10. Hemingway and Faulkner in Their Time edited by Earl Rovit and Arthur Waldhorn
OPD: 2005
format: 175-page hardcover
acquired: library book read: Feb 18-25 time reading: 4:46, 1.8 mpp
rating: 4
genre/style: literary criticism theme: Faulkner
about the editors: Earl Rovit (1927-2018) was born in Brookline, MA and was a long-time professor at the City College of New York. Arthur Waldhorn was born in NY City in 1918 and was also a professor at the City College of New York. I couldn’t find any more information on him.

"What a country! With Faulkner and Hemingway acclaimed as the greatest American novelists, & magazine editors still taking the view they did when I began to write! Brains & culture seem nonexistent from one end of the social scale to the other, & half the morons yell for filth, & the other half continue to put pants on piano-legs." - Edith Wharton, 1934

This is a collection of commentary by the contemporaries on these two authors, Hemingway and Faulkner. Nothing deep or difficult. All the quotes are just various authors and influential editors saying how they felt about them. But each contributor is given an introduction. So it gives a backhanded cross-section of who's who in American literature in the 1920's, 1930's, 1940's and 1950's. And they are all American, except one Canadian.

Hemingway and Faulkner were opposites in practically every way. Hemingway was bold presence in social circles, making himself the center of attention for better or worse. He was large, athletic, and an adventurer, but with hidden insecurities. Faulkner, who was physically small, was private and quiet, avoiding the intellectuals. Both drank too much, but Faulkner was a serious alcoholic and often met fellow writers drunk. Both burst out in the 1920's and 1930's and, their early work their best. Both died in the early 1960's, within a year of each other.

I do want to tell you how much of a mess this is, with confusing citations and inconsistency in every which way. But the truth is I really enjoyed this and took a lot home. It's information overload, but it's good information, and entertaining.

I'll leave with another quote. Kay Boyle (1902-1992), when asked whether something special characterized the 1920s, replied:

There was indeed. It was the revolt against all literary pretentiousness, against weary, dreary rhetoric, against all the outworn literary and academic conventions. Our slogans were Down with Henry James, down with Edith Wharton, down with the sterility of "The Waste Land"…

We had certain idols... Joyce, of course, and the short stories of Sherwood Anderson. We hailed the true simplicity of the early work of Hemingway... And of course there was Gertrude Stein. Without Gertrude Stein there might not have been as articulate a Sherwood Anderson and, undoubtedly, really undoubtedly, there would have been a less disciplined Hemingway…

2024
https://www.librarything.com/topic/358760#8439327 ( )