The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/A Visionary Hermeneutic Appropriation: Meditations on Hemingway’s Influence on Mailer: Difference between revisions
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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. | 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, | Mailer’s imaginal thematics, which often touches on the phantasmagoric, | ||
his baroque stylistics, and his distinctive intellectual concerns, all seem to be | his baroque stylistics, and his distinctive intellectual concerns, all seem to be | ||
divergent from those developed and practiced by Hemingway. Does this{{pg|163|164}} | divergent from those developed and practiced by Hemingway. Does this{{pg|163|164}} | ||
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good fiction, are potentially polysemic and subject to an endless existential | good fiction, are potentially polysemic and subject to an endless existential | ||
hermeneutics as are the lived experiences they try to recreate imaginatively. | hermeneutics as are the lived experiences they try to recreate imaginatively. | ||
The truth of such fiction can only be regarded in the plural: truths. Thus, Hemingway initiates a dialogue with all of his potential reader writers, to which they can respond emotionally, cognitively, and even actively pursue either by imitation or under the enchantment of influence. “Read anything I write for the pleasure of reading it,” he said in “The Art of Fiction,” an interview with George Plimpton. “Whatever else you find will be the measure of what you brought to the reading.” | The truth of such fiction can only be regarded in the plural: truths. Thus, Hemingway initiates a dialogue with all of his potential reader writers, to which they can respond emotionally, cognitively, and even actively pursue either by imitation or under the enchantment of influence. “Read anything I write for the pleasure of reading it,” he said in “The Art of Fiction,” an interview with George Plimpton. “Whatever else you find will be the measure of what you brought to the reading.” It would be hard to find a keener or more accurate description of existential hermeneutic activities and modes of recreating and making a text your own. | ||
To sum up: the combined agencies of three phenomenological operations in the act of reading make it possible for any reader of Hemingway to read{{pg|166|167}} | To sum up: the combined agencies of three phenomenological operations in the act of reading make it possible for any reader of Hemingway to read{{pg|166|167}} | ||