The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Authorship and Alienation in Death in the Afternoon and Advertisements for Myself: Difference between revisions
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{{dc|dc=A|uthorship and Alienation in Depth in the Afternoon and Advertisements for Myself”}} | {{dc|dc=A|uthorship and Alienation in Depth in the Afternoon and Advertisements for Myself”}} | ||
''In 1930, still smarting from compromises required of him by the publishing industry, Ernest Hemingway received a letter from an editor and puller the "emergency stop" cord on the speeding train of his career. Crumpling the letter in his fist, he stepped out of the car and onto the platform of non-fiction; he stood there, in this empty page of a place, his eyes focused in the distance as though there he saw the | ''In 1930, still smarting from compromises required of him by the publishing industry, Ernest Hemingway received a letter from an editor and puller the "emergency stop" cord on the speeding train of his career. Crumpling the letter in his fist, he stepped out of the car and onto the platform of non-fiction; he stood there, in this empty page of a place, his eyes focused in the distance as though there he saw the Spanish bullfights he had long wanted to capture in words. But a shadow passed between his eyes and his object - a Hemingway-shaped shadow, both him and not him, though which he could not see clearly.'' | ||
''He admitted the shadow to his work, naming it "Author," as if a separate identity might contain and isolate it, trying to preserve the kind of clarity on which he had earned his reputation as a writer. He tied it up neatly and stuffed it into Hell, leaving its figure slumped, presumed dead, on the platform behind him.'' | ''He admitted the shadow to his work, naming it "Author," as if a separate identity might contain and isolate it, trying to preserve the kind of clarity on which he had earned his reputation as a writer. He tied it up neatly and stuffed it into Hell, leaving its figure slumped, presumed dead, on the platform behind him.'' | ||
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{{pg|259|260}} | {{pg|259|260}} | ||
These works, ''Death in the Afternoon'' (1932) and ''Advertisements for Myself'' (1959), occur at almost precisely the same point in their careers — after initial critical success for quasi-autobiographical war novels, after the consequent achievement of celebrity, and after a major disappointment when that celebrity alone was not enough to overcome the restrictive vicissitudes of their respective moments in publishing culture. Although their disappointments differed in degree — Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms was published with missing profanity and an enforced blurring of the direct, explicit prose that he preferred. {{sfn|Bruccoli and Trogdon|1996|p=119}}</blockquote> | These works, ''Death in the Afternoon'' (1932) and ''Advertisements for Myself'' (1959), occur at almost precisely the same point in their careers — after initial critical success for quasi-autobiographical war novels, after the consequent achievement of celebrity, and after a major disappointment when that celebrity alone was not enough to overcome the restrictive vicissitudes of their respective moments in publishing culture. Although their disappointments differed in degree — Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms was published with missing profanity and an enforced blurring of the direct, explicit prose that he preferred. {{sfn|Bruccoli and Trogdon|1996|p=119|ref=harv}}</blockquote> | ||
Mailer’s ''The Deer Park'' was rejected by eight publishing houses before a ninth (Putnam) picked it up solely because he was Norman Mailer {{sfn|Mailer|1959|p= 230-231}} and with their next full-length books, both writers took urgent stances against the capitalist imposition of the social, implicitly performative role of “authorship” over and against their shared goals as writers who sought to capture truth in language as a prerequisite to presenting their works publicly. | Mailer’s ''The Deer Park'' was rejected by eight publishing houses before a ninth (Putnam) picked it up solely because he was Norman Mailer {{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=230-231|ref=harv}} and with their next full-length books, both writers took urgent stances against the capitalist imposition of the social, implicitly performative role of “authorship” over and against their shared goals as writers who sought to capture truth in language as a prerequisite to presenting their works publicly. | ||
Their stances in response to the writer/author alienation would initially differ thus: Hemingway saw this alienation as a paradox and sought to eliminate it through force of will and pedantry. Mailer, having learned from Hemingway (and writing not as a Modernist but Postmodernist), embraced the paradox and gave it center stage. Neither approach solved or could resolve the problems faced by the creative writer who must by definition become public property once he or she achieves publication, let alone critical or popular success. Consciousness of this problem and their ensuing struggles with it, expressed in ''Death in the Afternoon'' and ''Advertisements for Myself'', seems to have prevented both Hemingway and Mailer from publishing a fully formed novel for a decade (Hemingway’s ''To Have and Have Not [1938]'' was initially two long short stories, which he lumped together and published as a “novel” to quiet his critics). Their future success as novelists (which would in both cases be uneven) would depend for the remainder of their careers on how successfully each negotiated the inescapable alienation of writer from author that was intrinsic to mid-twentieth-century American authorship. | Their stances in response to the writer/author alienation would initially differ thus: Hemingway saw this alienation as a paradox and sought to eliminate it through force of will and pedantry. Mailer, having learned from Hemingway (and writing not as a Modernist but Postmodernist), embraced the paradox and gave it center stage. Neither approach solved or could resolve the problems faced by the creative writer who must by definition become public property once he or she achieves publication, let alone critical or popular success. Consciousness of this problem and their ensuing struggles with it, expressed in ''Death in the Afternoon'' and ''Advertisements for Myself'', seems to have prevented both Hemingway and Mailer from publishing a fully formed novel for a decade (Hemingway’s ''To Have and Have Not [1938]'' was initially two long short stories, which he lumped together and published as a “novel” to quiet his critics). Their future success as novelists (which would in both cases be uneven) would depend for the remainder of their careers on how successfully each negotiated the inescapable alienation of writer from author that was intrinsic to mid-twentieth-century American authorship. | ||
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On May 2, 1930, ''Forum'' editor Henry Goddard Leach approached Ernest Hemingway, requesting a celebrity statement on life, the universe, and everything: “To put it briefly, what we want from you is a statement of your personal credo, your convictions and beliefs concerning the nature of the world and of man . . . it would have to touch intimately on your own hopes and fears, the mainspring of your faith or the promptings of your despair.” In exchange, Leach offered the author of ''The Sun Also Rises'' and ''A Farewell to Arms''—and future Nobel prize-winner—$500. | On May 2, 1930, ''Forum'' editor Henry Goddard Leach approached Ernest Hemingway, requesting a celebrity statement on life, the universe, and everything: “To put it briefly, what we want from you is a statement of your personal credo, your convictions and beliefs concerning the nature of the world and of man . . . it would have to touch intimately on your own hopes and fears, the mainspring of your faith or the promptings of your despair.” In exchange, Leach offered the author of ''The Sun Also Rises'' and ''A Farewell to Arms''—and future Nobel prize-winner—$500. | ||
Hemingway was furious. He already had held Leach in contempt for the latter’s 1929 request for a short story of “about two-thousand words,” which | Hemingway was furious. He already had held Leach in contempt for the latter’s 1929 request for a short story of “about two-thousand words,” which Leach condescendingly reminded him must contain “narrative, or at least plot.” Hemingway’s response in 1929 had been to scribble angrily in the margins of stories in progress several pointed responses, including a never used story collection title, ''Unsuited to Our Needs''. In 1930, his response to the more | ||
Leach condescendingly reminded him must contain “narrative, or at least plot.” Hemingway’s response in 1929 had been to scribble angrily in the margins of stories in progress several pointed responses, including a never used story collection title, ''Unsuited to Our Needs''. In 1930, his response to the more | |||
{{pg|261|262}} | {{pg|261|262}} | ||
fawning (but still condescending) editor was more subtle and more public and its effects far longer-reaching. It would play out in the first third of Death in the Afternoon in the form of a series of nine dialogues between an Author, who emerges out of the voice of the first-person narrator but is distinguished by the labeling conventions of dramatic dialogue, and an Old Lady. Unfortunately for the book’s reception and thus for Hemingway’s reputation, the only one who understood the purpose of the dialogues was Hemingway (and perhaps, much later, Norman Mailer, whose discussion of the problems of authorship refers readers to ''Death in the Afternoon'' in the first three pages of ''Advertisements for Myself''). | fawning (but still condescending) editor was more subtle and more public and its effects far longer-reaching. It would play out in the first third of ''Death in the Afternoon'' in the form of a series of nine dialogues between an Author, who emerges out of the voice of the first-person narrator but is distinguished by the labeling conventions of dramatic dialogue, and an Old Lady. Unfortunately for the book’s reception and thus for Hemingway’s reputation, the only one who understood the purpose of the dialogues was Hemingway (and perhaps, much later, Norman Mailer, whose discussion of the problems of authorship refers readers to ''Death in the Afternoon'' in the first three pages of ''Advertisements for Myself''). | ||
Hemingway Hemingway had long wanted to write “the bullfighting book.” He first mentions the idea in his first letter to Maxwell Perkins, written when he was entering into contract with Boni & Liveright for his 1925 collection ''In Our Time''. (By 1926, he would switch allegiance to Perkins’s house, Charles Scribners’ | Hemingway Hemingway had long wanted to write “the bullfighting book.” He first mentions the idea in his first letter to Maxwell Perkins, written when he was entering into contract with Boni & Liveright for his 1925 collection ''In Our Time''. (By 1926, he would switch allegiance to Perkins’s house, Charles Scribners’ | ||
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No one knows whether Leach’s letter interrupted Hemingway’s actual writing or merely his preliminary thinking about his next book. Although Hemingway establishes on the first page of ''Death in the Afternoon'' that this so-conceived “bullfighting book” will be as much about writing and authorship as bullfighting (the analogy is thoroughly developed throughout | No one knows whether Leach’s letter interrupted Hemingway’s actual writing or merely his preliminary thinking about his next book. Although Hemingway establishes on the first page of ''Death in the Afternoon'' that this so-conceived “bullfighting book” will be as much about writing and authorship as bullfighting (the analogy is thoroughly developed throughout | ||
the book, hinging on the similarities in the economic, institutional and cultural mechanisms by which any art form is produced for a paying public), the first several chapters merely introduce the milieu, the spectacle, and its value to the writer, who tries in the night to remember which amongst thousands of details results in a feeling—for it is by strict focus on and adherence to such details, the narrator believes, a writer can convey real feeling and avoid cheap tricks and sentiment. The detail is the contrast between a gored matador’s thighbone and his dirty underwear {{sfn|Hemingway|1932| p= 20}}. Mailer would approve. | the book, hinging on the similarities in the economic, institutional and cultural mechanisms by which any art form is produced for a paying public), the first several chapters merely introduce the milieu, the spectacle, and its value to the writer, who tries in the night to remember which amongst thousands of details results in a feeling—for it is by strict focus on and adherence to such details, the narrator believes, a writer can convey real feeling and avoid cheap tricks and sentiment. The detail is the contrast between a gored matador’s thighbone and his dirty underwear {{sfn|Hemingway|1932|p=20}}. Mailer would approve. | ||
For the first six chapters, Death in the Afternoon promises to unfold as the observations of a writer (the narrative “I”) engaging with the culture, history, form, and presentation of the Spanish bullfight and, by extension, the character of the Spanish nation and people. Even had Hemingway not delivered something far more difficult, problematic, and admittedly obscure, | For the first six chapters, Death in the Afternoon promises to unfold as the observations of a writer (the narrative “I”) engaging with the culture, history, form, and presentation of the Spanish bullfight and, by extension, the character of the Spanish nation and people. Even had Hemingway not delivered something far more difficult, problematic, and admittedly obscure, | ||