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.
An infinitesimally small number of artists ever achieve such heights and even fewer in the first decade of adulthood. Many things contributed to this sensation that was the young Hemingway.
To begin with, reminiscent of many of the most successful rock artists who followed him in the later decades of the century - think of David Bowie, David Byrne and Madonna - Hemingway exhibited a remarkable capacity to draw valuable lessons from avant garde and experimental artists, while having a deep intuition about how to apply these lessons in ways that remained accessible to mainstream literary society. For Hemingway the important influences included Ezra Pound, James Joyce and Gertrude Stein. He knew how to capture a lesson in narrative or language from the avant garde in a way that domesticated it for the mainstream.
And capture it, he did. In a way quite similar to how rock and roll captured the rebelliousness and idealism of the highly educated and materially privileged 1960s baby boom generation, Hemingway's stories captured the sullen ennui and restlessness of the post-WWI cohort that came to be known as the lost generation.
Like, though, any artist who has such early meteoric success, replicating it can be a difficult thing to do. Though he had some modest "hits" along the way, it is not unfair to say he never quite reached the same heights literarily again after the early 30s. Probably only For Whom the Bell Tolls approached his early breakthrough works.
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.
Rather far ahead of his time, he was the pitchman for a number of consumer goods, including a pen, airline and a beer. Additionally there was a regular supply of letters from Hemingway to literary and other publications in which he contributed to the continual building and shaping of his persona and mystique as man's man and anti-intellectual 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.
For Hemingway, though, at least artistically, the end wasn't quite that tragic. Almost like one of those hanging-on senior citizen rock bands, with the audacity to actually try out a new song, rather than pandering endlessly to the clamoring for greatest hits, who suddenly found themselves with a new platinum record.
Just when it seemed that the world had seen all the original and powerful work an elderly Hemingway had to offer, suddenly, in 1952, he did it again. The Old Man and the Sea took the literary world by storm and once again made Hemingway artistically relevant.
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.
Like so many of the rock stars that followed the template he forged, in 1961, in an isolated home, Hemingway came to his demise, in a suicidal fog of depression and substance abuse. In the process not only did we lose one of the most important artists of the 20th century, but the one who invented the model of artistic celebrity that would mold the dreams of aspiring youth throughout the rest of the 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.
An infinitesimally small number of artists ever achieve such heights and even fewer in the first decade of adulthood. Many things contributed to this sensation that was the young Hemingway.
To begin with, reminiscent of many of the most successful rock artists who followed him in the later decades of the century - think of David Bowie, David Byrne and Madonna - Hemingway exhibited a remarkable capacity to draw valuable lessons from avant garde and experimental artists, while having a deep intuition about how to apply these lessons in ways that remained accessible to mainstream literary society. For Hemingway the important influences included Ezra Pound, James Joyce and Gertrude Stein. He knew how to capture a lesson in narrative or language from the avant garde in a way that domesticated it for the mainstream.
And capture it, he did. In a way quite similar to how rock and roll captured the rebelliousness and idealism of the highly educated and materially privileged 1960s baby boom generation, Hemingway's stories captured the sullen ennui and restlessness of the post-WWI cohort that came to be known as the lost generation.
Like, though, any artist who has such early meteoric success, replicating it can be a difficult thing to do. Though he had some modest "hits" along the way, it is not unfair to say he never quite reached the same heights literarily again after the early 30s. Probably only For Whom the Bell Tolls approached his early breakthrough works.
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.
Rather far ahead of his time, he was the pitchman for a number of consumer goods, including a pen, airline and a beer. Additionally there was a regular supply of letters from Hemingway to literary and other publications in which he contributed to the continual building and shaping of his persona and mystique as man's man and anti-intellectual 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.
For Hemingway, though, at least artistically, the end wasn't quite that tragic. Almost like one of those hanging-on senior citizen rock bands, with the audacity to actually try out a new song, rather than pandering endlessly to the clamoring for greatest hits, who suddenly found themselves with a new platinum record.
Just when it seemed that the world had seen all the original and powerful work an elderly Hemingway had to offer, suddenly, in 1952, he did it again. The Old Man and the Sea took the literary world by storm and once again made Hemingway artistically relevant.
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.
Like so many of the rock stars that followed the template he forged, in 1961, in an isolated home, Hemingway came to his demise, in a suicidal fog of depression and substance abuse. In the process not only did we lose one of the most important artists of the 20th century, but the one who invented the model of artistic celebrity that would mold the dreams of aspiring youth throughout the rest of the century.
And in all likelihood does so still.
About the Author:
To keep up on the scoop about U.S. writers, living and breathing or not, check out Mickey Jhonny's work at the blog Famous American Authors . He also follows the trends in sophisticated television: catch his insightful articles at the Don Draper Haircut site.
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