342
PARTISAN
REVIEW
Society does not do much to help the American to come of age.
It provides no effective form. That which churches or orders of chivalry
or systems of education did in the past individuals now try to do inde–
pendently. When the boy becomes a man in an American story we are
asked to believe that his experience of the change was crucial and final;
no further confirmation is necessary.
There is one extraordinary exception in American fiction, and
that
is in
The Great Gatsby.
Born James Gatz, Gatsby is ready at the hour
of metamorphosis with his new name and new traits. Fitzgerald calls
his identity "Platonic." A better term for it is perhaps WiIIiam James's
"twice-born." But whereas the great twice-born, the converted Augus–
tines and Pauls are reborn in greater reality and become more "them–
selves," Gatsby's new birth is into illusion and deception. A liar and
im–
postor, he is condemned to a life of anxious vigilance and uneasy ad–
venture. His deepest hope is that love wiII release him from his false
existence, for the man he has made of himself is the
wrong
man. But
there is no love forthcoming, and it is as the wrong man that he
is
murdered by a maddened husband.
Where, then, is the right man? Fitzgerald does not pretend that
he can produce him and the absence of a right man creates a certain
slackness in the novel. The fact that money does not confer manhood
seems to have shocked and scandalized Fitzgerald.
Hemingway has an intense desire to impose his version of the
thing upon us, to create an image of manhood, to define the manner
of baptism and communion. He works at this both as a writer and
as
a public figure. I find it quite natural that he should want to become
an influence, an exemplary individual, and the reason why I think
it is natural is that he is really so isolated, self-absorbed and effortful.
When he dreams of a victory it is a total victory; one great battle,
one great issue. Everyone wants to be the right man, and this is by no
means a trivial desire. But Hemingway now appears to feel that he
is
winning and his own personality, always an important dramatic element
in his writing is, in
The Old Man and the Sea,
a kind of moral back–
ground. He tends to speak for Nature itself. Should Nature and Heming–
way become identical one or the other will have won too total a victory.
Saul Bellow
