The reader may feel a bit incredulous at suggesting an early 20th century writer be memorialized by a term which only came into common usage a number of years after his death. However, I hope to demonstrate that Hemingway was indeed the template replicated by such a large number of the rock stars who crashed and burned after meteoric ascents, in the decades just subsequent to Hemingway's death in 1961.
Hemingway well earned his prominent place on our list of top 20 most famous American authors . His literary achievements alone would earn him his ranking. Yet, there is no disputing that Hemingway as icon far transcended his literary legacy in casting the mold of 20st century artistic celebrity.
He was only yet in his 20s when Hemingway received expansive critical accolades following the publication of his anguished and restless novella The Sun Also Rises. This was already pretty heady stuff for such a young man. Yet, only a few years after that he became a bestselling author, on the strength of his novel, A Farewell to Arms. Furthermore, he had yet further cemented his critical acclaim with two short story collections in the years just before and following Farewell. He was widely acknowledged as having reinvented the short story, with his moving, epiphany-inspired tales, that captured the tiny tragedies and lingering scars of life in tales such as A Day's Wait, A Clean and Well-Lighted Place and Hills Like White Elephants.
This remarkable accomplishment of simultaneous critical and commercial success became the dream of generation after generation of artistically inclined youth throughout the 20th century. And to have achieved all this while still in fact a very young man was the almost fairytale-like part of the story. There were a variety of factors that converged to allow for his success.
To begin with, similarly incidentally to many of the iconic rock stars of the 70s-80s - think of David Bowie, David Byrne and Madonna - Hemingway had an astute aptitude for co-opting tropes and techniques of avant garde and experimental artists. He learned important lessons about language and narrative from those experimenting outside the mainstream. Yet, like Bowie or Madonna, had a knack for understanding how to apply those insights while maintaining an appeal to a mass audience. Ezra Pound, James Joyce and Gertrude Stein, were among the experimental writers Hemingway learned from, but managed to capture in a way domesticated for popular tastes.
And capture it, he did. Indeed, it is not too much of an exaggeration to compare the way that rock and roll tapped into the rebellious idealism of the highly educated and materially privileged 1960s baby boom generation, with the way that Hemingway's stories touched a chord in the sullen ennui and restlessness of the post-WWI zeitgeist. Those who came to be called the lost generation found in Hemingway someone who sang their song.
Meteoric success at a young age, though, poses its challenges: how does one repeat the feat? What do you do for an encore? He did have some modest "hits" in the 30s, capped off with the success of For Whom the Bell Tolls in 1940. Perhaps not a work equal to what he'd accomplished previously, but it sold. The 40s dragged out though as long a decade in which Hemingway's publications became less and less impressive and relevant.
Despite this declining regard of his writing, Hemingway if anything was an increasingly renowned household name. Now, though, it was more his non-writing exploits that seemed to capture the public imagination. Hemingway seemed to be well aware of his celebrity status and made no small effort to flame the fires of public fascination. He cultivated connections with leading gossip columnists and there were always photographs for the glossy magazines when he was on one of his big game hunting or fishing excursions.
It might come as a surprise for many people today to know this, but Hemingway was endorsing commercial products, such as pens, airlines and beer, long before the actors and athlete's with whom we associate such activity today. Additionally, Hemingway was a frequent source of letters to both literary and other publications, providing him the occasion to refine his well honed image as the proverbial man's man and the anti-intellectual's intellectual.
There certainly were those, even among his contemporaries, who claimed that Hemingway had grown a sad and tired parody of himself by the mid-point of the century. Again, it wouldn't be too overstretching an analogy to compare this perception of him as resembling the attitude today to 60s and 70s rock and pop bands, grey and flabby, that cash in on their past glories with nostalgia tours of casinos and community halls.
In Hemingway's case, however, one last triumph was still awaiting. Imagine those hanging-on senior citizen rock bands that, instead, of just endlessly playing the feel good greatest hits, actually had the brashness to insist on playing new material. And, to everyone's amazement, produced yet one more gold record.
Just when almost all critical and even commercial opinion seemed to be on the side that as a writer, Hemingway was over, he struck one more time, with an act of literary accomplishment that some still consider the greatest of his long career. Suddenly, in 1952, with the publication of The Old Man and the Sea, taking the world of letters and literature by storm, Earnest Hemingway was artistically relevant once more. This resurgence in the autumn of his life was soon after rewarded with the Nobel Prize in literature, which finally cemented his legend.
Yet, in that tragic way in which Hemingway's work always told more about him than perhaps he realized, one can't help noting the theme of this last great novella. It tells the story of an elderly man who sees his last hope for greatness slip away out of his grasp. The moment of its apparent possession revealed as but a mirage. By the 50s, there was something tragically broken in the heart of Hemingway.
As if adding the finishing touch to that template of the tragic rock star, which he created for subsequent generations, in 1961, in an isolated home, Earnest Hemingway's final chapter came to an end in a suicidal fog of depression and substance abuse. The literary world lost one of its giants and artistic aspiring youth for decades to come inherited the model for tragic artistic genius which would endure throughout the 20th century.
And in all likelihood does so still.
Hemingway well earned his prominent place on our list of top 20 most famous American authors . His literary achievements alone would earn him his ranking. Yet, there is no disputing that Hemingway as icon far transcended his literary legacy in casting the mold of 20st century artistic celebrity.
He was only yet in his 20s when Hemingway received expansive critical accolades following the publication of his anguished and restless novella The Sun Also Rises. This was already pretty heady stuff for such a young man. Yet, only a few years after that he became a bestselling author, on the strength of his novel, A Farewell to Arms. Furthermore, he had yet further cemented his critical acclaim with two short story collections in the years just before and following Farewell. He was widely acknowledged as having reinvented the short story, with his moving, epiphany-inspired tales, that captured the tiny tragedies and lingering scars of life in tales such as A Day's Wait, A Clean and Well-Lighted Place and Hills Like White Elephants.
This remarkable accomplishment of simultaneous critical and commercial success became the dream of generation after generation of artistically inclined youth throughout the 20th century. And to have achieved all this while still in fact a very young man was the almost fairytale-like part of the story. There were a variety of factors that converged to allow for his success.
To begin with, similarly incidentally to many of the iconic rock stars of the 70s-80s - think of David Bowie, David Byrne and Madonna - Hemingway had an astute aptitude for co-opting tropes and techniques of avant garde and experimental artists. He learned important lessons about language and narrative from those experimenting outside the mainstream. Yet, like Bowie or Madonna, had a knack for understanding how to apply those insights while maintaining an appeal to a mass audience. Ezra Pound, James Joyce and Gertrude Stein, were among the experimental writers Hemingway learned from, but managed to capture in a way domesticated for popular tastes.
And capture it, he did. Indeed, it is not too much of an exaggeration to compare the way that rock and roll tapped into the rebellious idealism of the highly educated and materially privileged 1960s baby boom generation, with the way that Hemingway's stories touched a chord in the sullen ennui and restlessness of the post-WWI zeitgeist. Those who came to be called the lost generation found in Hemingway someone who sang their song.
Meteoric success at a young age, though, poses its challenges: how does one repeat the feat? What do you do for an encore? He did have some modest "hits" in the 30s, capped off with the success of For Whom the Bell Tolls in 1940. Perhaps not a work equal to what he'd accomplished previously, but it sold. The 40s dragged out though as long a decade in which Hemingway's publications became less and less impressive and relevant.
Despite this declining regard of his writing, Hemingway if anything was an increasingly renowned household name. Now, though, it was more his non-writing exploits that seemed to capture the public imagination. Hemingway seemed to be well aware of his celebrity status and made no small effort to flame the fires of public fascination. He cultivated connections with leading gossip columnists and there were always photographs for the glossy magazines when he was on one of his big game hunting or fishing excursions.
It might come as a surprise for many people today to know this, but Hemingway was endorsing commercial products, such as pens, airlines and beer, long before the actors and athlete's with whom we associate such activity today. Additionally, Hemingway was a frequent source of letters to both literary and other publications, providing him the occasion to refine his well honed image as the proverbial man's man and the anti-intellectual's intellectual.
There certainly were those, even among his contemporaries, who claimed that Hemingway had grown a sad and tired parody of himself by the mid-point of the century. Again, it wouldn't be too overstretching an analogy to compare this perception of him as resembling the attitude today to 60s and 70s rock and pop bands, grey and flabby, that cash in on their past glories with nostalgia tours of casinos and community halls.
In Hemingway's case, however, one last triumph was still awaiting. Imagine those hanging-on senior citizen rock bands that, instead, of just endlessly playing the feel good greatest hits, actually had the brashness to insist on playing new material. And, to everyone's amazement, produced yet one more gold record.
Just when almost all critical and even commercial opinion seemed to be on the side that as a writer, Hemingway was over, he struck one more time, with an act of literary accomplishment that some still consider the greatest of his long career. Suddenly, in 1952, with the publication of The Old Man and the Sea, taking the world of letters and literature by storm, Earnest Hemingway was artistically relevant once more. This resurgence in the autumn of his life was soon after rewarded with the Nobel Prize in literature, which finally cemented his legend.
Yet, in that tragic way in which Hemingway's work always told more about him than perhaps he realized, one can't help noting the theme of this last great novella. It tells the story of an elderly man who sees his last hope for greatness slip away out of his grasp. The moment of its apparent possession revealed as but a mirage. By the 50s, there was something tragically broken in the heart of Hemingway.
As if adding the finishing touch to that template of the tragic rock star, which he created for subsequent generations, in 1961, in an isolated home, Earnest Hemingway's final chapter came to an end in a suicidal fog of depression and substance abuse. The literary world lost one of its giants and artistic aspiring youth for decades to come inherited the model for tragic artistic genius which would endure throughout the 20th century.
And in all likelihood does so still.
About the Author:
To stay in the know on the scoop about American writers, living and breathing or not, you need to follow Mickey Jhonny's work at the blog Famous American Authors . He also follows the hottest shows in sophisticated television: catch his insightful articles at the Don Draper Haircut blog.
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