Home » Literary leftists (Part II): Hemingway, Dos Passos, and the Spanish Civil War

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Literary leftists (Part II): Hemingway, Dos Passos, and the Spanish Civil War — 22 Comments

  1. “think artists, and more so writers, are drawn to passion that can be expressed in overarching themes and unambiguous (as they see it) conflict-struggles.”

    That would make the Bush administration a bunch of artists and writers.Is the real world black and white ,or not?you people have to make up your minds.Was the Spanish civil war evil commies against evil fascists or was it more nuanced? How about our current war?

  2. Writers of fiction are used to having things go their way–in the book. They may have to write a hundred-page backstory bio of a character to make his actions consistent. But they make up the backstory, too.
    And they use coincidence and they use anything else they need to make things go their way.
    So, perhaps they have the habit, eventually, that when they think things are a certain way, that’s the way the things are.
    Have to be.
    Always been that way.

    If true, this is a sure way to miss reality.

  3. I think artists, and more so writers, are drawn to passion that can be expressed in overarching themes and unambiguous (as they see it) conflict-struggles.

    That’s where they find their poetry, what they define as nobility. They see the Marxist revolutionary, or even today’s terrorist, and they see a purity of essence that they cherish.

  4. A beautifully-written memoir about Spain and the Spanish Civil War is “The Forging of a Rebel”, by Arturo Barea. The author was on the Republican side, but is honest about its atrocities as well as those committed by the fascists. I reviw it here.

  5. I read Dos Passos’ Three Soldiers when I was a teenager. Although I don’t recall much detail, the atmosphere of the novel lingers and vaguely reminds me of dark fantasy/science fiction, so that is where I would shelve it in a modern bookstore.

    Three Soldiers was also my first introduction to the concept of fragging and the book pretty much embodies the attitude of the modern left to the military. It is amazing how old many leftist tropes are: the whole blood-for-oil thingee derives from Rockefeller and Standard Oil a hundred years ago and the anti-military rhetoric traces back to the aftermath of WWI. To enter the leftist world view is to enter a time warp and live in the oldern days. The left offers a sad bit of nostalgia for a forgotten time. I suppose that is part of its appeal.

  6. The communists and the fascists are natural allies. Not because of any particular love one has for the other, but because to survive against all odds they must unite their strength against their common foes. The enemy of fascism becomes also the enemy of communism.

    THe Spanish Civil War is an example of what happens in any society or culture, without the aid of enlightened principles of governance. Europe may see itself as the beacon of social justice and civilization, but the truth is somewhat cruder.

    In the case of the SCW, it seems to be that both sides were destroying the middle, the enemy, and partitioning what was left between them in a final free for all. Using whatever means available, or whatever persons available, to accomplish the task of partitioning the spoils.

    We saw it in Poland, between Nazi Germany and Communist Russia. We saw it between Nazi Germany and xenophobic and militarist Japan. We even saw it with Osama Bin Laden and Saddam.

    There comes a point however, when not even the unified power of both radicals and status quo conservatives, can defeat their common foe. Dividing an alliance based upon hate, is rather easy, but it does require some strength of character. Of national character.

    It is this aspect of the strategy in combating political and ideological extremism that Bush either doesn’t know how to communicate or doesn’t want to communicate.

    The advantage of the alliance of hate, towards American, towards human dignity, is simply that they acquire a bunch of useful idiots in enemy territory. The disadvantage is that they need it, to break the alliance of human dignity and rights.

    Our actions should be to separate our enemies from each other, to make their actions harm each other by necessity, and then to swoop in and take out the weakened party. As you can see, Europe believed it had its own grand strategy during the first half of the 20th century. It didn’t go so well. Sure, they left the fascists and the communists fight it out, but they were supporting both the communists (ideologically and propaganda wise) as well as the fascists (political appeasement).

    America crafted a different national policy during the 20th century, which is simple in its elegance of form. Divide the enemy, and then conquer them. Divide dictators from terroists, then divide terroists from the Arab street, then divide the Arab street from our useful idiots. Divide the Emperor of Japan from his military, divide the island of Japan from other islands. Divide Germany from Japan. Divide Russia from Germany. France from Russia. Then initiate the coup de grace, obliterating each group in succession. First Germany, then Japan, then Russia in the Cold War. (As you might notice, skipping France might not have been optimal, although it was very clever of the French to side with the apparently winning party and then switch sides in order to get a UN seat after the war with the winners.)

    This strategy is simple. That is not the curious aspect, the curious aspect is how many people in the world know nothing about it. And how many Europeans seem to think diplomacy and social justice brought about perpetual peace upon their continent, rather than the Grand Strategy of uncouth Americans.

    Look at Europe today. They have no military to stage coups. They have no Soviet union to fund coups and revolutions. They have no threat but the ones they invite to their own countries. I cannot accept that this came about because Europe became enlightened, ahead of all other continents on Earth. Many other continents, South America or Africa perhaps, would love to find themselves in the same situation of perpetual peace and prosperity (mebe not prosperity).

    Unfortunately for them, it seems, they can’t get American interventions as easily as our extended family in Europe can. Talk about nepotism.

  7. For what it is worth as an insight, John Dos Passos, while born to privilege, was illegitimate. His father was a self made attorney/investor and his mother a high born Virginian. He grew up using his mother’s last name.

    He never seemed to be the “go along to get along” type that Hemingway was.

  8. Tatterdamalian

    Sorry you’re under the weather tonight. Read slowly, sip a cup of tea, and perhaps things will clear up. A copy of “Elements of Style” might hel.
    Cheers.

  9. Wow, you must be spot on, seeing as how you have set erasmus off on a foaming rant. “How about all those business gurus–plenty narcissistic and visionary,” indeed. “I’M NOT ABSTRACT AND NARCISSTIC! YOU’RE THE ONES WHO ARE ABSTRACT AND NARCISSTIC! YOU AND YOU AND YOUYOUYOUYOUMOTHER****ING YOU!”

    And the funny thing is, nobody even accused him of anything. Just goes to show you, all you gotta do is pull the tailfeather and see who squawks the loudest.

  10. Brad

    OK, tell me how Saul Bellow has “betrayed us?” Or, years ago, how did Robert Frost do it?
    What are you talking about?
    Whom did artists betray? The country? The people? Their audience?
    Generalizations are fun at 2am college bull sessions, but God is still in the details.

  11. Lots of people stumbled in this situation, and others.
    Is the proportion of writers and intellectuals who stumble greater than that of normal people?
    Probably, but the problem is that the writers can’t stop themselves from telling us how they went about the entire process.

    I’ve read a couple of parodies of Hemingway, and it was hard to tell the difference.
    My guess is that he got his style from Kipling. Try the latter’s “The Bull That Thought” and see if you can think you could fool somebody into thinking it’s an unfairly obscure Hemingway story.

  12. ‘Tender is the Night’ was the ‘Bridges of Madison County’ of the 1930s. Grisham, while trash, is a better stylist than Hemingway.

    I’ve suffered at the hands of all four of these authors for many a long hour. They were mawkish and maudlin, self-serving and self-parodying. Fitzgerald at least was an excellent stylist; the rest could be (and in some cases have been) taught in writing classes as examples of ‘how not to’.

  13. Good one, neo. 10% (1 million people) of Spain’s population perished in the Civil War, as Fascist battled Communist. It was a dress rehersal of the totalitarian horrors already in the making, and the totalitarian horrors to come.

    “Papa” was heavily invested in himself. His suicide, imitated by some of his descendants, was itself the ultimate narcissistic act. And you’re correct: Hemingway was a dupe at best, a stooge at worst. And as my old English professor liked to say, it was his style that set him apart, not his substance.

  14. Totally disagree with erasmus:
    The “unstable mix of abstraction and narcissism” is spot on. Couldn’t be better put. We face the danger of this mix today, and our most beloved artists will always betray us because of the mix. Love the movie, the book, the song, the role, the poem, etc, but always be aware of the simplistic abstractions that drive such creations. “The opium of the intellectuals” and “seduction of unreason” are forefront in human disasters. Nietzche went to mental hell because of his aphoristic genius. I love his writing but I don’t want to follow him. As a young man I sat in a cafe that Hemingway frequented and thought it fantastic; now I think he was a simple jerk (BTW the article gets the operation wrong; it is intended to constrict; Hemingway was probably also a sexual jerk).

  15. KierkegaardKTV:

    All those four writers are “unreadable” today????? How so? You can’t read them? Who else?
    Or, do you mean “unread?”
    And, to give just one example, nothing Grisham has written comes even close to Fitzgerald’s “Tender is the Night.”

    I

  16. I am unconvinced that Hemingway was in any way obsessed with his prose style; otherwise he might have hired someone to improve it. In fact, all four of the writers cited–Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, and Dos Passos are all but unreadable today, other than ‘The Great Gatsby’. And with the exception of Faulkner, all were tireless self-promoters; further, with the exception of Dos Passos, all were famous drunks as well. They were, in short, the John Grishams, Norman Mailers, and Robert James Wallers of their day. Only Orwell, who is mentioned in the article, and Steinbeck and Lewis, who were not, are ‘literary lefties’ of any genius or lasting worth.

  17. “Bull.” erasmus

    Such commentary, wit and incisiveness; the dismissive “achievement” of an equivocal leveling. Abstract-tossing and narcissistic indeed.

  18. True:
    1. Spain was caught between two fires (Communism and Fascism), and its citizens betrayed by both.
    2. Spain’s top army officers initiated plans to r4eplace the republic with a military junta before Franco assumed the leading role in the “rising/”
    3. Guernica, the grandfather of terror/civilian bombing, done by the German Condor Legion for Franco.
    Yet, what’s with Packer’s intellectual-baiting, the unstable mix of “abstraction and narcissism?”
    Why is that mix necessarily “unstable?” Christopher Hitchens and Henry Kissinger possess plenty of both qualities; are both “unstable” in the same or different ways?

    How about all those business gurus–plenty narcissistic and visionary. Also an unstable mix?
    It’s a catchy phrase, but intellectuals are no more alike than the narcissistic hairdressers of NYC or abstraction-tossing philosophers at a Arendt seminar or Kierkegaard symposium.

    New Yorker critics display an unstable mix of cleverness and shallowness. Bull. Some do, others don’t.

  19. Ever the impassioned observors with fingers safely on the pens and not the triggers. No! There’ll be no late night hauntings of brains blown onto the sides of buildings and artery blood to be wiped off the face from close quarters work with a knife or pistol, rather the memories of bad food and dysentary will sustain the illusion of really being in the thick of it, keeping them safe from the responsibility of participating in war’s real dramas.

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