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I loved Hemingway, but he has been smeared by the mainstream critics, clearly because he fully supported the Cuban Revolution and despised imperialism. In the end, he got essentially murdered by the US regime.
I loved the naughtiness, madness, aggressive anti-establishment humor of Joseph Heller. Yes, his books used to be bestsellers, although they were trashing everything from US militarism, to the US corporate culture. In his era, and when I was a child, his novels sold like hot potatoes. In the United States, there are no writers like him, now. Nobody dares to write as he did. Writers are silenced by "political correctness", by self-censorship, and by the desire to please increasingly oppressive publishers. Intuitively, they know what is expected from them. They play the game. It is huge business. Like journalism, and, as in academia.
Now, in the United States, as well as in the United Kingdom and Germany, there are numerous literary awards, which reward mediocrity, but there are hardly any literary giants.
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North American writers were well ahead of their time. At least some of them were.
Recently, when I was visiting my friends at the "Left Word" publishing house in New Delhi, India, I was surprised to find a Mark Twain book about the crimes against humanity committed by King Leopold II of Belgium, in Congo! Part of the Belgian establishment is still denying these crimes, to this day. A hundred years ago, Mark Twain rose in defense of a destroyed African nation.
Hemingway clearly understood the enormity of Mark Twain, as he also understood Africa. In his "Green Hills of Africa", he wrote, in fact he smashed America with one powerful thought:
"All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called . If you read it you must stop where the n-word Jim is stolen from the boys. That is the real end. The rest is just cheating. But it's the best book we've had. All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since."
Hemingway also clearly understood his times. Quoted in Look in May of 1954, he said:
"There is nothing wrong with Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin that a .577 solid would not cure".
Now, wouldn't you love the literature of a country, which dares to drop such verbal bombs? These days, such a statement would land you in the Guantanamo camp. Of course, Hemingway, according to several declassified FBI files, was given an overdose of electric shocks, at a mental clinic, when he was seeking help for depression; something that later drove him to suicide. But he dared, and others dared, as well.
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I spent time in the deep south of the country, when I was young. I used to drive around, tempting fate with my New York license plates. I listened to countless stories in Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama and Texas. It was all depressing, as it was all enormously powerful.
The United States is a segregated country. If they tell you it is not, they lie. It was, when I lived there, and it still is, now. They hit you with political correctness in order to shut you up, so you don't say it, write it, or even hear how deeply it is divided.
But in the past, you could park yourself in a bar, somewhere in Louisiana, and take it all in. It was dangerous, unsettling, but it was true life, and if you were young, and had guts, it was the best school for writing fiction: the stories, the people, all raw, exposed, painful, and in a very twisted way, beautiful.
Paris was an escape for many. If you were born an American, and you were black, you just couldn't live in the United States. It would crush you, humiliate you, kill you. Unless you were chasing awards, and were willing to soften things up, like Toni Morrison did at some point. But if you were like Richard Wright, one of the very best, one of the greatest, and the author of Black Boy and Native Son, you simply had to go: say it all and leave in total desperation.
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