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 | ''In 1930, still smarting from compromises required of him by the publishing industry, Ernest Hemingway received a letter from an editor and pulled 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, through 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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''The train changed course for Purgatory.'' | ''The train changed course for Purgatory.'' | ||
''In 1959, Norman Mailer, in whose baggage rested eight rejection letters for his last novel, alighted at the same station, and the shadow greeted him or perhaps alighted with him. He already knew its name; he had used it well enough. He could no more shake it than Hemingway before him. He challenged it to debate, or perhaps a boxing match - perhaps, maybe | ''In 1959, Norman Mailer, in whose baggage rested eight rejection letters for his last novel, alighted at the same station, and the shadow greeted him or perhaps alighted with him. He already knew its name; he had used it well enough. He could no more shake it than Hemingway before him. He challenged it to debate, or perhaps a boxing match - perhaps, maybe later, to a bullfight.'' | ||
''The course changed again.'' | ''The course changed again.'' | ||
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Hemingway, spurred on by Leach’s insulting request as well as Aldous Huxley’s derogatory critique of him as uneducated and boorish (“Foreheads Villainous | Hemingway, spurred on by Leach’s insulting request as well as Aldous Huxley’s derogatory critique of him as uneducated and boorish (“Foreheads Villainous | ||
Low”), twisted his book into something more, which critics felt rendered it less: a tangential descent into a wildly allusive and allegorical discussion of the problems with art production, specifically the distraction and alienation forced on a working writer who must function as author (a discursive role as well as an object for consumption) before an obtuse and increasingly hostile public. This discussion takes the form of nine Dantean dialogues between an Author who, if you distinguish him from the narrator and from Hemingway at all (which initial reviewers, with the exception of Malcolm Cowley, did not) seems to come out of nowhere in order to ridicule and verbally abuse a prudish and hypocritical Old Lady, who emerges out of an imagined “crowd” to become, temporarily, a character, who allegorically stands for “the public.” The dialogues intrude seemingly at random in the first third of the book, after which they disappear entirely, | Low”), twisted his book into something more, which critics felt rendered it less: a tangential descent into a wildly allusive and allegorical discussion of the problems with art production, specifically the distraction and alienation forced on a working writer who must function as author (a discursive role as well as an object for consumption) before an obtuse and increasingly hostile public. This discussion takes the form of nine Dantean dialogues between an Author who, if you distinguish him from the narrator and from Hemingway at all (which initial reviewers, with the exception of Malcolm Cowley, did not) seems to come out of nowhere in order to ridicule and verbally abuse a prudish and hypocritical Old Lady, who emerges out of an imagined “crowd” to become, temporarily, a character, who allegorically stands for “the public.” The dialogues intrude seemingly at random in the first third of the book, after which they disappear entirely, whereupon Hemingway returns his focus to the writing/ bullfighting/ art/ production conceit for the remainder of the book. | ||
With the sudden intrusion of characters (the Old Lady and the Author her presence creates), the ostensibly non-fiction ''Death in the Afternoon'' takes on the first of several additional genres: dramatic fiction—more specifically, a morality play in nine acts (or nine circles) in which the Author, in return | With the sudden intrusion of characters (the Old Lady and the Author her presence creates), the ostensibly non-fiction ''Death in the Afternoon'' takes on the first of several additional genres: dramatic fiction—more specifically, a morality play in nine acts (or nine circles) in which the Author, in return | ||
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What Hemingway does not say, does not seem to need to say, is that the decadent system of art, artist, and audience is always measurable against a Platonic ideal reality in which the artist performs for the aficion. His approach is clever—too clever by half—and pugilistic, rendered palatable only when revealed (a la the man behind the curtain in ''The Wizard of Oz'') as a deliberately contemptible construct: “What about the Old Lady? She’s gone. We threw her out of the book, finally. A little late, you say. Yes, perhaps a little late . . . Shall we try to raise the general tone? What about higher things?” {{sfn|Hemingway|1932|p=190}} The “we” in the narrative voice is telling ''vis à vis'' the contamination of the writer, he who occupies the space of observer and from it crafts his narratives, by the Author, revealed finally as a performance required by the system. | What Hemingway does not say, does not seem to need to say, is that the decadent system of art, artist, and audience is always measurable against a Platonic ideal reality in which the artist performs for the aficion. His approach is clever—too clever by half—and pugilistic, rendered palatable only when revealed (a la the man behind the curtain in ''The Wizard of Oz'') as a deliberately contemptible construct: “What about the Old Lady? She’s gone. We threw her out of the book, finally. A little late, you say. Yes, perhaps a little late . . . Shall we try to raise the general tone? What about higher things?” {{sfn|Hemingway|1932|p=190}} The “we” in the narrative voice is telling ''vis à vis'' the contamination of the writer, he who occupies the space of observer and from it crafts his narratives, by the Author, revealed finally as a performance required by the system. | ||
Once again in the voice of the singular, “I,” the text responds directly and specifically to Aldous Huxley’s accusation that Hemingway was too concerned with “Lower Things” and not nearly well educated enough to speak as a public authority.{{sfn|Hemingway|1932|p=190}} Countering Huxley’s critique, the narrator employs the words “writer” and “writing” twenty two times in the next two pages as though it offers an antidote to the poison of authorship. {{sfn|Hemingway|1932|p=191-2}} By comparison to the kind of performance required by Huxley and, by extension, the entire economic system of cultural capital, the “importance” the | Once again in the voice of the singular, “I,” the text responds directly and specifically to Aldous Huxley’s accusation that Hemingway was too concerned with “Lower Things” and not nearly well educated enough to speak as a public authority.{{sfn|Hemingway|1932|p=190}} Countering Huxley’s critique, the narrator employs the words “writer” and “writing” twenty-two times in the next two pages as though it offers an antidote to the poison of authorship. {{sfn|Hemingway|1932|p=191-2}} By comparison to the kind of performance required by Huxley and, by extension, the entire economic system of cultural capital, the “importance” the | ||
writer locates in the contrast between Domingo Hernandorena’s dirty underwear and the “clean, clean, unbearably clean "whiteness" of his exposed thighbone is a "higher thing" indeed. {{sfn|Hemingway|1932|p=20}} | writer locates in the contrast between Domingo Hernandorena’s dirty underwear and the “clean, clean, unbearably clean "whiteness" of his exposed thighbone is a "higher thing" indeed. {{sfn|Hemingway|1932|p=20}} | ||