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The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Reflections: Difference between revisions
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{{DISPLAYTITLE:<span style="font-size:22px;">''The Mailer Review''/Volume 4, 2010/</span>Reflections}} | |||
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{{dc|dc=T|he seeds of an emphasis}} on [[Norman Mailer]] and Ernest Hemingway in ''[[The Mailer Review]]'' have been present for a long time. I have been teaching and writing about Ernest Hemingway for more than three decades and powerful connections between him and Norman Mailer are obvious to anyone versed in twentieth-century American literature. Hemingway was one of a small group of American writers to dominate the first half of the last century. Mailer belongs to a select handful of writers who changed the literary landscape of the second half of the past century. Further, Mailer was a public intellectual, a prolific biographer, and a social and political chronicler, covering six sets of political conventions and writing about every president from Franklin Delano Roosevelt on. | |||
[[File:Hem-Mailer-sm.jpg|thumb|500px]] | |||
Both artists, from their beginnings, were intensely interested in fundamental human struggles: life and death, war and peace, the power and mysteries of sex, love and pain, joy and depression, consciousness of the void and its brief respites, human entropy, and the infinite enigmas of life. Both men were cultural iconoclasts, rabidly interested in “manly” sports, especially boxing and bullfighting. Both men loved French culture, lived in Paris, visited it often, knew the French novel, and were revered by the French. | Both artists, from their beginnings, were intensely interested in fundamental human struggles: life and death, war and peace, the power and mysteries of sex, love and pain, joy and depression, consciousness of the void and its brief respites, human entropy, and the infinite enigmas of life. Both men were cultural iconoclasts, rabidly interested in “manly” sports, especially boxing and bullfighting. Both men loved French culture, lived in Paris, visited it often, knew the French novel, and were revered by the French. | ||
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There is no question that Hemingway was a significant influence on Mailer, as several essays in this volume articulate. Was Mailer influential on Hemingway, even in a limited way? There is no evidence to support any direct influence, but Hemingway was certainly aware of young Mailer’s talents. There were common interests and experiences that bound these literary warriors. Both men became international celebrities at roughly the same age. Hemingway was twenty-six when ''The Sun Also Rises'' was published, establishing him as a major American writer of international stature. Mailer was twenty-five when ''The Naked and the Dead'' ignited worldwide interest in this rising star. Mailer’s chronicle of the Pacific theatre of World War II remained number one on the ''New York Times'' bestseller list for an amazing sixty-two weeks. These prolific American treasures were a generation apart in age. (Mailer lived twenty-three years longer than Hemingway, surely resulting in a major difference in their outputs.) Yet Hemingway was only forty-nine when he learned of the stunning success of Mailer’s first novel — and a war novel no less. Hemingway’s war fiction (''A Farewell to Arms'', ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'', and ''Across the River and Into the Trees'') clearly plays a major role in the Hemingway canon and this love of common subject matter was an intellectual and aesthetic binding force early on. Sadly, the two lions never met. What might have been? | There is no question that Hemingway was a significant influence on Mailer, as several essays in this volume articulate. Was Mailer influential on Hemingway, even in a limited way? There is no evidence to support any direct influence, but Hemingway was certainly aware of young Mailer’s talents. There were common interests and experiences that bound these literary warriors. Both men became international celebrities at roughly the same age. Hemingway was twenty-six when ''The Sun Also Rises'' was published, establishing him as a major American writer of international stature. Mailer was twenty-five when ''The Naked and the Dead'' ignited worldwide interest in this rising star. Mailer’s chronicle of the Pacific theatre of World War II remained number one on the ''New York Times'' bestseller list for an amazing sixty-two weeks. These prolific American treasures were a generation apart in age. (Mailer lived twenty-three years longer than Hemingway, surely resulting in a major difference in their outputs.) Yet Hemingway was only forty-nine when he learned of the stunning success of Mailer’s first novel — and a war novel no less. Hemingway’s war fiction (''A Farewell to Arms'', ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'', and ''Across the River and Into the Trees'') clearly plays a major role in the Hemingway canon and this love of common subject matter was an intellectual and aesthetic binding force early on. Sadly, the two lions never met. What might have been? | ||
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{{Review|state=expanded}} | {{Review|state=expanded}} | ||
{{DEFAULTSORT:Reflestions}} | |||
[[Category:Editorials]] | [[Category:Editorials]] | ||
[[Category:Written by Phillip Sipiora]] | [[Category:Written by Phillip Sipiora]] | ||