The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/A Visionary Hermeneutic Appropriation: Meditations on Hemingway’s Influence on Mailer: Difference between revisions
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“The burden of government,” [Samuel] Johnson brooded,“is increased upon princes by the virtues of their immediate predecessors,” and he added: “He that succeeds a celebrated writer, has the same difficulties to encounter.” We know the rancid humor of this too well, and any reader of Advertisements for Myself may enjoy the frantic dances of Norman Mailer as he strives to evade his own anxiety that it is, after all, Hemingway all the way | “The burden of government,” [Samuel] Johnson brooded,“is increased upon princes by the virtues of their immediate predecessors,” and he added: “He that succeeds a celebrated writer, has the same difficulties to encounter.” We know the rancid humor of this too well, and any reader of Advertisements for Myself may enjoy the frantic dances of Norman Mailer as he strives to evade his own anxiety that it is, after all, Hemingway all the way, emphasis added{{sfn|Bloom|1979|p=28}} | ||
Oddly, in “First Advertisement for Myself,” the introductory piece to ''Advertisement for Myself,'' what Bloom perceives as “frantic dances” would seem like ritualistic dances. Mailer performs them as he prepares to affect a kind Jungian metanoia to re-form his divided psyche to bring about self-healing and renewed creative energy. The “rancid humor” of it derives from the struggles of the psyche of a writer torn apart between a sense of utter defeat and megalomania. “Defeat has left my nature divided,” declares Mailer, “my sense of timing is eccentric, and I contain within myself the bitter exhaustions of an old man, and the cocky arguments of a bright boy. So I am everything but my proper age of thirty-six, and anger has brought me to the edge of the brutal.”{{sfn|Bloom|1979|p=17}} On the other hand, he immediately confesses, “In sitting down to write a sermon for this collection, I find arrogance in much of my mood,” which is an understatement.{{sfn|Bloom|1979|p=17}} | Oddly, in “First Advertisement for Myself,” the introductory piece to ''Advertisement for Myself,'' what Bloom perceives as “frantic dances” would seem like ritualistic dances. Mailer performs them as he prepares to affect a kind Jungian metanoia to re-form his divided psyche to bring about self-healing and renewed creative energy. The “rancid humor” of it derives from the struggles of the psyche of a writer torn apart between a sense of utter defeat and megalomania. “Defeat has left my nature divided,” declares Mailer, “my sense of timing is eccentric, and I contain within myself the bitter exhaustions of an old man, and the cocky arguments of a bright boy. So I am everything but my proper age of thirty-six, and anger has brought me to the edge of the brutal.”{{sfn|Bloom|1979|p=17}} On the other hand, he immediately confesses, “In sitting down to write a sermon for this collection, I find arrogance in much of my mood,” which is an understatement.{{sfn|Bloom|1979|p=17}} | ||
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Later, as it was his inclination, Mailer extravagantly predicts, “it is my present and future work which will have the deepest influence of any work being done by an American novelist in these years.”{{sfn|Bloom|1979|p=17}} His contradictory statements make intelligible a psychological swing between defeat and a sense of manic exaltation, a type of bipolar depression that he may have shared for sometime and to some degree with Hemingway. They detract from his confidence in his claim of eventual superior influence and puts it in question. But I would say his vacillations in self-assurance are much to his credit. Because, sad to say for him and for us, Mailer came to acknowledge later in life that his prediction that his work will have “the deepest influence of any work being done by an American novelist in these years” did not transpire—at least not in any appreciable way. | |||
On a certain plane of critical thought, one may argue ''Advertisements for Myself'' constitutes Mailer’s own treatise on influence. In a letter to George Plimpton, Hemingway refers to the book as “the sort of ragtag assembly of his [Mailer’s] rewrites, second thoughts and ramblings ''shot through with occasional brilliance”'', emphasis added.{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=912}} If by “ragtag” Hemingway meant that the books contents were diverse and lacking in cohesion in appearance or composition, that might well have been true. But the fact remains that Mailer intentionally structured it as such, as he did, say, in ''Cannibals and Christians.'' But Hemingway’s remark on the text being “shot through with occasional brilliance” is right on the mark. Hardly noticeable, Mailer’s attempts in this text culminate in discovering and establishing a viable, working out a dialectical synthesis between himself and Hemingway as men and writers. Mailer’s articulation of the subject falls into that hard earned occasional brilliance of the text. Did Hemingway realize this in his own way? It is entirely possible. | |||
Mailer’s own sense of “defeat” will not cease tormenting him unless and until this Hemingway matter is truly settled once and for all. “Every American writer,” writes Mailer plainly, “who takes himself to be both major and macho must sooner or later give a faena which borrows from the self-love of a Hemingway style.”{{sfn|Mailer|1959|p=19}} “Faena” is an unusual but pertinent word to use here in connection to Hemingway and the way Mailer proposes to deal with his contemporaries. Faena denotes a series of final ritual passes at the bull that a matador carries out in bullfighting. It occurs immediately before the ''kill,'' the moment of truth, to highlight a matador’s skill. On the other hand, to perform “a faena which borrows from the self-love of a{{pg|180|181}} | |||
=== Notes === | === Notes === | ||