The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/A Visionary Hermeneutic Appropriation: Meditations on Hemingway’s Influence on Mailer: Difference between revisions

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 My intention in treating Hemingway’s influence on American writers at
 some length has been to show the nature and extent of the problem Mailer{{pg|167|168}}
+was facing in dealing with Hemingway’s pervasive and detectable influence. Placing Mailer within my list would not have done justice to his own unique place in the history of twentieth-century American letters. For this reason, I made no mention of either his name or,I must add, Nelson Algren’s (1909-1981). I would say Hemingway’s influence on them falls into a different category. One may think of it as profound but not readily intelligible influence. They were two writers who were truly “hit in the gut” hard and for good and keeps by Hemingway. But the essence of how they experienced that radical influence remains mostly nontransparent.
+Once one understands how—and how hard—with what lasting effects Hemingway as a writer “hit” a younger fellow-writer like Mailer in the “gut,” consequences can then be explored. A proper definition and explication of it may then emerge. Mailer and Algren both came to embody Hemingway’s influence, identifying with him, each in his own way. The result was the development of affinities with him, both as men and writers. Even though the nature, scope, and intensity of their kinship with Hemingway greatly varied, they both went beyond the boundaries of the dialectic of direct imitation and influence. As enlightening and fascinating as it is to compare simultaneously Mailer and Algren’s relationships with Hemingway, it would fall beyond the perimeters of the present study.{{efn|Following the logic of visionary appropriation in this essay, I am currently engaged in writing a study of Hemingway’s mode of influence on Nelson Algren.}}
+Accordingly,I would like to add the category of nontransparent influence to the broad sphere of Mailer-Hemingway studies. I designate it as visionary hermeneutic appropriation, primarily as it applies to Mailer. I shall later devote a section to its definition. To my mind, the critical narrative of Hemingway’s influence on Mailer belongs to the logic of this other sphere of influence,which sounds a bit technical but bears out to be less so in practice. I deem it to be a useful concept and place it as a category within the general theory of influence. I am persuaded it will provide forays into uncharted territories. Basically, it will embrace the proximal and the distal, the familiar to the unfamiliar, the expected and the unexpected from within and without the immediate and known boundaries of studies of Hemingway’s influence so far done.
+'''IV. MAILER'S RECOGNITION AND ASSESSMENT OF HEMINGWAY's INFLUENCE'''
+In “Prisoner of Success,” an interview with Paul Attanasio, Mailer stated with
+exceptional lucidity:{{pg|168|169}}
 === Notes ===