Hemingway and Trauma

ALL-TIME AMERICAN WRITERS TOURNAMENT

Editor’s note: We’ll return to “live” coverage of the Tournament as soon as possible. Until then we’ll be making occasional posts regarding possible or likely participants in the tournament.
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INTERESTING to me is the way Ernest Hemingway so aggressively pushed himself to partake of experience, of the world and life– part of his process of self-creation as a writer.

Instinctively Hemingway knew that to be a great writer he had to put himself out there– beyond safety. As Jack London did before ever considering becoming a writer.

(NO writer worked harder at turning himself into a great writer, with all that goes into it, than Ernest Hemingway.)

Examine the most striking most emotional most vulnerable or compassionate artists– those more in tune with the universe than the run-of-the-mill rest of us– Van Gogh, Beethoven, Dickens, Dostoevsky, even Kurt Cobain– and you’ll see they experienced, at some point of their lives, extreme trauma and emotional pain.

Trauma is at the center of Hemingway’s best work, from the early short stories to his first two masterful novels, The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms.

Does this apply in any way to writers today? Is it an argument for putting oneself out there?

It’s not an argument for playing it safe. The standard route of schooling, certifications, workshops, seminars; of following the herd; has produced a great amount of competence, even talent. But no literary greatness.

It’s why we at New Pop Lit have looked for writers outside the established system, knowing they may have a deeper take on reality. Those who’ve had the toughest lives, faced the most hardship, bounced around the most– whose writing might appear offbeat or hyper-emotional or bizarre– might have a greater store of what some call talent or even have some of what others call genius.

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New Pop Lit Writers Combine Day One

ALL-TIME AMERICAN WRITERS TOURNAMENT

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A bus pulled up at the gate to the training camp. Exiting were thirty-some American writers, most of them not yet selected to the big tourney and wanting to prove their qualifications. Joining them were a handful of the already selected– Ernest Hemingway most prominently; he of the famous grin– out to have a good time but also confident they could prove themselves in any field; against any assortment of literary competition.

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Also among the group were our two correspondents, Emily Dickinson and Norman Mailer, the first already in the big event, the other desiring very much to be in it.

Jonathan Franzen, one of the last to step off the bus, blinked at the piercing sunlight.

(Jonathan Franzen.)
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Awaiting the group were the Combine’s Director and Assistant Director. Count Leo Tolstoy wore a brown cassock, with an enormous Orthodox cross hung around his neck. Dark-browed, bearded, and tall, with Slavic features, he was a formidable-looking man, with formidable-looking eyes.

(Kramskoy portrait of Tolstoy.)
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His shorter assistant, Vladimir, appeared equally Russian, but was fairer in hair and complexion, and stockier. More akin to a blond bulldog. He wore white shorts and a white t-shirt. Around his neck was a whistle. Facially he resembled a particular Russian president.

They scrutinized the American writers with curiosity and some scorn. Neither of them was easily impressed. Their attitude toward the Combine was, “You’re here to impress us. Show us what you can do.”

The writers, awaiting instructions, broke into small groups. Ernest Hemingway stood with his friend F. Scott Fitzgerald, who he’d convinced to sign up for this.

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“It’ll be easy to stand out in this crowd, Scott,” Ernest assured his friend while speaking out of the side of his mouth. “The others are mugs.”

Hemingway carried a football under one arm while shadowboxing with imaginary opponents, hoping the Coach (he saw the Count as a coach) would notice. Hemingway paused and slapped Scott on the back, almost knocking him down.

“You will not need that,” Vladimir said to Hemingway.

“What?” the writer asked.

“That!” Vladimir said, pointing to the football, which Hemingway quickly placed on the ground.

Next to Hemingway, Scott looked delicate. Terrified but determined. The perpetual scrub team player eager to make good. His blue eyes considered. He was not without talent. Whether it would impress the formidable count/coach as well as the scouts and analysts was another matter.

“Line up, please,” Vladimir instructed, blowing his whistle twice.

Count Leo stepped from behind his assistant. He perused the lot of them, black eyes considering. Tiny Emily, scrawny Mary Gaitskill and Joyce Carol Oates, and unimpressively short Truman Capote, Scott Fitzgerald and Norman Mailer, among others, were almost beneath his notice. They didn’t look like great writers. “Clerks,” he muttered in Russian. To his mind it’d be a task to coach them up.

(Joyce Carol Oates.)
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Two in the crowd appeared to have potential– Hemingway, who he’d heard much about, and another tall writer, Franzen, who’d been advertised to the Count as “The American Tolstoy.” Leo observed the transparent arrogance of both men and thought, “Good.”

The Count murmured in Russian. Vladimir translated in a loud voice.

“Count Leo has your submitted manuscripts. He will assess them before deciding your testing regimen. We are here to evaluate your suitability to be presented to the world as great writers.”

Much sarcastic emphasis on the word “great,” as if only Russians could truly be great at the art. It was a voice of authority. Vladimir told the group to stow their gear in their cabins. They were to reassemble at the nearby training ground in precisely one hour. He blew the whistle sharply, twice, to show he meant what he said. The writers scattered.

(Ernest Hemingway.)
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(Next: “Combine Day One” continued.)

Writers Tournament: #7 Seeds

ALL-TIME AMERICAN WRITERS TOURNAMENT

(Stephen Crane.)
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Our latest entrants into the big event:

A.)  Stephen Crane.

For pure writing talent, few American writers match the author of The Red Badge of Courage, “The Open Boat,” and other classics. Decades before Hemingway, Crane saw writing visually, like a painting. His works are expressionist explosions of color and emotion.

(Art: “Evening Sun” by Otto Dix.)

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B.)  Carl Sandburg.

Sandburg’s poetry reflected his home base of Chicago: rough-hewn, proletarian, and real. A voice of the Great Depression of the Thirties. An American cultural giant in the Fifties. Thoroughly populist, his clear-but-strong poems were accessible to everyone.

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C.)  J.D. Salinger.

He’s most widely known for his assigned-in-high school study of adolescence, Catcher in the Rye. But his best work is Nine Stories— nine well-crafted modernist gems of fiction synthesizing those twin pillars of American literature, Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. One of the jewels contains the best short story title ever: “For Esme with Love and Squalor.”

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D.)  Kenneth Rexroth.

A forerunner of, and large influence on, the Beats, this San Francisco poet’s uncompromising work was more accomplished. Would Ginsberg’s “Howl” have been possible without the example of Rexroth’s powerful masterpiece, “Thou Shalt Not Kill”?

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The Macho Fifties

ALL-TIME AMERICAN WRITERS TOURNAMENT

In the wake of Ernest Hemingway, who made the idea of the Great American Novelist respectable– even macho– the 1950’s was the heyday of the male American novelist. The decade showcased a score of ambitious new male authors, if no great ones, all pursuing the traditional novel.

Among them, James Baldwin, Saul Bellow, John Cheever, Ralph Ellison, James Jones, Norman Mailer, James Michener, J.D. Salinger, Irwin Shaw, William Styron, Gore Vidal, and Herman Wouk. At the end of the decade but ably writing about it, J.F. Powers and Richard Yates.

(Throw in playwrights Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, William Inge; poets from John Berryman to Kenneth Rexroth to the Beats; and short fiction writers like Truman Capote, and the list becomes more impressive.)

The role of novelist was thought of not as an effete pursuit but as masculine as working construction– and as fast a road to celebrity as pop singer or baseball player. A legion of men leaving military service in particular wanted to be novelists. They wanted to be Hemingway.

Not every one of these men can make the tourney brackets.

Should any of them?

 

Appreciation #6

“Ernest Hemingway” by Samuel Stevens

(Time cover by Waldo Peirce.)

There is probably no writer more controversial than Ernest Hemingway, attacked by academia as a misogynist, while others see him as a talentless hack with an inflated reputation. Yet his work endures despite all of it.

Hemingway was able to show deep emotion with his stripped-down style, changing American literature in the process. His novel The Sun Also Rises captures the relationship between men and women in such a way that few other writers have been able to do. He was also a master of the short story, demonstrated in “Soldiers Home,” “The Killers,” and “A Clean, Well Lighted Place” among many others.

He was not a perfect man, nor even a perfect writer– but who is? His myth has lived on more than who he truly was, laid bare in his novels and short stories. He is also an archetype of American success, spending years in obscurity among the Paris avantgarde before working his way up to literary fame.

Many have tried to imitate him, but there will only ever be one Ernest Hemingway.
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Samuel Stevens’s last story for New Pop Lit was “The Vast Conspiracy.”

Who Is Finnegan?

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WHEN WE PRESENTED our “Hemingway-Fitzgerald Trivia Question” we were fairly confident in our answer. We looked for critical support. We received instead a response from Dr. Scott Donaldson disagreeing with our analysis.

“‘Snobbish Story’ possibly based on E.H., Finnegan definitely not (FSF writing about himself). . .”

Scott Donaldson is THE authority on the two legendary American authors. His works include Hemingway vs. Fitzgerald: The Rise and Fall of a Literary Friendship, plus separate books on both men. Hard to believe he could miss on this story, “Financing Finnegan.” (Or indeed on both stories.)

Who’s right? Who’s wrong? Is F. Scott Fitzgerald writing about himself? Or, instead, as we contend, about his on-and-off friend Ernest Hemingway?

You can read the story here and judge for yourself.
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As for ourselves, further research on the matter confirms our original opinion.

Dr. Donaldson has bought the accepted narrative on F. Scott Fitzgerald. In part, a portrayal of Fitzgerald as victim, with bearish Hemingway as antagonist. This viewpoint is in part attributable to Hemingway himself, and his seemingly unprovoked attacks on Scott in A Moveable Feast. But also to Scott’s “Crack-Up” essays in Esquire.

But again we ask, is Scott “Finnegan”?

At one point in his career he might’ve been. His experiences and one-time standing as a literary wonderboy no doubt informed his view of the character. But at the time he wrote “Finnegan,” nothing about Scott himself any longer fit. And hadn’t fit for a long time.

“Finnegan” is a famous novelist. By contrast, in 1938, for the greater public, Scott Fitzgerald was almost forgotten. He didn’t become a legendary author until the 1950’s, years after his death. In retrospect. No one considered him to be one in 1938. (On the other hand, Hemingway’s standing in 1938 was almost exactly the same as Finnegan’s.)

“Finnegan” has unending money problems– owes his publisher money on advances. Scott Fitzgerald had once been in this situation. But in 1938 he was not working on a novel, had received no advance for one. Instead, in 1937, as described on his Wikipedia page, F. Scott Fitzgerald had “entered into a lucrative exclusive deal with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer” to write screenplays. In 1937 Fitzgerald earned $29,757.87– the equivalent of $540,000.00 today. Over half-a-million dollars. In 1938 when he wrote “Financing Finnegan” he was swimming in money. For anyone alive during the Great Depression it was a near-fortune.

If anything, Scott’s situation fits well not with Finnegan, but the narrator of the tale.

What of Ernest Hemingway?

Again, we have to go back to 1938, when Fitzgerald wrote the story. Hemingway’s latest novel, To Have and Have Not, released in October 1937, had been a giant flop. It was slammed by reviewers, including the New York Times, which said, “this new novel is an empty book.” It was Hemingway’s first novel in eight years. It’s generally regarded by critics today, as it was then, as his worst novel.

As for finances, a glance at Hemingway’s Selected Letters shows he was in continual money trouble– at least as much as Scott had ever been. In part because Hem refused to crank out scores of short stories (or screenplays) purely to earn money. In 1938, after the failure of a long-awaited novel, Hemingway’s financial situation must’ve been particularly precarious.

Anyway you slice it, “Finnegan” is a depiction not of F. Scott Fitzgerald but of his one-time friend, Ernest Hemingway. Still smarting from his buddy’s shot at him in Esquire, Scott used the same forum to subtly even the score. Scott Donaldson didn’t catch it– but the ever-sensitive Ernest would have.

Answer to Trivia Question

ALL-TIME AMERICAN WRITERS TOURNAMENT

Time to give the answer to our Hemingway-Fitzgerald Trivia Question! We asked,

“In what two F. Scott Fitzgerald pop stories was a major character a thinly-disguised version of Ernest Hemingway?”

AFTER WE SENT the question to an array of literary experts, we received responses from two of them reminding us of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Philippe” stories published in Redbook magazine in 1934/35. The chief character Philippe is based on Fitzgerald’s intermittent hero worship of the younger writer. We haven’t read the stories, and don’t know if they’ve been anthologized. Thanks to Dr. Kirk Curnutt and Dr. Scott Donaldson for the information. (They can collect on our original prize of a free beer in Detroit at any time.)
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But while the Philippe answer is technically correct, we were thinking of two other, better known Scott Fitzgerald stories.

The first is “A Snobbish Story,” originally published in the Saturday Evening Post in November of 1930, then later by Scribner’s in a collection, The Basil and Josephine Stories. It’s an excellent story, with dialogue which still bites, between rich girl Josephine and a young Chicago journalist. The characterization of the journalist is superb– there are more than enough clues in it to determine this is a vivid portrayal of the young Ernest Hemingway.

“–his eyes were nearly black, with an intense, passionate light in them; his mouth was sensitive and strongly set.”

The character, John, is described as a large young man. John talks and behaves much like how the early Hemingway must’ve been. Brash, confident, outspoken; “extraordinarily handsome.” “I’m going to be a great writer someday,” he announces.

Josephine and the young man insult each other. She tells him, “I’m going into a convent or else to be a trained nurse in the war.” (The story is set in 1916, when the Great War was raging in Europe.) “Will you enlist in the French army and let me nurse you?”

This is not just a nod to Hemingway, who was famously nursed by a beautiful nurse in that war– it’s an obvious one, given that Hem’s A Farewell to Arms had been published a year before Scott wrote this story, and was still topping best-seller lists. The plot concerns an injured young man who falls in love with his nurse.

“I want to be the best writer in the world, that’s all,” the John character says. In 1930, Ernest Hemingway was in the process of becoming exactly that.

The clincher in deciding that the character is based on young Ernest Hemingway comes when the man’s wife shows up! “–a handsome girl–.” “Neither of us believed in the old-fashioned bourgeois marriage–” John tells Josephine, about his wife.

Ernest Hemingway had something of an open marriage with his first wife– at least after future second wife Pauline showed up!
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It’s not as if F. Scott Fitzgerald was NOT known for putting persons he knew into his fiction. He in fact did this time and again– most notably with his wife Zelda, but also with good friends the Murphys; with old college friends; with old girlfriends; with anyone and everyone. Hemingway was a large presence in Scott Fitzgerald’s life; first as protege; then, equal. In subtle ways, as rival.
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The second story completing the answer to our Trivia Question is “Financing Finnegan,” originally published in Esquire magazine in January 1938.

The timing and venue of this publication are telling. In 1936 Ernest Hemingway published, in Esquire, “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” in which he mentioned F. Scott Fitzgerald by name in a disdainful way. Fitzgerald was highly embarrassed, to the extent of asking Ernest to change the name in any future appearances of the story. Hemingway complied. Was it payback time?

The character “Finnegan” is described by the narrator but never seen. The relationship between the two writers mimics that of Fitzgerald and Hemingway. They both have the same publisher. Finnegan receives the kind of large advances for his work that the narrator used to receive. Finnegan is working on a novel, “one of those great successful novels of his.” “There’s never been such a talent,” the narrator says, a bit sarcastically. “His was indeed a name with ingots in it.”

Finnegan is injury prone– as Hemingway famously was– and is also a world traveler, forever looking for new experiences, new material for his work. (He’s said to be at the North Pole, then in Norway.) The clincher comes when the narrator describes Finnegan’s work.

The writing is described as containing “–a shy frankness together with an impression of a very quiet brave battle going on inside of him that he couldn’t quite bring himself to talk about– but that showed as heat lightning in his work.”

Does that not describe the writing of Ernest Hemingway?

“–nobody ever denied that Finnegan could write.”

The story catches Finnegan between successes, when he’s straining the faith of his publisher. Everyone hopes he’ll come through with a “great, successful novel.” In the real world Ernest Hemingway would do this, when For Whom the Bell Tolls was released in 1940.

Overall the story is derogatory toward Finnegan. It strongly hints at Fitzgerald’s disillusionment with Hemingway, particularly when the narrator says, “I’ve taken it upon myself to investigate some of the stories about him–.” And found they were mostly fake.
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Hemingway was to have the last word in his memoir of the 1920’s, A Moveable Feast.

 

 

F. Scott Fitzgerald as Pop Writer

ALL-TIME AMERICAN WRITERS TOURNAMENT

According to Ernest Hemingway‘s testimony in A Moveable Feast, Scott Fitzgerald claimed to intentionally alter the ending of his short stories to make them more saleable. More palatable to Saturday Evening Post readers.

Yet when one reads Fitzgerald’s “pop” tales, their endings are as perfect, as apt, as artful, as those of his more highly-regarded works.

This is especially true of the “Basil and Josephine” stories, most of which are compact gems full of insight, beauty, and meaning.

Examine these two endings, each of which is a culmination of theme and plot:

from “Basil and Cleopatra”

“Jubal the impossible came up with an air of possession, and Basil’s heart went bobbing off around the ballroom in a pink silk dress. Lost again in a fog of indecision, he walked out on the veranda. There was a flurry of premature snow in the air and the stars looked cold. Staring up at them he saw that they were his stars as always– symbols of ambition, struggle and glory. The wind blew through them, trumpeting that high white note for which he always listened, and the thin-blown clouds, stripped for battle, passed in review. The scene was of an unparalleled brightness and magnificence, and only the practiced eye of the commander saw that one star was no longer there.”

from “A Snobbish Story”

“Then she caught her breath as the lights changed, the music quickened and at the head of the steps, Travis de Coppet in white-satin football suit swung into the spotlight a shimmering blonde in a dress of autumn leaves. It was Madelaine Danby, and it was the role Josephine would have played. With the warm rain of intimate applause, Josephine decided something: That any value she might have was in the immediate, shimmering present– and thus thinking, she threw in her lot with the rich and powerful of this world forever.”

(Hardly throwaway endings! Note: Both reflect disillusion and disappointment, and so are not exactly “happy.”)

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F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “pop” stories are as sophisticated as his more famous works. In a few cases, more so.

What makes them important to the editors at New Pop Lit?

Fitzgerald’s pop stories point the way, more than his “serious” work, toward where literature needs to go NOW in 2017. Readability, humor, sparkle, punch– presented in unpretentious fashion available to all. The short story as lively as a pop song.

(As I’ve pointed out often, the short story was once THE popular American art form.)

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s pop stories are soaked in verve and style. A writer falling back on his past, consumed in memory and insight, not trying to overawe literary critics but simply writing. Letting his magical talent flow. They’re also very well written.

While today a Fitzgerald classic like “Babylon Revisited” seems a tad maudlin and contrived– the saloon Irishman crying in his beer at closing time– the pop tales are fun and very real.
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FYI: With even the Hemingway-Fitzgerald experts unable to come up with the solution to our Trivia Question (we contacted a few of them), we’ll be giving and explaining the answer soon. Did we overreach? You’ll have to judge for yourself.

 

Upping the Prize!

ALL-TIME AMERICAN WRITERS TOURNAMENT

As there is yet to be a winner in our “Hemingway-Fitzgerald Trivia Question,” first presented here, we’re upping the prize a bit. We are now offering a $20 Starbucks gift card to the first correct answer posted here, or at the original blog post.

“But”– to quote Gertrude Stein’s famous final words– “what is the question?”

“In what two F. Scott Fitzgerald pop stories was a major character a thinly-disguised version of Ernest Hemingway?” 

Good luck!

 

Good Guys and Bad Guys

ALL-TIME AMERICAN WRITERS TOURNAMENT

As  I was thinking about Ernest Hemingway‘s behavior at the Tournament so far, I pondered whether he’s a good guy or a bad guy. If the Tournament were similar to Wrestlemania, I believe Hem would relish being a villain.

Who are other “bad guys”? Everyone hates Jonathan Franzen, so I have him penciled in to the bad guy role also, if he makes the line-up. There are some obvious “Boo! Hiss!” characters such as Ezra Pound and his tag-team partner, T.S. “The Fop” Eliot. As Ayn Rand seems to be heavily disliked, and carries the egomania of an effective bad guy, we’ll have her play that part as well. She used to stampede around in real life using a cigarette holder and wearing a cape, so she’d gladly play the part in the Tournament.

“Good guys” by definition are a bland lot. In literature we have Emily D, John Steinbeck, Pearl Buck, Harriet Beecher Stowe of course, and possibly social conscience guys like Arthur Miller and Carl Sandburg. Miller, anyway, will have a female manager who was a bit of a celebrity herself. That will add some melodrama.

Anti-heroes? Jack Kerouac for sure, and likely Stephen Crane and Walt Whitman.

Then we have the Divas, which is where I put Allen Ginsberg, “Glamor Boy” Scott Fitzgerald, Sylvia Plath, and J.D. Salinger. The hard part will be getting Salinger into the ring. One can see a sneering Hemingway waiting for him, accusing him of cowardice and such—though if Salinger avoids disqualification and enters the ring he might do fairly well.

(Never fear, we will NOT make the writers wrestle for real. Simply thinking of ways to promote them.)