Norman and Ernest (Exit Music)

Authors

  • Donald L. Kaufmann University of South Florida Author

Keywords:

Ernest Hemingway, literary influence and legacy, masculinity in literature, American literary canon, authorial voice, twentieth-century American literature, literary rivalry

Abstract

Hemingway’s suicidal shadows reinforced the literary truism that Mailer was Papa’s heir apparent for the postwar generation. In 1948 Hemingway was revisited in the guise of The Naked and the Dead. Both men abided by the Neo-Primitive, a distrust of civilization and complication, a demand that man shift to the natural and simple and go back to the tough-guy earth.

Author Biography

  • Donald L. Kaufmann, University of South Florida

    Donald L. Kaufmann is Professor of English at the University of South Florida, where he has taught American literature and creative writing since coming to USF from the University of Alaska in 1965. He is the author of Norman Mailer: The Countdown: The First Twenty Years (Southern Illinois UP, 1969), one of the first two books to appear on the work of Norman Mailer. He has also published essays on Mailer, Updike, Bellow, Hemingway, and other twentieth-century American writers. Prof. Kaufmann holds one of the largest Mailer collections of books, stories, essays, memorabilia, and ephemera.

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Published

2026-03-25

Issue

Vol. 4 No. 1 (2010): Literary Warriors

Section

Articles