The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/A Visionary Hermeneutic Appropriation: Meditations on Hemingway’s Influence on Mailer: Difference between revisions
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admired Simenon’s fiction, which he originally discovered in the 1920s in Paris. | admired Simenon’s fiction, which he originally discovered in the 1920s in Paris. | ||
Let us take a closer look at Mailer’s view of Hemingway’s centrality to twentieth century American writing. In any human community our fellow human beings always surround us in the circle of their ontological presence as the horizon of our life. As a consequence, the notion of occupying the “very center” in such communities spells out a position of unquestionable eminence and prominence. Mailer readily credits Hemingway with the central position in writing in the community of writers in America. In a Playboy interview, conducted by his son John Buffalo Mailer, he spoke of Hemingway’s “prodigious influence for young American writers. He taught a lot of us how to look for the tensile strength of a sentence.”{{sfn|Mailer, | Let us take a closer look at Mailer’s view of Hemingway’s centrality to twentieth century American writing. In any human community our fellow human beings always surround us in the circle of their ontological presence as the horizon of our life. As a consequence, the notion of occupying the “very center” in such communities spells out a position of unquestionable eminence and prominence. Mailer readily credits Hemingway with the central position in writing in the community of writers in America. In a Playboy interview, conducted by his son John Buffalo Mailer, he spoke of Hemingway’s “prodigious influence for young American writers. He taught a lot of us how to look for the tensile strength of a sentence.”{{sfn|Mailer, Norman|Mailer, John Buffalo|2006|p=122}} | ||
Combining these related declarations about centrality is irresistible. First, because lexically “center” indicates the principal, pivotal, and radial point within a circle or sphere. The center comprises the focal point of the circumference that it defines. Second, the grammatical notion “sentence” defines the foundational, generative, syntactical unit of language. The sentence constitutes the center of our meaningful oral and scriptural discourse. It follows then that the maximal stress that a sentence as the basic unit of discourse may bear is essential. The sentence must do so without syntactically imploding into semantic nonsense. Mailer’s statements pay austere but high homage to Hemingway. The older writer comes through Mailer’s considered opinion as the high priest of creative writing in twentieth-century American writing. Judged by any standard, that is high praise, spontaneously offered. At the same time, it bears witness to the challenge that Hemingway as a writer posed to Mailer and how he dealt with it. | Combining these related declarations about centrality is irresistible. First, because lexically “center” indicates the principal, pivotal, and radial point within a circle or sphere. The center comprises the focal point of the circumference that it defines. Second, the grammatical notion “sentence” defines the foundational, generative, syntactical unit of language. The sentence constitutes the center of our meaningful oral and scriptural discourse. It follows then that the maximal stress that a sentence as the basic unit of discourse may bear is essential. The sentence must do so without syntactically imploding into semantic nonsense. Mailer’s statements pay austere but high homage to Hemingway. The older writer comes through Mailer’s considered opinion as the high priest of creative writing in twentieth-century American writing. Judged by any standard, that is high praise, spontaneously offered. At the same time, it bears witness to the challenge that Hemingway as a writer posed to Mailer and how he dealt with it. | ||