Hemingway and the Mechanism of Fame: Statements, Public Letters, Introductions, Forewords, Prefaces, Blurbs, Reviews, and Endorsements

Ernest Hemingway was famous for being famous. He assiduously cultivated different and sometimes divergent personae—sportsman, soldier, aesthetician, patriot, drinker, womanizer, intellectual, anti-intellectual, sage, brawler, world traveler, war correspondent, big-game hunter, and even author—each chosen to foster his place in the American cultural consciousness and support the sales of his books. In every role he projected the insider’s air of authority and expertise that was presumed credible, even when not wholly deserved. His success in these self-legendizing efforts to couple nonliterary celebrity with literary stature is evident in his continued fame among those familiar and unfamiliar with his books. Hemingway and the Mechanism of Fame assembles Hemingway’s public writings about himself, all framed as documents of support for or criticism of other people and other products.