A Critical View

13 November 13, 2007

Precis
Chad Honsinger/ English 494

Field, Allyson Nadia. Expatriate Lifestyle as Tourist Destination: The Sun Also Rises and Experiential Travelogues of the Twenties. The Hemingway Review, Volume 25, Number 2, Spring 2006. Idaho University Press.

The Sun Also Rises as Travel Log

Hemmingway’s great early novel can be critiqued within the context of other travel logs of the period along with the novels literary themed critiques, or so Allyson Nadia Field argues. Field quotes Janet Flaner as preface to her analysis as characterizing Hemingway as a man who “was a born traveler as he was a born novelist”. She weighs The Sun Also Rises against four travel logs circulating in the period: Pages from the Book of Paris, Paris with the Lid Lifted, How to be Happy in Paris (without being ruined), and Paris on Parade. In ascending order of importance; the last log was written by Robert Forrest Wilson. Her intent then is fairly simply to illuminate the traveling nature of the text by displaying these other works. Her argument follows these lines. Because of the social diversity of society today the reader when reading about a bar or something else does not especially stick the place out in there mind. For readers of the twenties; the literary and artistic communities were mixing with the highest of society and creating their own entertainment. Especially true in Paris, the reader would then identify that this was the place to be. In our day, with the high degree of travelers, this seems to happen with entire cities (Amsterdam) or small chic hideaway treasures of “culture” (Cinque Terre). Fields argument then follows the line that when Hemmingway mentions the cafes, bars, and clubs he is inherently creating a travel log. The novel has a certain pattern in the repetition of places. Thus while Hemingway (known for tourist distain) did not create a travel log he created a work which the discreet observer could use as a travel log. In a second point Field puts forth the two kinds of travel logs; there were “theme” travel logs and experiential travel logs. There were travel records of great monuments, the Notre Dame etcetera, which gave people a site overview of the city. Then, which she reviews, there are the “experience” guilds. These are travel logs which show you where to get the experience, especially the less “puritan” experiences of Paris. Thus, Field argues, the novel is a record of the fleeing men and women who made foreign streets home and thrived on continual experience in the form of new itineraries and new loves. The perpetual experiences grow dull, but Hemingway has become an icon who rose above them and brought an “outsiders” perspective to the experience of expatriates in Paris.

The work adds to an understanding of Hemingway’s perspective on Paris and the culture of the times from which the work emerged.

Bessie Smith

Before addressing the great vocals of Bessie Smith, the lack of numerous Jazz vocals catches the ear, and creates consternation. For the music seems almost boring to our music pounded ears. It is also difficult to grasp the meaning when words are sparse, the music created in a different era. Dancing is the important key. Most jazz was composed to dance to and if you imagine America as a dancing nation in a period much more alive then ours, in this respect, the heart of jazz comes out. Intense swing, new musical progressions with every piece, gave a culture of movement and rhythm. The lack of vocals came about not because of a lack of voices but as a sophistication past voices. Instruments now replaced voices to give different moods and feelings. In one song, I think it is Louis Armstrong, imitates the braying of a horse and other barnyard sounds with his instrument.

I am not musically developed unfortunately but I can understand the vocals to Back Water Blues with Bessie Smith and James P. Johnson on piano. This song is something of an ode to her inspiration for the blues. The blues led her, the spirit of the blues is so distinct that it has a force of its own. Like romance carrying a person away, "The blues done called me to pack my things and go". The sense of displacement being dealt with by the blues can be felt in the dropped note at the end of go. She is moving along but does not have anyplace to find rest and comfort, so rest and comfort come from the possibilities being free and rejected afford. In loneliness comes the ability to create and give rise to a new expression, "Ain't no place for a poor old girl to go". The tone is soothing, melancholically so. The ragtime playing against the sad overtones of the blues makes the rhythm and brings a great sad cadence. The artist cries out in a sense against the forces she cannot control, cannot work with, and cannot change; like the rising waters. She watches what she had being destroyed and proclaims, "I can't move no more".

Comic Inspiration

Sinclair Lewis really engages the reader by the disturbing correctness of his character’s pure thought pattern. Pure in a sense far from pure; the original thought pattern which then became polished and refined over time. Much of the conversation within Babbitt then takes the reader to the comical state where the characters personal desires are interjected into the later logical line of thought. It has been suggested that his characters are merely caricatures which obtain no real humanity and simply exemplify a “type”. This is mistaking an element of Lewis’s style; he has an undistinguished line between comic and reality. When reading you must read as if every word of the character has humor behind it, yet the tale is not to be laughed about. It is almost righteous in this respect; providing light humor for an instructive end. Quite different from Fitzgerald’s characters who exemplify the absurdity of everything but are harder to digest in their ordinary actions. Lewis then picks an upright character to show the confusion of selfish desire and the overall logical system that character upholds. He still thinks highly of the logic of a good system, not casting it all to the wind. This is illustrated by the set up of the novel and of course Babbitt’s blusterous manner. Talking to his son about the spiritual and mental side of America’s power; in defense against the accusation that it was all “material” he expounds, “they think that these mechanical improvements are all that we stand for; whereas to a real thinker, he sees that spiritual and, uh, dominating movements like Efficiency, and Rotarianism, and Prohibition, and Democracy are what comprise our deepest and truest wealth” (65). This is really comical. He stumbles upon himself and ends up letting off that the real purpose he finds in these “spiritual” ideas is domination. Further Babbitt shows a continued inability to grasp the broader state of the affairs which people live for and wrestle with. Freedom, self-control, and purpose escape him completely. We find out that he does not even love his wife, but was suckered into accepting her like he was coxed into buying into all of his ideals.

A Profound Wit

Dorothy Parker--a woman with that rare ability to belittle people and make them feel better then ever. She really does have an excellent wit. She is a person who can take melodramas of life, experience them, and make a graceful about face which carries force. Within "Resume" (lacking accents which supersede my technical skills) she lists out all that a person might destroy themselves in a manner which convinces you that she has seriously considered them all. With lines like, "Gas smells awful" she does not pine after the person to consider the values of life by saying, "But in the end when you are trying to kill yourself; don't you think you will regret it? Self harm is so horrible, you're sure to hate the smell of gas...". No just a simple "smells awful" with a touch of lightness she sums up the whole experience and in an almost condescending way lets you know that your humanity will prevail and that it is absolutely ridicules at the same time. She ends off "Gas smells awful,/ You might as well live." Live, and continue being human, just not so stupid. She thus puts one at the top of themselves by encouraging you to be what you are at your best a well rounded human. And only through her ability to bear all the small unhappiness's of existence can she call you out on them. Excellent.

Symposium

Fitzgerald is excellent in "The Beautiful and Damned". His prose has a wonderful rhythm and brilliant intensity. But his theme is what I found to be astounding. For the storyline is very depressing. Coming on half of the novel one feels despair and the faintest hope that the characters will achieve some sort of rebirth. That Anthony would just learn to suffer in the smallest of ways, through a days work, and thereby start a life set on discipline and advancement. But contrary to the back cover description; the novel is not a good satire if it is meant to be one, in fact it is lousy. For Anthony falls to ruins, everything is right on track for a good moral satire, then right when you think hes done--he gets everything he was fighting for and succeeds in staying firm to his vision of life. It is a beautiful and damned vision, but as an up lifter of the values of a working existence, it was not. For the key to this is the Symposium not of love but of self and self futility.

The Poet under the Prose

The poetic imagery radiating thought out Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and the Damned rushes toward the goal of creating beauty in an American setting- with the American dialect. As his ever ideal Anthony expresses, the options for an American of leisure to form out of the industrial landscape a heightened expression of man is constantly crushed- practically anyway. The simple question that come to me in the face of brilliance was; is the process of seeking beauty ultimately empty, leaving nothing except the flawed turmoil of a human behind. The process of creating beauty is difficult, piecing, proportioning, relating, emphasising- everything. And in this what is left when the creation fades, is not beauty but the form and image of beauty. The beauty of the thing cannot attain everlasting permanence. Words fade. The psalms of the Bible cannot be translated in the same verve, whether they were expressively beautiful or not. The words can be translated with our poetry but it is not the same. The Greek temple can be copied, yes, and the form never has the original intonations. The beauty can be recreated, but never the original creation of the thing of beauty can not be repeated.

Thus, how can the American language become beautiful, if it does not have writers willing to take up the task, always content with copying the "English" beauty. This is what I respect about Fitzgerald, he took the plunge. In doing this the writer made himself accessible to the American people; brought small amounts of beauty before them. And he brought characters, wonderful characters. The scene at the end of Part II with "beauty" with Gloria leaving on the train and the notable three left in a mourning reminiscent of "Bye Bye Miss American Pie" is really fantastic... Ya that's enough.