The Mailer Review/Volume 13, 2019/Angst, Authorship, Critics: “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” “The Crack-Up,” Advertisements for Myself: Difference between revisions

Kennedy perceives that in Hemingway “place is the organizing principle of memory.”{{sfn|Kennedy|1999|p=328}} This claim rings true: we may think of the title and epigraph for Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises (1926) or we could reflect on the archetypal nature of so many settings in Hemingway’s work.{{efn|To take just the ten stories in the {{harvtxt|Hemingway|2003}}, the settings are Safari, Café, Hospital, Hunt, Hospital, Café, War, Fight, and Safari. Each setting suggests by synecdoche that life is a safari, or a hospital or a café at night, etc.}} We might think

So Kennedy writes of Harry’s “topographical visions” in “Snows.” These are a series of five vignettes, printed in italic type, describing places, people, events, sensory impressions, hints and allusions that represent “what might have been.”They do not yet exist as stories, as developed plots and narratives. They are merely the ''possibility'' of a story. They exist only in Harry’s fevered imagination—they are the thoughts of a dying man. Containing the raw material for a dozen stories, all remain unwritten.

What is the significance of another animal, the leopard, mentioned at the beginning of the epigraph? Surely that—even at the point of death—this skilled hunter was still climbing, still searching for its prey. Ben Stoltzfus draws a contrast between Harry and the leopard: ”The leopard near the summit is one of the objects in the chain of animal events, death, and sensory impressions that contributes to the particular emotion of the story. The epigraph states that no one has explained the presence of the leopard at that altitude, but Hemingway’s story is the answer to the riddle and it explains the cat’s presence.”{{sfn|Stoltzfus|2005|p=224}} Harry, by contrast, as a writer was neither climbing nor hunting. “Leopards hunt and they do what leopards do, whereas Harry, the would-be writer, does everything except write.”{{sfn|Stoltzfus|2005|p=224}} Both man and leopard die—as eventually do all living things—but they die for different reasons.

We can also recognize that this new confessional voice is as much evasion as revelation. In Fitzgerald’s self-disclosure, there was much literary art, and a heavy dose of self-deception. At times, as writers or readers, are we all not guilty of such self-deception? As T.S. Eliot reminds us, “our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves.”{{sfn|Eliot|1933|p=155}}“Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves.”{{sfn|Eliot|1933|p=155}}. It is interesting, therefore, that the opening sentences of the first essay are actually in second-person, not the supposed “greater authenticity provided by the first-person voice with all its limitations.”{{sfn|Hampl|2012|p=108}} “Of course all life is a process of breaking down, but the blows that do the dramatic side of the work—the big, sudden blows that come, or seem to come, from outside—the ones you remember and blame things on and, in moments of weakness, tell your friends about, don’t show their effect all at once. There is another kind of blow that comes from within—that you don’t feel until it’s too late to do anything about it, until you realize with finality that in some regard you will never be as good a man again.”{{Sfn|Fitzgerald|1993|p=69}} Fitzgerald begins with the provocative claim, “Of course all life is a process of breaking down . . .”{{sfn|Fitzgerald|1993|p=69}} Following these introductory sentences, there comes the oft-quoted aphorism of Fitzgerald, “[T]he test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.”{{sfn|Fitzgerald|1993|p=69}} There are, of course, many precedents for a first-person voice—confessional or otherwise.{{efn|As first-person precedents to Fitzgerald voice in “The Crack-Up,” Hampl mentions Whitman’s “Song of Myself ” (1855), Nick Carraway in ''The Great Gatsby'' (1925), Hemingway’s Nick Adams, and “before that the narrators of ''Huckleberry Finn'' and ''Moby-Dick''.”{{sfn|Hampl|2012|p=118}} }} It is also true that while ''something'' is being revealed, “often in a wry, self-deprecating style,”{{sfn|Hampl|2012|p=104}} much more is being concealed. Fitzgerald makes no mention of his own alcoholism, his affair with a married woman, or of Zelda’s schizophrenia.{{efn|“Though he describes his psychological and spiritual breakdown, his utter collapse, often in a wry, self-deprecating style, he doesn’t spill many autobiographical beans. We don’t learn of his despair over his wife’s mental illness. He doesn’t divulge his bouts with drinking, his imprudent affair with a married woman, his money worries, his literary woes. Mother, father, those stock figures of personal narrative—never mentioned.”{{sfn|Hampl|2012|p=104}} }} Rather telling omissions, one might say. In his 1980 article, Donaldson says, “As it stands, ‘The Crack-Up’ tells its truth only between the lines.”{{sfn|Donaldson|1980|p=182}} Indeed it does. But that is true of much of Modernist fiction and poetry, is it not?

Scott Donaldson agrees with this general point. “It is true of Fitzgerald,” he writes, “not only that his characters are modeled on himself but that he sometimes becomes his characters after the fact.”{{sfn|Donaldson|1980|p=185}}{{efn|“Thus his retreat to Ashville, Tyron, Hendersonville in North Carolina during the two years of his personal depression virtually repeat Dick Diver’s drifting among the small towns of upstate New York. . . . He will now be ‘ a writer only,’ he announces in the last of the ‘Crack-Up’ articles, just as Dick Diver finally became only a doctor, no longer a scientist or entertainer or bon vivant.”{{sfn|Donaldson|1980|p=185}} }} Batchelor cites other critics who agree that Fitzgerald “virtually invented the confessional mode” of writing and that his own life seems to mirror his greatest artistic creations, characters such as Jay Gatsby.{{sfn|Batchelor|2013|p=78}}{{efn|Morris Dickstein discusses the author’s transformation from literary and celebrity prince to “representative man,” which led to him producing more “introspective” work. The result, Dickstein explains, was that the great novelist “virtually invented the confessional mode in American writing.”{{Sfn|Dickstein|2005|p=82}} Because of the “Crack-Up” essays in ''Esquire'', later writers felt free to explore the genre, including Norman Mailer in ''Advertisements for Myself''. Writing about Fitzgerald in late 1963, critic Malcolm Cowley assesses the author’s life as similar to one of his artistic creations, even greater than that perpetuated by Jay Gatsby. There is a certain duality, he concludes, between the study of Gatsby in high schools all over the nation and the author’s life becoming “a legend like that of Poe or even that of Davy Crockett.”{{sfn|Batchelor|2013|p=78}} }}

{{quote|What is more beautiful than the landscape of loss? What is more heartbreaking, more haunting, more romantic? F. Scott Fitzgerald saw the world as a place of unbearable beauty and unlimited glamour. He saw it as illuminated by the glory of the natural landscape, by the glitter of the people, and by the perilous, irresistible pull of love. He was a romantic, and the greatest of his writing is charged with feeling and haunted by a longing for something irretrievable.{{sfn|Robinson|2005|p=xi}}}}

What is the cultural context for Hemingway and Fitzgerald in the 1930s? Do

authors reflect the struggles of their age or simply their own struggles? We

would answer both, surely. The economic and social angst of the 1930s—

considerable on any metric—can not easily be divorced from one person’s

psychological angst. We remember that this was the middle of the Great Depression, and although the Great War was two decades previous, another

greater War seemed increasingly inevitable.

On a different level, the 18th Amendment had been repealed in December 1933, so alcohol was once more legal in America. Ironically, Hampl points out that, just as Fitzgerald’s “Crack-Up” articles were appearing, the first Alcoholics Anonymous groups were beginning to meet. There was no causal relationship, but as Hampl suggests, “no cultural change happens in a vacuum”, at the very least, there was “a shared landscape.” {{sfn|Hampl|2012|pp=108}} Through these AA groups, America was introduced to a new kind of secular confessional, a different kind of personal storytelling—one that nearly a century later is still very much with us.¹⁹

What of the phrase “nervous breakdown” and the metaphor “crack-up”? A useful article, “Nervous Breakdown in 20th-Century American Culture” by Megan Barke and others, shows how the term opens “an interesting window on pervasive anxieties” {{sfn|Barke|2002|pp=565}}. The phrase had been introduced in 1901 by Albert Adams in a “technical treatise, addressed to physicians,” but he used it with a decidedly “mechanistic emphasis.” {{sfn|Barke|2002|pp=568}} The article continues,

{{quote|Adam’s specific physical arguments had little impact, but his term quickly added to the lexicon available to discuss nervous ailments. Attention to ‘shell shock’ in World War I provided an additional ingredient, and by the 1920s, along with continued use of neurasthenia and stress or strain, nervous breakdown had

clearly become part of a standard American vocabulary. {{sfn|Barke|2002|pp=568|}} }}

They suggest that earlier generations often masked their anxieties by more

freely using opiates, but that particular escape from stress was increasingly

blocked from the 1980s onward.²⁰ As we have said, there was plenty of angst

going around. The term nervous breakdown “began to cover a wide range of definitions,” embracing “a multiplicity of symptoms." {{sfn|Barke|2002|pp=569}} The very vagueness of the term no doubt increased its usefulness. While there were attempts to distinguish between mild and severe cases, such rational evaluations were not always successful: “Yet many descriptions of nervous breakdown belied this rational progression, insisting that the phenomenon always involved terrible pain: as F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in ‘The

Crack-Up,’ ‘Every act of life from the morning tooth-brush to the friend at

dinner had become an effort’.” {{sfn|Barke|2002|pp=570}}  

Gradually, the usefulness of the term nervous breakdown—and the associated metaphor of a “crack-up”—diminished in American culture. In part, this was due to the impact of World War II, Korea and Vietnam, which increased understanding of the psychological effects of trauma on soldiers— and on their families. {{sfn|Barke|2002|pp=577}} In part, this was also due to a new series of drugs, including tranquillizers and antidepressants, available by the 1950s. In 1952, the American Psychiatric Association produced their first ''Diagnostic and Statistical Manual''(DSM I). “Nervous breakdown,” the authors tell us, “was never listed.” {{sfn|Barke|2002|pp=578}} They conclude, “Nervous breakdown’s history and its continued currency suggest a fascinating undercurrent to American worries about worry in the 20th century.” {sfn|Barke|2002|pp=580}}

It seems undeniable that both Hemingway and Fit

. . .

{{reflist|15em}}

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# 1{{cite book |last=Baker |first=Carlos |date=1972 |title=Hemingway: The Writer as Artist |publisher=Princeton UP |ref=harv}}

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# 2{{cite journal |last1=Barke |first1=Megan |last2=Fribush |first2=Rebecca |last3=Stearns |first3=Peter N. |date=2000|title=Nervous Breakdown in 20th Century American Culture |journal=Journal of Social History |volume=33 |issue=3 |pages=565-584 |ref=harv}}

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# 3{{cite journal |last=Batchelor |first=Bob |date=2013|title=Visions of the American Dream: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Bob Dylan, and Norman Mailer Probe at the Heart of the National Idea |journal=The Mailer Review |volume=7 |issue=1 |pages=74-89 |ref=harv}}