"It s Only Interesting the First Time": or, Hemingway as Kierkegaard

Journal article

Jacqueline Brogan

North Dakota Quarterly, Vol.64(3), pp.5-26

1997

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Title: "It s Only Interesting the First Time": or, Hemingway as Kierkegaard
Author/Creator: Jacqueline Brogan
Publication Details: North Dakota Quarterly, Vol.64(3), pp.5-26
Annotation: Addresses the ethical problems of the creative writer, exploring the difference between meaningful, sustainable repetition and meaningless, deathward recollection as represented in The Garden of Eden and S ren Kierkegaard s Repetition (1843). Asserts that writing, especially when based on the writer s actual life, is a deathward act by casting relationships and events in the past tense, causing them to become recollections rather than allowing them to retain immediacy as repetitions. Argues that by detaching himself from Catherine to write, David keeps the relationship from healthy repetition and forces Catherine to desperately reinvent herself as interesting in order to maintain relevance and prolong her doomed relationship with her writer-husband. Asserts that the cycle of sexual destruction through pursuit of the interesting is a metaphor for the problems of consciousness, time, memory, language, and writing.
Academic Unit: Hemingway Bibliography
Language: English
Resource Type: Journal article
Record Identifier: 991015132482903691