At first glance it might seem a bit of cultural dissonance to refer to one of the most famous American authors by a term that only came into popularity some years after he died. Yet, in many ways, Hemingway's life and career was the template for so many to be called rock stars in the decades immediately following his death in 1961.
We've placed Hemingway high on our list of top 20 most famous American authors . He earned that rank on the strength of his contribution to English language literature. Yet, even with all that, there's no denying that his fame and its very nature superseded even that literary legacy. He made the mold for artistic celebrity that defined the 20th century.
Still in his 20s he rocketed to critical acclaim with his anguished and restless novella The Sun Also Rises. Just a couple years later, still basking in his critical cache, he also became a bestselling author, with the publication of A Farewell to Arms. The latter was sandwiched between a pair of story collections that were so remarkable that it is fair to say that Hemingway singlehandedly reinvented the short story. Stories like A Day's Wait, A Clean and Well-Lighted Place and Hills Like White Elephants were heartbreaking snapshots of life's tiny emotional wounds and scars.
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.
For one thing, like so many of the most successful rock artists to follow in the decades soon after his death - think of David Bowie, David Byrne and Madonna - he showed an astute ability to absorb valuable lessons from avant garde and experimental artists, outside the mainstream, and yet recognized how to leverage those insights while still appealing to a mass audience. In Hemingway's case, he drew from the work of Ezra Pound, James Joyce and Gertrude Stein, among others, while still crafting stories that captured the spirit of his time.
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.
Nonetheless, his name never ceased being on the tips of people's tongues and his private life was a source of seemingly endless fascination in the popular press. And Hemingway clearly was aware of this fascination and took no small effort in nurturing it along. He sought out and maintained cordial associations with influential gossip columnists of the time. And his much celebrated exploits in the hunting or fishing of big game never failed to produce photographic fodder for the pages of the era's glossy magazines.
He appeared in commercial advertisements endorsing a number of consumer products. And he regularly submitted letters to literary and other publications in which he primped and primed the well sculpted image of the man's man and the 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.
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.
When it appeared to all-the-world that Hemingway had nothing original or important left to say, the literary world was swept away with the 1952 publication of his heartbreaking novella, The Old Man and the Sea. Amazingly, he had done it again; once more Hemingway had become artistically relevant. No doubt largely a function of this last great hurrah, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature, perhaps adding the final piece to the Hemingway 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.
We've placed Hemingway high on our list of top 20 most famous American authors . He earned that rank on the strength of his contribution to English language literature. Yet, even with all that, there's no denying that his fame and its very nature superseded even that literary legacy. He made the mold for artistic celebrity that defined the 20th century.
Still in his 20s he rocketed to critical acclaim with his anguished and restless novella The Sun Also Rises. Just a couple years later, still basking in his critical cache, he also became a bestselling author, with the publication of A Farewell to Arms. The latter was sandwiched between a pair of story collections that were so remarkable that it is fair to say that Hemingway singlehandedly reinvented the short story. Stories like A Day's Wait, A Clean and Well-Lighted Place and Hills Like White Elephants were heartbreaking snapshots of life's tiny emotional wounds and scars.
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.
For one thing, like so many of the most successful rock artists to follow in the decades soon after his death - think of David Bowie, David Byrne and Madonna - he showed an astute ability to absorb valuable lessons from avant garde and experimental artists, outside the mainstream, and yet recognized how to leverage those insights while still appealing to a mass audience. In Hemingway's case, he drew from the work of Ezra Pound, James Joyce and Gertrude Stein, among others, while still crafting stories that captured the spirit of his time.
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.
Nonetheless, his name never ceased being on the tips of people's tongues and his private life was a source of seemingly endless fascination in the popular press. And Hemingway clearly was aware of this fascination and took no small effort in nurturing it along. He sought out and maintained cordial associations with influential gossip columnists of the time. And his much celebrated exploits in the hunting or fishing of big game never failed to produce photographic fodder for the pages of the era's glossy magazines.
He appeared in commercial advertisements endorsing a number of consumer products. And he regularly submitted letters to literary and other publications in which he primped and primed the well sculpted image of the man's man and the 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.
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.
When it appeared to all-the-world that Hemingway had nothing original or important left to say, the literary world was swept away with the 1952 publication of his heartbreaking novella, The Old Man and the Sea. Amazingly, he had done it again; once more Hemingway had become artistically relevant. No doubt largely a function of this last great hurrah, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature, perhaps adding the final piece to the Hemingway 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 U.S. writers, living and breathing or not, you need to follow Mickey Jhonny's work at the blog Famous American Authors . He also keeps tabs on the hottest shows in sophisticated television: catch his great work at the Don Draper Haircut blog.
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