Horizon

Makes me wonder what my 1881 'A Tramp Abroad' is worth...

Ok, so was Hemingway right?

OK, I'll bite: was Hemingway right about wot?

Hemingway wrote in The Green Hills of Africa that modern American literatures begins with HF. Odd book to write it in. I'd have to read it again, but I'm not sure I could bear it. I seem to remember a lot of 'All the country in the world is the same country and all the hunters are the same people' and 'None of us great shots is appreciated. Wait 'til we're gone.'

The Green Hills of Africa is an awful pompous condescending mess of a book.

And what about Melville, Poe and Hawthorne and even Washington Irving? Haven't checked dates (so feel free to shame me) but weren't they all earlier?

Hemingway said--it's quoted in Bobby's link--that All American fiction comes from one book, Huckleberry Finn, there was nothing before it and nothing after it.
Obviously I think Hemingway an overrated, self aggrandizing old prick who inflicted by default the tedium of airport prose on the world but I was wondering what you lot think? I think Huck Finn is one of the great books though.
I think it's funny that you should need to 'bit' martha to ask that question. Your cartoon view of me would surely have me liking Hmeingway for a 'man's man' and all that old shit.

I'm guessing that the Civil War remains the great divider. Cooper, Irving, Poe, Hawthorne and that crowd standing on one side, the post-revolutionary or pre-war side, and Twain on the other. Maybe you could say those early Easterners spoke a sort of "European", that American literature did not get swept up in the Jacksonian swell until after the Great Rebellion. That unique "American Voice" rises after the war. I'm not sure Twain invented it, but the world heard it from him.

HF should probably be read for pleasure. When you start inspecting the architecture you get concerned. Perhaps it stands so tall because it shouldn't. There's so something so American about it: great yet terribly flawed.

Hemingway knew his game when he cast Twain as a literary ancestor.

It goes crap at the end yes, but the journey is great.

For a very brief view of Twain's strengths and weaknesses, this story is worth a read.

I read an argument recently that Twain is saying something about the excessively deliberate speed of antislavery efforts by casting Tom as the apparently well-meaning mistreater of Jim in that whole dreary part at the end. It's an interesting idea.

As for starting with Twain, I don't see why Hemingway's self-image would have been just as content starting with Melville. BTW there's a lovely Melville page here.

I liked:

The Gam: Other Melville-Related Sites on the Web

The Gam- could be a nickname for you!

Seriously, they're having a big antiquarian book fair a few blocks from here this weekend, the last day of three being tomorrow. If anyone wants me to look for something in particular I'd be happy for an excuse to go over and browse.

As for starting with Twain, I don't see why Hemingway's self-image would have been just as content starting with Melville.

I think Hemingway's literary identification with Twain was genuine. The realism of Twain and his generation wasn't just a new school of writing but an actual reaction against the romanticism of the Coopers, Hawthornes and Melvilles.

The Story of the Good Little Boy presages the escape episode in Huck Finn. The idea that people would behave or even think in that vein is a literal joke. Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses could easily been turned on Melville for just this speech by Ahab before his death:

I turn my body from the sun. What ho, Tashtego! let me hear thy hammer. Oh! ye three unsurrendered spires of mine; thou uncracked keel; and only god-bullied hull; thou firm deck, and haughty helm, and Pole-pointed prow, - death - glorious ship! must ye then perish, and without me? Am I cut off from the last fond pride of meanest shipwrecked captains? Oh, lonely death on lonely life! Oh, now I feel my topmost greatness lies in my topmost grief. Ho, ho! from all your furthest bounds, pour ye now in, ye bold billows of my whole foregone life, and top this one piled comber of my death! Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! Thus, I give up the spear!

Great theater, of course, but entertainment for high brows and therefore not American, however much an American may have written it.

Film's good.

Bobby, are you saying that high culture is by definition not American?

I’m not saying high culture is not American by definition (and certainly not that it’s un-American); but as the republic evolved in the 19th century it did become severely marginalized by popular culture.

Moby Dick is a great novel, written by an American. But it’s a difficult read for the average slob, it wasn’t popular, and Melville fell off the map. The voice of Huckleberry Finn is true, it’s richly American, and it resonates to this day. It is a great and popular book.

For a little insight into how real was the battle between high and popular culture in the 19th century, check out the Astor Place Riot.

That was about a lot of stuff aside from culture, with xenophobia and economic resentment at the top of the list. Popular theatre in New York City then was probably more politically charged than even hip-hop is now.

I agree that saying culture clash was the cause of the Astor Place Riot is like saying the assassination of Franz Ferdinand was the cause of WWI. Class warfare was the bomb, anti-intellectualism the fuse, I suppose.