Don't be misled by the fact that he died several years before the term came into vogue. Earnest Hemingway was indeed a rock star. Not only metaphorically, but his life and career established the template for the life and career of the tragic rock star in subsequent decades: setting the standard for both success aspirations and tragic crash.
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.
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.
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.
Such youthful meteoric success though, much as it's pined for by artistically inclined youth, generation after generation in the 20th century, has a heavy price to pay. For, where does one go from there; what is the encore? After the publication of For Whom the Bell Tolls, in 1940, a work already short of his youthful achievements, Hemingway's publications throughout the rest of the decade sank into an ever more uneasy reception from the public and critics alike.
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.
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.
If Hemingway's story had ended there, it would still have been the template for the future rock star, but it turned out he had one more moment of greatness in him - and thereby raised the bar to a mythical height for those who would follow him. It was almost as if one of those geriatric rock bands had the audacity to insist on doing original material though they were being booed off every stage when refusing to just play oldies and goldies. Then, remarkably, they had 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.
And yet, there was something too true in the story, as there always was in Hemingway's greatest work. This story of an elderly man, near the end of life, who experiences his last grasp at greatness slip fleetingly through his fingers, perhaps told us more about the tragic heart of the legend than many wanted to hear.
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 indeed still does.
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.
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.
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.
Such youthful meteoric success though, much as it's pined for by artistically inclined youth, generation after generation in the 20th century, has a heavy price to pay. For, where does one go from there; what is the encore? After the publication of For Whom the Bell Tolls, in 1940, a work already short of his youthful achievements, Hemingway's publications throughout the rest of the decade sank into an ever more uneasy reception from the public and critics alike.
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.
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.
If Hemingway's story had ended there, it would still have been the template for the future rock star, but it turned out he had one more moment of greatness in him - and thereby raised the bar to a mythical height for those who would follow him. It was almost as if one of those geriatric rock bands had the audacity to insist on doing original material though they were being booed off every stage when refusing to just play oldies and goldies. Then, remarkably, they had 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.
And yet, there was something too true in the story, as there always was in Hemingway's greatest work. This story of an elderly man, near the end of life, who experiences his last grasp at greatness slip fleetingly through his fingers, perhaps told us more about the tragic heart of the legend than many wanted to hear.
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 indeed still does.
About the Author:
To keep up on the scoop about U.S. writers, dead or alive, you need to follow 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.