Highbrow jackson6/24/2023 And in no place was the competition more intense, the arena so significant, than in New York City. In an era when Life magazine anointed Jackson Pollack as the great American artist and Hemingway as the great American writer, the young men (especially) who came out of the war - Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, James Jones, and so many more - all wanted to make their own marks on this newly enhanced world of fame and celebrity. As Jack Kerouac wrote, “The only people for me are the mad ones burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars” - and he was not alone. The degree of failure or success was somewhat less important than making an unforgettable impression. Whether it was the ostentatious physical risks of Hemingway the bullfighter and white hunter, or the guttered candle of Fitzgerald in Hollywood, this new American writer not only had to write, but to be, preferably in a flamboyant, self-dramatizing configuration of talent and nerve. It wasn’t enough any longer merely to achieve you had to be seen to achieve. As the model of the movie star became the decisive influence in literature as in so many fields, a lot more bells and whistles were added to the idea of the American writer. The intervening 60 or so years had seen another major shift. Long before, in A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890), William Dean Howells had documented the shift of national culture from Boston to New York. SOMETHING SPECIAL was brewing in the East Coast literary world after World War II. Written, produced and directed by Tom Bean and Luke Poling, Plimpton! Starring George Plimpton as Himself opened in New York on it will open in Los Angeles on June 7.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |