At 02:43 PM 3/3/00 -0800, Doug Basset wrote:
>I'd like to humbly point out that
Hemingway's
>influence over the entire hb field has been immense
--
>indeed, it's hard to imagine hb literature
without
>him. Like him or not (and many do not, often
because
>they disapprove of his life) I think he has to
be
>respected as one of the few giants of 20th
Century
>literature. (Whatever one thinks of his
personal
>philosophy -- and it can be justly criticized --
I
>think it's unfair to call it
"superficial").
>
>Although I admire and respect Conrad, he has
always
>struck me as essentially a transitional figure
between
>the 19th and 20th centuries. I do not think he
has
>been particularly influential in American
fiction.
>
I think that
Hemingway's early short stories and first novel are
extraordinary, but the decline in the later pieces was very
noticable and was commented on even during his lifetime by
friends like Edmund Wilson. By
"The Old Man And The Sea" it seems to me that he is just
imitating himself
(in that particular case, imitating a very fine younger
story; "The Undefeated"). Admittedly, by this time he was
probably quite ill as well as at an advanced stage in
alcoholism. I do agree that, for better or for worse,
parodies of his approach have been and continue to be the
dominant mode of expression in "hard-boiled"
literature.
Likewise I think that
Hemingway's reputation was at it's apex about when he was
awarded the Nobel and has been downgraded ever since....I
think that the intervening years have made readers more
sensitive to the self-pity and sentimentality which began to
dominate the later stories. This is not to denigrate his
achievments but just to note that it isn't all up to one
consistent standard
Conversely, I
believe that Conrad's reputation is actually picking up steam
as time goes by. If he is less imitated that Hemingway, at
least part of the reason has to be that it is very hard to
duplicate his ironic and ambiguous effects. I would suggest
that, among American novels, _The Great Gatsby_ shows a lot
of Joseph Conrad influence. I think that this might be true
for Nabokov as well. And I don't think that I am the first
person to wonder at Chandler's adoption of the name Marlowe
for _his_ narrator.
James
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