itself,but rather effects which come from being truly radical,from going to the root of what is written about, so that life—which I believe is always disturbing if it is indeed seen—may serve as a gadfly to complacency, institution, and the dead weight of public taste. (qtd. in Foster )
Hemingway makes an important distinction between his journalism and his art and suggests that if a writer-artist depicts life honestly, states it “purely{{pg|352|353}}
Mailer’s admission that he tries to capture the“disturbing”by“going to the root of what is written about”and capturing life“as it really is”(Hemingway, “Letter to John”)—which“is always disturbing if it is indeed seen”—not only echoes Hemingway’s philosophy of portraying“the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful”(qtd. in Baker ), but Mailer’s focus on broadening readers’perceptions through art also recalls Hemingway’s focus on teaching his readers how to see the “danger,” “cruelty,” and the emotional experience of “life and death”in the bullfight as mere“parts”of the“whole” of the art of Spanish bullfighting (Hemingway, Death –). For both Hemingway and Mailer, writing honestly not only assists in the creation of the emotional experience the writer hopes to capture or convey in his/her writing, honest writing can also alter readers’ perceptions, “serve as a gadfly to complacency, institution, and . . . public taste,” and thus bring readers to a heightened awareness of self and world (qtd. in Foster ). Here we find what is at the core of Mailer and Hemingway’s artistic purposes: to shake us, wake us up, make us think, and make us change.
 
According to both Hemingway and Mailer, their focus on the disturbing aspects of life—including war, death, violence, murder, suicide, and animalistic brutality—stands at the core of both authors’philosophies of writing and of their artistic goals as writers. They strive to shake readers out of their normal ways of seeing, feeling, thinking, and being. In fact, they strive to get to the core, “the root,”“the purity,”“the real thing,” and present the “disturbing” (qtd. in Foster) and real in order to capture the “motion and fact”(Hemingway, Death ) that creates the emotion, bring readers to experience the thing for themselves,and thus bring readers to see life,themselves, and their worlds more “clearly” and as a “whole” (–).
enough,” captures the “motion and fact” of life as it really happens, then honest, real, universal, and enduring emotions and experience will be conveyed to the reader. (2) Yet, for both Mailer and Hemingway, honest writing not only provides the foundation for good writing, but founds the morality of their philosophy of art, a sentiment reflected in Mailer’s statement that “we might quit [this discussion on writing] with the agreeable moral instruction that one must do one’s best to be honest.” (“Hazards” 399) Similarly, Hemingway tell readers in the opening pages of ''Death in the Afternoon'' that although they must create their own standards—ranging from moral to artistic—he strives in his writing “only to tell honestly those things I have found true about it”—it referring to the Spanish bullfight and, correlatively, art and writing, life and death, and the violence, brutality, and cruelty of the bullfight and life. (2)
Writers, as Hemingway and Mailer suggest, have a responsibility to their art, their“working morale,”and their readers to try to get to the core of experience and show readers how to see self, world, life, and even art more clearly, honestly, and truly—without illusions (Mailer, “Hazards” ). In fact,in the opening pages of Death in the Afternoon,Hemingway urges readers to rely on their own “experience and observation,” to “only feel those things they actually feel and not the things they think they should feel” (, ), to feel “what you really felt, rather than what you were supposed to feel, and had been taught to feel” (), to create their own standards—both moral and aesthetic—and come to see the bullfight (and correlatively life, death, and art) more“clearly”and as a“whole”(, –). Significantly, Hemingway’s focus on the writer’s purpose as clarifying Americans’vision of self and world is Mailer’s stated artistic purpose as well.In Cannibals and Christians, Mailer succinctly states this Hemingwayesque philosophy in his claim that the highest purpose of literature is“to clarify a nation’s vision of itself” (). Mailer writes,
 
It is, I believe, the highest function a writer may serve, to see life (no matter by what means or form or experiment) as others do not see it, or only partially see it, and therefore open for the reader that literary experience which comes uniquely from the novel—the sense of having one’s perceptions deepened, and one’s illusions about oneself rendered even more untenable. For me, this is the highest function of art, precisely that it is disturbing, that it does not let man rest,and therefore forces him so far as art may force anything to enlarge the horizons of his life. (qtd. in Foster )
Honest writing is the foundation for good writing by Hemingway and Mailer standards, yet both authors have been accused by critics of being obsessed with death, violence, and the darker aspects of life. Hemingway answers: in order to write honestly and convey life “as it really is”
Both Hemingway and Mailer’s goal of clarifying “a nation’s vision of itself” is consciously focused on capturing and conveying real emotion and experience that shakes readers out of their normal ways of thinking and being. This, according to Hemingway and Mailer, opens readers to differing perspectives, forces them to be honest with themselves,and helps them to break all illusions of self and world (Mailer, Cannibals ). Yet this philosophy of writing in which the author takes responsibility for enlarging readers’“horizons” through presenting life honestly,“as it really is” (Hemingway,“Letter to John”), is not exclusively bound to Hemingway or Mailer’s own, selfdeveloped philosophy of writing and art.
 
Hemingway and Mailer’s philosophy of writing and their artistic striving to make, as Mailer puts it,“a revolution in the consciousness of our time,”is founded in existential notions of creating art and becoming an artist (Advertisements ). For existentialists, to become an artist, an individual must break through all illusions,see self and world more clearly,get to the core or “root” of life, and thus see life “as it really is” (Hemingway,“Letter to John” ).The catalyst for this perceptual shift,according to existentialists,is profound emotional experience. Specifically, the existentialists’ study of the intense emotional experience that accompanies facing death, an experience that shakes individuals out of their normal ways of being, seeing, feeling, and thinking, is an essential part of their philosophy of creating art and becoming an artist.
{{quote|You can’t do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful. Because if it is all beautiful you can’t believe in it. Things aren’t that way. It is only by showing both sides—3 dimensions and if possible 4 that you can write the way I want to. (qtd. in Baker 135)}}
According to the existentialists, it is through the study of death that individuals recognize the importance of seeing life “clearly” and as a “whole” (Hemingway, Death , ) and come to understand the urgent necessity, as Hemingway puts it,of making“something of his own,”of creating“art”and becoming “artist” () or “author” of one’s own life, meaning, structure, content, and commitments (Yalom –). The study of death reveals to individuals, according to existential scholar Charles Guignon, the importance of seeing their lives as a “whole” (Hemingway, Death ) and the importance of“creating their lives as‘works of art’”(Guignon xxxv).Significantly, the profound emotional experience that brings individuals to see their lives as a “whole” is bound to the realization that the structure of human nature is a synthesis between the temporal and the eternal—what Hemingway refers to as “the feeling of life and death and mortality and immortality” (Hemingway, Death )—in which the individual moments of one’s life (the temporal or parts) require an overarching unity or meaning (the eternal or whole) to give authentic meaning to one’s life and/or work ().It is through facing up to one’s own certain death—and the uncertain hour and day of one’s death—that the individual comes to the realization that he/she is responsible for creating his/her life and work as art by expressing the eternal in his/her nature, something Hemingway envisions as the enduring emotional experience of the bullfight, something he strives to convey through his writing and an essential aspect of his existential-oriented philosophy of creating art.This existential focus on the study of death,the realization of the temporal and eternal nature of human existence, and the profound emotional experiences that bring individuals to the realization that they must express the eternal in their nature form the basis of both Hemingway and Mailer’s philosophy of writing and their goals as writer-artists.
 
HEMINGWAY AND MAILER: THE ART OF WRITING EXISTENTIALLY
The way he wants to write? Hemingway explains this directly in the following description of his goals as a writer: “I’m trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across—not to just depict life—or criticize it—but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me you actually experience the thing.” (qtd. in Baker 153) Similarly, Mailer defends his focus on “the bad and the ugly” in his writing as bound to his purpose and goals as an artist. Mailer writes,
 
{{quote|I suppose that the virtue I should like most to achieve as a writer is to be genuinely disturbing and by this I mean no easy reliance upon material which is shocking or brutal in itself, but rather effects which come from being truly radical, from going to the root of what is written about, so that life—which I believe is always}}{{pg|353|354}}
 
{{quote|disturbing if it is indeed seen—may serve as a gadfly to complacency, institution, and the dead weight of public taste. (qtd. in Foster 40)}}
 
Mailer’s admission that he tries to capture the “disturbing” by “going to the root of what is written about” and capturing life “as it really is”(Hemingway, “Letter to John” 354)—which “is always disturbing if it is indeed seen”—not only echoes Hemingway’s philosophy of portraying“the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful”(qtd. in Baker 153), but Mailer’s focus on broadening readers’ perceptions through art also recalls Hemingway’s focus on teaching his readers how to see the “danger,” “cruelty,” and the emotional experience of “life and death”in the bullfight as mere“parts”of the“whole” of the art of Spanish bullfighting (Hemingway, Death 2–9). For both Hemingway and Mailer, writing honestly not only assists in the creation of the emotional experience the writer hopes to capture or convey in his/her writing, honest writing can also alter readers’ perceptions, “serve as a gadfly to complacency, institution, and . . . public taste,” and thus bring readers to a heightened awareness of self and world (qtd. in Foster 40). Here we find what is at the core of Mailer and Hemingway’s artistic purposes: to shake us, wake us up, make us think, and make us change.
 
According to both Hemingway and Mailer, their focus on the disturbing aspects of life—including war, death, violence, murder, suicide, and animalistic brutality—stands at the core of both authors’ philosophies of writing and of their artistic goals as writers. They strive to shake readers out of their normal ways of seeing, feeling, thinking, and being. In fact, they strive to get to the core, “the root,” “the purity,” “the real thing,” and present the “disturbing” (qtd. in Foster) and real in order to capture the “motion and fact”(Hemingway, ''Death'' 2) that creates the emotion, bring readers to experience the thing for themselves, and thus bring readers to see life, themselves, and their worlds more “clearly” and as a “whole” (8–9).
 
Writers, as Hemingway and Mailer suggest, have a responsibility to their art, their“working morale,”and their readers to try to get to the core of experience and show readers how to see self, world, life, and even art more clearly, honestly, and truly—without illusions (Mailer, “Hazards” 399). In fact, in the opening pages of ''Death in the Afternoon'', Hemingway urges readers to rely on their own “experience and observation,” to “only feel those things they actually feel and not the things they think they should feel” (5, 10), to feel “what you really felt, rather than what you were supposed to feel, and had been taught to feel” (2), to create their own standards—both moral and aesthetic—and come to see the bullfight (and correlatively life, death, and art) more “clearly” and as a “whole”(4, 8–9). Significantly, Hemingway’s focus on the writer’s purpose as clarifying Americans’ vision of self and world is Mailer’s stated artistic purpose as well.In ''Cannibals and Christians'', Mailer succinctly states this Hemingwayesque philosophy in his claim that the highest purpose of literature is“to clarify a nation’s vision of itself” (98). Mailer writes,
{{quote|It is, I believe, the highest function a writer may serve, to see life (no matter by what means or form or experiment) as others do not see it, or only partially see it, and therefore open for the reader that literary experience which comes uniquely from the novel—the sense of having one’s perceptions deepened, and one’s illusions about oneself rendered even more untenable. For me, this is the highest function of art, precisely that it is disturbing, that it does not let man rest,and therefore forces him so far as art may force anything to enlarge the horizons of his life. (qtd. in Foster 40)}}
Both Hemingway and Mailer’s goal of clarifying “a nation’s vision of itself” is consciously focused on capturing and conveying real emotion and experience that shakes readers out of their normal ways of thinking and being. This, according to Hemingway and Mailer, opens readers to differing perspectives, forces them to be honest with themselves,and helps them to break all illusions of self and world (Mailer, ''Cannibals'' 98). Yet this philosophy of writing in which the author takes responsibility for enlarging readers’“horizons” through presenting life honestly,“as it really is” (Hemingway, “Letter to John” 354), is not exclusively bound to Hemingway or Mailer’s own, self-developed philosophy of writing and art.
 
Hemingway and Mailer’s philosophy of writing and their artistic striving to make, as Mailer puts it,“a revolution in the consciousness of our time,”is founded in existential notions of creating art and becoming an artist (''Advertisements'' 17). For existentialists, to become an artist, an individual must break through all illusions, see self and world more clearly, get to the core or “root” of life, and thus see life “as it really is” (Hemingway, “Letter to John” 354).The catalyst for this perceptual shift, according to existentialists, is profound emotional experience. Specifically, the existentialists’ study of the intense emotional experience that accompanies facing death, an experience that shakes individuals out of their normal ways of being, seeing, feeling, and thinking, is an essential part of their philosophy of creating art and becoming an artist.
According to the existentialists, it is through the study of death that individuals recognize the importance of seeing life “clearly” and as a “whole” (Hemingway, ''Death'' 2, 9) and come to understand the urgent necessity, as Hemingway puts it, of making “something of his own,” of creating “art” and becoming “artist” (100) or “author” of one’s own life, meaning, structure, content, and commitments (Yalom 8–9). The study of death reveals to individuals, according to existential scholar Charles Guignon, the importance of seeing their lives as a “whole” (Hemingway, Death 278) and the importance of“creating their lives as ‘works of art’”(Guignon xxxv).Significantly, the profound emotional experience that brings individuals to see their lives as a “whole” is bound to the realization that the structure of human nature is a synthesis between the temporal and the eternal—what Hemingway refers to as “the feeling of life and death and mortality and immortality” (Hemingway, ''Death'' 3)—in which the individual moments of one’s life (the temporal or parts) require an overarching unity or meaning (the eternal or whole) to give authentic meaning to one’s life and/or work (63).It is through facing up to one’s own certain death—and the uncertain hour and day of one’s death—that the individual comes to the realization that he/she is responsible for creating his/her life and work as art by expressing the eternal in his/her nature, something Hemingway envisions as the enduring emotional experience of the bullfight, something he strives to convey through his writing and an essential aspect of his existential-oriented philosophy of creating art. This existential focus on the study of death, the realization of the temporal and eternal nature of human existence, and the profound emotional experiences that bring individuals to the realization that they must express the eternal in their nature form the basis of both Hemingway and Mailer’s philosophy of writing and their goals as writer-artists.
 
===='''HEMINGWAY AND MAILER: THE ART OF WRITING EXISTENTIALLY'''====
 
Where Hemingway seeks to express the eternal through his art by capturing
Where Hemingway seeks to express the eternal through his art by capturing
“the real thing, the sequence of motion and fact which made the emotion and which would be valid . . . if you stated it purely enough, always”(Death ),Mailer envisions as“the existential state,of the novel writer”in which the writer-artist strives to capture and convey enduring emotion and experience and is constantly faced with the death of his art (“Hazards”).Whether it is the death of the writer’s abilities, the death of his art via his critics, or the actual “existential state” the writer-artist must enter to capture and convey the eternal through his/her art, for Mailer, and as we can see in Death in the Afternoon, for Hemingway, the professional writer-artist, like Hemingway’s matador, must face up to his/her own death—albeit existential death—on a daily basis in order to create art.
“the real thing, the sequence of motion and fact which made the emotion and which would be valid . . . if you stated it purely enough, always” (''Death'' 2), Mailer envisions as “the existential state, of the novel writer” in which the writer-artist strives to capture and convey enduring emotion and experience and is constantly faced with the death of his art (“Hazards” 393). Whether it is the death of the writer’s abilities, the death of his art via his critics, or the actual “existential state” the writer-artist must enter to capture and convey the eternal through his/her art, for Mailer, and as we can see in Death in the Afternoon, for Hemingway, the professional writer-artist, like Hemingway’s matador, must face up to his/her own death—albeit existential death—on a daily basis in order to create art.
As both Hemingway and Mailer directly and indirectly tell their readers, their philosophy of writing is an existential one; it is a philosophy of art in which the writer-artist strives to write honestly and show life“as it really is” by presenting the“genuinely disturbing”and“the bad and ugly”in order to express eternal, enduring human emotion and experience through their art (“Letter to John”; qtd.in Foster ; qtd.in Baker ).If they write“purely enough”(Hemingway, Death ), according to Hemingway and Mailer, what they present in their art will be felt by readers—and correlatively their fellow writers and artists—and bring them to the realization that they, too, must take responsibility for what their lives and their work or “art” are adding up to.Importantly,imbedded in both authors’philosophy of writing is a social-mindedness and a focus on individual responsibility not normally attributed to these writers. But both Hemingway and Mailer do present a philosophy of writing and a philosophy of life through which they attempt to teach readers to learn “how to live in it”—in the increasingly modernized, post-war culture that favors conformity over individual expression and thwarts the development of the creative spirit—by presenting an art of living for their times (Hemingway, Sun ).
As both Hemingway and Mailer directly and indirectly tell their readers, their philosophy of writing is an existential one; it is a philosophy of art in which the writer-artist strives to write honestly and show life“as it really is” by presenting the “genuinely disturbing”and “the bad and ugly” in order to express eternal, enduring human emotion and experience through their art (“Letter to John” 354; qtd. in Foster 40; qtd. in Baker 153). If they write “purely enough”(Hemingway, ''Death'' 2), according to Hemingway and Mailer, what they present in their art will be felt by readers—and correlatively their fellow writers and artists—and bring them to the realization that they, too, must take responsibility for what their lives and their work or “art” are adding up to. Importantly, imbedded in both authors’ philosophy of writing is a social-mindedness and a focus on individual responsibility not normally attributed to these writers. But both Hemingway and Mailer do present a philosophy of writing and a philosophy of life through which they attempt to teach readers to learn “how to live in it”—in the increasingly modernized, post-war culture that favors conformity over individual expression and thwarts the development of the creative spirit—by presenting an art of living for their times (Hemingway, ''Sun'' 152).
Considering Hemingway and Mailer’s didactic focus on clarifying Americans’ visions of themselves and their aspirations to make“a revolution in the consciousness” of their times, it is not surprising that both authors were often disappointed when critics accused them of being morbidly obsessed with death and of endorsing violence through their works (qtd. in Glenday ).“Hemingway,” according to Carlos Baker,“was dismayed that many reviewers found Death in the Afternoon marred by a morbid ‘preoccupation with fatality’ and a tendency to ‘he-manish posturing’” (). Mailer was frustrated by critics of An American Dream, who accused him of being “no more than an American pornographer, socially irresponsible, and acutely immoral”(Wenke ).What these critics miss is that it is this death-obsessed view that founds their philosophies of writing and life and their aspirations as existentialist artists. The artist, in Hemingway and Mailer’s view, must strive to convey real, disturbing emotions and experiences in order to shake readers out of their everyday ways of being.Like the existentialists who“rose in revulsion against the corruption of values in capitalist society”and whose “basic conviction was that the evils it perceived were to be ascribed to the very concept and existence of society,” Hemingway and Mailer expose the inadequacy of American capitalism in an increasingly commercial and consumer culture and reject the capitalistic values, identities, and norms prescribed by and reinforced through the increasingly oppressive social and political structures of American culture (Finkelstein –).Therefore,both Hemingway and Mailer’s choice of “disturbing” and “ugly” subjects taken alongside their existential-oriented philosophy of writing and art not only points to these authors’ intense concern for how war, death, and violence have changed the face and heart of their native nation, but reveals a socialmindedness often overlooked in their art (qtd. in Foster ; qtd. in Baker
Considering Hemingway and Mailer’s didactic focus on clarifying Americans’ visions of themselves and their aspirations to make“a revolution in the consciousness” of their times, it is not surprising that both authors were often disappointed when critics accused them of being morbidly obsessed with death and of endorsing violence through their works (qtd. in Glenday 86). “Hemingway,” according to Carlos Baker,“was dismayed that many reviewers found ''Death in the Afternoon'' marred by a morbid ‘preoccupation with fatality’ and a tendency to ‘he-manish posturing’” (243). Mailer was frustrated by critics of ''An American Dream'', who accused him of being “no more than an American pornographer, socially irresponsible, and acutely immoral”(Wenke 98).What these critics miss is that it is this death-obsessed view that founds their philosophies of writing and life and their aspirations as existentialist artists. The artist, in Hemingway and Mailer’s view, must strive to convey real, disturbing emotions and experiences in order to shake readers out of their everyday ways of being.Like the existentialists who“rose in revulsion against the corruption of values in capitalist society”and whose “basic conviction was that the evils it perceived were to be ascribed to the very concept and existence of society,” Hemingway and Mailer expose the inadequacy of American capitalism in an increasingly commercial and consumer culture and reject the capitalistic values, identities, and norms prescribed by and reinforced through the increasingly oppressive social and political structures of American culture (Finkelstein –).Therefore,both Hemingway and Mailer’s choice of “disturbing” and “ugly” subjects taken alongside their existential-oriented philosophy of writing and art not only points to these authors’ intense concern for how war, death, and violence have changed the face and heart of their native nation, but reveals a socialmindedness often overlooked in their art (qtd. in Foster ; qtd. in Baker
).
).
To this day critics still denounce Hemingway and Mailer’s choice of subjects—war, murder, rape, violence, madness, suicide, and senseless brutality—when, in fact, their choice of these subjects is consistent with existential philosophy of art and the concerns of the existential artist.In short, what Hemingway and Mailer’s philosophy of writing reveals is that they are intensely concerned with the direction our increasingly conformist and inauthentic American culture is headed: towards the death of the individual, the death of individualism,and the death of the vitality of the creative spirit (Adams ). Their philosophies focus on how to combat the feelings and forces that oppress the individual psyche and thwart individual growth and development. They show and tell readers to break from all illusions of self and world—they try to “clarify” our vision—and show us that we must refuse to be complicit.What they present is an art of writing that is also an art of living for their times, one in which the individual or artist must take responsibility first for what his/her life or art is adding up to, and then for what his/her culture is and is becoming. Nowhere is this more evident than in Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon and Mailer’s An American Dream, works a handful of critics—including Lawrence Broer, John Killinger, Kurt Muller, Michael Reynolds, Laura Adams, Michael Glenday and Richard Poirier—argue represent a shift in each author’s art and reflect the creation of their own,self-developed philosophies of life and death,philosophies that they will carry with them throughout the rest of their lives. These works, taken together, provide a key to the depth of Hemingway’s influence on Mailer’s art and thought.Throughout An American Dream Mailer subtly references and invokes Hemingway, the man, Hemingway’s characters, and espouses what is at the core of the philosophy of life,death and art Hemingway focuses on throughout his manifesto on bullfight, art and writing, Death in the Afternoon.
To this day critics still denounce Hemingway and Mailer’s choice of subjects—war, murder, rape, violence, madness, suicide, and senseless brutality—when, in fact, their choice of these subjects is consistent with existential philosophy of art and the concerns of the existential artist.In short, what Hemingway and Mailer’s philosophy of writing reveals is that they are intensely concerned with the direction our increasingly conformist and inauthentic American culture is headed: towards the death of the individual, the death of individualism,and the death of the vitality of the creative spirit (Adams ). Their philosophies focus on how to combat the feelings and forces that oppress the individual psyche and thwart individual growth and development. They show and tell readers to break from all illusions of self and world—they try to “clarify” our vision—and show us that we must refuse to be complicit.What they present is an art of writing that is also an art of living for their times, one in which the individual or artist must take responsibility first for what his/her life or art is adding up to, and then for what his/her culture is and is becoming. Nowhere is this more evident than in Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon and Mailer’s An American Dream, works a handful of critics—including Lawrence Broer, John Killinger, Kurt Muller, Michael Reynolds, Laura Adams, Michael Glenday and Richard Poirier—argue represent a shift in each author’s art and reflect the creation of their own,self-developed philosophies of life and death,philosophies that they will carry with them throughout the rest of their lives. These works, taken together, provide a key to the depth of Hemingway’s influence on Mailer’s art and thought.Throughout An American Dream Mailer subtly references and invokes Hemingway, the man, Hemingway’s characters, and espouses what is at the core of the philosophy of life,death and art Hemingway focuses on throughout his manifesto on bullfight, art and writing, Death in the Afternoon.
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