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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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Mailer develops this point by describing his struggle with Hemingway and Hemingway’s struggle with himself, concluding that he has come “to have a great sympathy for The Master’s irrepressible tantrum that he is the champion writer of this time” because to be any less “is tiring, much too tiring.”{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=19}}
Mailer develops this point by describing his struggle with Hemingway and Hemingway’s struggle with himself, concluding that he has come “to have a great sympathy for The Master’s irrepressible tantrum that he is the champion writer of this time” because to be any less “is tiring, much too tiring.”{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=19}}


Despite Mailer’s apparently visceral understanding of the struggle Hemingway dramatized in ''Death in the Afternoon,'' he, like Hemingway’s initial critics, seems to have missed the Dantean lens through which Hemingway refracts that struggle: “Hemingway has always been afraid to think, afraid of losing even a little popularity."{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=20}} (This is especially ironic given that Hemingway’s popularity took a nose-dive because he thought.) Mailer does provide a caveat, giving “credit to the man, he’s known the value of his own{{pg|268|269}}work, and he fought to make his personality enrich his books,” especially in ''A Farewell to Arms'' and ''Death in the Afternoon'', both of which are exemplary of how “[a]n author’s personality can help or hurt the attention readers give to his books.”{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=21}}  
Despite Mailer’s apparently visceral understanding of the struggle Hemingway dramatized in ''Death in the Afternoon,'' he, like Hemingway’s initial critics, seems to have missed the Dantean lens through which Hemingway refracts that struggle: “Hemingway has always been afraid to think, afraid of losing even a little popularity.”{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=20}} (This is especially ironic given that Hemingway’s popularity took a nose-dive because he thought.) Mailer does provide a caveat, giving “credit to the man, he’s known the value of his own{{pg|268|269}}work, and he fought to make his personality enrich his books,” especially in ''A Farewell to Arms'' and ''Death in the Afternoon'', both of which are exemplary of how “[a]n author’s personality can help or hurt the attention readers give to his books.”{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=21}}  


Mailer’s preliminary conclusion regarding the problem of alienation is, again ironically, that “[t]he way to save your work and reach more readers is to advertise yourself, steal your own favorite page out of Hemingway’s unwritten ''Notes From Papa On How The Working Novelist Can Get Ahead''.” {{sfn|Mailer|1959| p=21}} Seemingly unaware of the problem that those “unwritten” notes are implicit in ''Death in the Afternoon’s'' Author/Old Lady dialogues (and the consequent problem that those dialogues had the opposite of their intended effect), Mailer indulges in some gymnastic contortions of his own. Despite the fact that the “First Advertisement” does “steal” that page (topically and thematically, however un-self-consciously), and despite the fact that Mailer states how unsuited he is to that sort of self-advertisement, both happen within exactly that sort of advertisement in the service of that sort of advertisement.
Mailer’s preliminary conclusion regarding the problem of alienation is, again ironically, that “[t]he way to save your work and reach more readers is to advertise yourself, steal your own favorite page out of Hemingway’s unwritten ''Notes From Papa On How The Working Novelist Can Get Ahead''.” {{sfn|Mailer|1959| p=21}} Seemingly unaware of the problem that those “unwritten” notes are implicit in ''Death in the Afternoon’s'' Author/Old Lady dialogues (and the consequent problem that those dialogues had the opposite of their intended effect), Mailer indulges in some gymnastic contortions of his own. Despite the fact that the “First Advertisement” does “steal” that page (topically and thematically, however un-self-consciously), and despite the fact that Mailer states how unsuited he is to that sort of self-advertisement, both happen within exactly that sort of advertisement in the service of that sort of advertisement.


It seems evident that Mailer missed at least the “thinking” part that structured Hemingway’s burlesque according to Dante’s circles of Hell, yet one page further finds Mailer listing his own “sinners” or “criminals,” which map as neatly onto Hemingway’s as Hemingway’s do onto Dante’s: “I must get
It seems evident that Mailer missed at least the “thinking” part that structured Hemingway’s burlesque according to Dante’s circles of Hell, yet one page further finds Mailer listing his own “sinners” or “criminals,” which map as neatly onto Hemingway’s as Hemingway’s do onto Dante’s: “I must get
better at overriding the indifference which comes from the snobs, arbiters, managers and conforming maniacs who manipulate most of the world of letters."{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=22}} Mailer further defines his struggle as wanting to “write so well and so strongly as to call my shot, but unfortunately I may have fatigued the earth of rich language beyond repair.”{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=22}} Writing “so well and so strongly” was the ambition of both writers. Both discovered they could not call their shots (Hemingway in publishing ''A Farewell to Arms'' and after publishing ''Death in the Afternoon''; Mailer in trying to publish ''The Deer Park''). Both writers acknowledged the contamination and depletion of their central resource, language (Hemingway’s Author addresses this equally overtly, warning that “all our words from loose using have lost their edge.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1932|p=71}} The six and a half declarative pages of Mailer’s First Advertisement thus provide an
better at overriding the indifference which comes from the snobs, arbiters, managers and conforming maniacs who manipulate most of the world of letters.”{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=22}} Mailer further defines his struggle as wanting to “write so well and so strongly as to call my shot, but unfortunately I may have fatigued the earth of rich language beyond repair.”{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=22}} Writing “so well and so strongly” was the ambition of both writers. Both discovered they could not call their shots (Hemingway in publishing ''A Farewell to Arms'' and after publishing ''Death in the Afternoon''; Mailer in trying to publish ''The Deer Park''). Both writers acknowledged the contamination and depletion of their central resource, language (Hemingway’s Author addresses this equally overtly, warning that “all our words from loose using have lost their edge.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1932|p=71}} The six and a half declarative pages of Mailer’s First Advertisement thus provide an
eerie echo of all nine Hemingway dialogues in both generalities (content) and specifics (language)—in the thirty years between their publication, nothing about authorial alienation had changed.
eerie echo of all nine Hemingway dialogues in both generalities (content) and specifics (language)—in the thirty years between their publication, nothing about authorial alienation had changed.


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