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

Written by
Erik Nakjavani

---

Abstract: TBD

---

URL: TBD

[T]here is nothing in the critical field that should be of greater philosophical interest or prove more rewarding to analysis than the progressive modification of one mind by the work of another.

I. Prologue

Norman Mailer and Ernest Hemingway. This phrase brings into proximity two prominent twentieth-century American writers. The phrasal contiguity of the two names suggests an arrangement that at first glance conceals more than it reveals. For, upon reflection, their proximity sketches out areas that often tend toward more pronounced darkness rather than light. One repeatedly thinks about Hemingway’s influence on other writers. Colleagues at various academic conferences refer to it. It appears in scholarly journals, popular magazines, and newspapers. Still one does not readily see what might constitute Hemingway’s influence on Mailer, that is, aside from what amounts to and is derided by some critics as Mailer’s imitative behavior in the worst meaning of the adjective.

Mailer’s imaginal thematics,which often touches on the phantasmagoric, his baroque stylistics, and his distinctive intellectual concerns, all seem to be divergent from those developed and practiced by Hemingway. Does this

page 163

---

page 164

mean, then, that the conjunction “and” in my initial verbless and therefore as yet inactive sentence misleadingly sets forth commonalities between the two writers? I think not. Because I would expect one may at least adumbrate a theoretical common ground between them. The conjunctive “and” will exceed its usual grammatical function and eventually carry out an exceptional task. The promise of latent and multiple vistas of the connection between Mailer and Hemingway, which as yet remain unknown, will still become known. However, the fulfillment of this promise requires wide-ranging conceptual meditations and may take a long and nonlinear course. The meditative approach I am proposing will offer an inkling of possible signifying links between Mailer and Hemingway.

Clearly, Hemingway and Mailer’s names are heavily laden with literary, cultural,religious, educational, and socio-political implications. They often connote factual differences, even inevitable conflicts. Consequently, now and again, the differences may seem to be unbridgeable and militate against the prospect of serious comparative studies of the commonalities between the two writers. Since such study endeavors to go beyond wading in the shallows of mere superficial similarities and comparisons, the complexity of its conceptual framework will also proportionally increase. But I would like to go straight to my conclusion and confirm that such a study is indeed realizable, in spite of undeniable obscurities, or paradoxically because of them. For such seemingly impenetrable areas force us to rethink our theoretical guiding principles of literary influence and reconfigure constitutive elements.

Happily, Mailer’s own preoccupation—if indeed not outright obsession—with Hemingway as a singularly distinctive man and writer renders my effort somewhat easier. Mailer’s own articulations of his connection with Hemingway will allow me to make intelligible possible shared literary philosophical views and aspirations. His passionate fascination with Hemingway communicates itself as a combination of theoretical and experiential interests and practices. Altogether, they indicate a space where a serious study of their affinities and visionary literary kinship may come to light as viable. Such likelihood may not be easily discernible if one only limits oneself to the more traditional influence imitation theories. It would seem to me applying such theories to Hemingway and Mailer as tutor and tyro may well prove to be an egregious over-simplification and therefore more aporetic than heuristic. In my view, the whole problematic of Mailer’s relationship

page 164

---

page 165

with Hemingway sets in motion a pervasive expectant mood. A Heideggerian sense of ontological disclosures gives the impression of emerging from it, providing the clearing where the two language artists practiced their profession. This clearing also permits crisscrossing meditations, interpretations, and associative musings. As we well know, Mailer and Hemingway’s personalities and works tend to elicit such activities in their readers.

As a result, in due course I shall propose and will attempt to develop a subcategory to the traditional theory of influence to make intelligible the nature of Hemingway’s unusual influence over Mailer’s imagination. I classify it as visionary hermeneutic appropriation as influence. I hope the general theoretical thrust of such classification differentiates it from the more direct and more easily discernible thematic and stylistic influence as imitation. It will provide us with a useful working concept. I hope the reader will find it less daunting in its logic and practice than its designation at first might suggest.

It would seem helpful to begin our task of examining the particular mode of influence Hemingway exerted on Mailer with a brief overall assessment of Hemingway’s widespread influence on twentieth-century American writers, including Mailer. I shall then proceed to Mailer’s own appraisal of Hemingway’s influence on the writers of his generation. Above all, I will examine Mailer’s perception of Hemingway’s influence on himself as arguably one of the most ambitious writers of his own time right along with the older Hemingway. This sequence will make it possible to study how Hemingway’s influence on Mailer characterizes itself as a highly differentiated case.

II. HEMINGWAY’S TRANSPARENT INFLUENCE ON SOME NOTABLE AMERICAN WRITERS

There are many American writers who appear to have made Hemingway’s work and way of life their own. They have done so through direct influence and imitation. Two interrelated operations make the effects of such influence intelligible. First, there is a process of phenomenological hermeneutics in the sense that Martin Heidegger understood it as interpretation and understanding. Analogous to the task of gods’ messenger Hermes, the reader writer endeavors to understand Hemingway’s work in the context of his or her own interpretation of it. In practice, this task is readily achievable as a given in human heuristic activities without considering the more technical underpinnings of hermeneutics as such. The act of interpretation permits

page 165

---

page 166

Works Cited

• Agamben, Giorgio (2005). The Time That Remains: A Commentary on the Letter to the Romans. Translated by Dalley, Patricia. Stanford: Stanford UP.
• Anzieu, Didier (1990). A Skin for Thought: Interviews with Gilbert Tarrab on Psychology and Psychoanalysis. Translated by Briggs, Daphne Nash. London: Karnak Books.
• Beauvoir, Simone de (1993). The Second Sex. Translated by Parshley, H. M. New York: Everyman's Library.
• Bloom, Harold (1979). The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry. New York: Oxford UP.
• Bowie, Malcolm (1993). Lacan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP.
• Freud, Sigmund (1946). Totem and Taboo: Resemblances Between the Psychic Lives of Savages and Neurotics. Translated by Brill, A. A. New York: Random House.
• Gracián, Baltasar (2008). The Art of Worldly Wisdom. Translated by Fischer, Martin. New York: Barnes & Noble.
• Heidegger, Martin (1935). Poetry, Language, Thought. Translated by Hofstadter, Albert. New York: Harper Colophon Books.
• Hemingway, Ernest (1965). "The Art of Fiction". In Plimpton, George. Writers at Work. New York: The Viking Press. pp. 217–39.
• Mailer, Norman (1932). Death in the Afternoon. New York: Scribner.
• Mailer, Norman (1981). Baker, Carlos, ed. Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters, 1917–1961. New York: Scribner.
• Mailer, Norman (1935). Green Hills of Africa. New York: Scribner.
• Mailer, Norman (1959). Advertisements for Myself. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.
• Mailer, Norman (1966). Cannibals and Christians. New York: Dial.
• Mailer, Norman (1988). "Conversations with Norman Mailer" (Interview). Jackson: "UP of Mississippi". pp. 20–8, 155–75, 207–27, 291–8.
• Mailer, Norman (1975). The Fight. Boston: Little, Brown and Co.
• Mailer, Norman (1982). Pieces and Pontifications. Boston: Little, Brown and Co.
• Mailer, Norman (2003). The Spooky Art: Some Thoughts on Writing. New York: Random House.
• Mailer, Norman; Mailer, John Buffalo (2006). The Big Empty: Dialogues on Politics, Sex, God, Boxing, Morality, Myth, Poker, and Bad Conscience in America. New York: Nation Books.
• Marcel, Gabriel (1973). The Philosophy of Existentialism. Translated by Harari, Manya. Secaucus, N.J.: The Citadel Press.
• Nakjavani, Erik (1984). "The Aesthetics of Silence: Hemingway's "The Art of the Short Story"". The Hemingway Review. 3 (2): 38–45.
• Nakjavani, Erik (1986). "The Aesthetics of the Visible and the Invisible: Hemingway and Cézanne". The Hemingway Review. 5 (2): 2–11.
• Nakjavani, Erik (2003). "The Prose of Life: Lived Experience in the Fiction of Hemingway, Sartre, and Beauvoir". North Dakota Quarterly. 70 (4): 140–65.
• Raymond, Dwayne (2010). Mornings with Mailer: A Recollection of Friendship. New York: Harper.
• Valéry, Paul (1972). Leonardo, Poe, Mallarmé. Translated by Cowley, Malcolm; Lawler, James R. Princeton: Princeton UP.