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.
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, 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.
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.
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.
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.
That it was a story of an elderly man, with one last chance at greatness, who sees it slip away between his fingers, never quite really within his grasp, may remind us that his most successful works were those with a vaguely autobiographical flavor - and a sense of inexorable tragedy.
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, 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.
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.
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.
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.
That it was a story of an elderly man, with one last chance at greatness, who sees it slip away between his fingers, never quite really within his grasp, may remind us that his most successful works were those with a vaguely autobiographical flavor - and a sense of inexorable tragedy.
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 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 site Famous American Authors . He also keeps tabs on the hottest shows in sophisticated television: catch his insightful articles at the Don Draper Haircut site.
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