Rumors of Grace

God-Language in Hemingway and Mailer

Authors

  • Raymond M. Vince University of Tampa Author

Keywords:

Ernest Hemingway, religion and literature, God-language in fiction, modernism, grace and transcendence, existentialism

Abstract

In both Ernest Hemingway and Norman Mailer, their rhetoric announces a beginning, a new Genesis. But, unlike the biblical Genesis, there is an absence of God, providence, a rational universe. But how does the residual God-language in Hemingway and Mailer actually work? Is grace—a crucial Judeo-Christian reality—to be replaced by nada, signaled in Hemingway’s “A Clean Well-Lighted Place”? Or, in an absurd post-human world, does narrative “make sense of life.” Is God-language part of the rhetoric of modernity—or its antithesis? Paradoxically, both may be true.

Author Biography

  • Raymond M. Vince, University of Tampa

    Raymond M.Vince is Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Tampa. Interests include War & Heroism, Mailer, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald. His book, Heroism, War, and Narrative, was published in 2008 by VDM of Germany. He has published on The Great Gatsby and Einstein; Pattern, Time, & Memory in T. S. Eliot & Mailer; God-language in Hemingway & Mailer; and William Morris. Prof. Vince received his PhD in English from USF and holds graduate degrees in Theology and Scientific Method from Bristol University, Kings College, London, and LSE. Website: http://rayvince.weebly.com/

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Published

2026-03-25

Issue

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

Section

Articles

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