South Atlantic Modern Language Association (SAMLA)
Westin Peachtree Plaza
Atlanta, GA, November 3-5, 2017
Hemingway’s Periodical Presences: "Ernest Writes, Ernest Is Written About"
For SAMLA 2017, we seek papers exploring any facet of Hemingway’s appearances in periodicals. Within this broad subject, we particularly encourage assessing both the “public man” and the Nobel Laureate in Hemingway’s last decade. Two overarching questions:
1. In July 1961 and the period immediately following, the periodical press did/did not recognize Hemingway as the polymath man-of-letters he strove to be: journalist, sportsman, insider, teacher, connoisseur, celebrity, artist;
2. Centering inquiry on Hemingway’s periodical presences, particularly in his last years, is valuable for Hemingway studies because…?
Helpful context for the final years, 1949-1961, occurs in the oft-cited Malcolm Cowley, “A Portrait of Mr. Papa,” Life, 1949, and Lillian Ross, “How Do You Like It Now, Gentlemen?” New Yorker, 1950.
Paper topics for this session may address the dual-sided nature of “Hemingway’s Periodical Presences: Ernest Writes, Ernest Is Written About.”
By 1 June 2017, please send a title and 250-word abstract to John Fenstermaker, Florida State University, jfenstermaker@fsu.edu.
Background:
Hemingway Writes: Across the River and into the Trees, Cosmopolitan, 1950; The Old Man and the Sea, Life, 1952; “The Dangerous Summer,” Life, 1960, and the final published stories, “Get a Seeing-Eyed Dog” and “A Man of the World,” Atlantic, 1957. (Occasionally, too, Hemingway permitted magazines to excerpt or reprint his work.) Moreover, he steadily produced “occasional” essays: blurbs, introductions, prefaces, forewords; reviews; public letters; even product endorsements. This public man/celebrity coexisted with the Pulitzer Prize/Nobel Laureate (then shaping A Moveable Feast, Islands in the Stream, The Garden of Eden, True at First Light/Under Kilimanjaro, “The Last Good Country…”).
Hemingway Is Written About: Extraordinary media coverage follows the Pulitzer, 1953; the Nobel, 1954; two plane crashes in Africa, 1954; the “Dangerous Summer” competitions, 1959. Varied perspectives on man and artist develop continually, for example in Life, Look, Time, New York Herald Tribune Book Review, New York Times Book Review, and the New York dailies (especially Post interviews with Leonard Lyons and Earl Wilson). Hemingway’s death, July 2, 1961, unleashes in the press an avalanche….