Passage to Nirvana: Difference between revisions
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{{Infobox book| <!-- See Wikipedia:WikiProject_Novels or Wikipedia:WikiProject_Books --> |
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| name = '''Passage to Nirvana''' |
| name = '''Passage to Nirvana''' |
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| image = [[File:Passage to Nirvana Cover.jpg|200px|Original book cover]] |
| image = [[:File:Passage to Nirvana Cover.jpg|200px|Original book cover]]<!--Non free file removed by DASHBot--> |
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| author = [[Lee Carlson]] |
| author = [[Lee Carlson]] |
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| cover_artist = Michael Croteau |
| cover_artist = Michael Croteau |
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[[File:Nirvana_BookInside.jpg|thumb|350px|right|The unique creative layout of the book, with each chapter preceeded by a very short poem Carlson calls a "Po."]] |
[[:File:Nirvana_BookInside.jpg|thumb|350px|right|The unique creative layout of the book, with each chapter preceeded by a very short poem Carlson calls a "Po."]]<!--Non free file removed by DASHBot--> |
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Waldmeir was one of the most prominent critics to wholly consider the function of the novella's [[Christian]] imagery, made most evident through Santiago's blatant reference to the [[crucifixion]] following his sighting of the sharks that reads: |
Waldmeir was one of the most prominent critics to wholly consider the function of the novella's [[Christian]] imagery, made most evident through Santiago's blatant reference to the [[crucifixion]] following his sighting of the sharks that reads: |
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Revision as of 05:12, 26 March 2011
Passage to Nirvana
| 200px|Original book cover | |
| Author | Lee Carlson |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Michael Croteau |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Memoir |
| Publisher | Henry Chapin & Sons |
Publication date | 2010 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (hardback, paperback, Kindle, epub and iPad) |
| Pages | 326 p |
| ISBN | 978-0-9826884-6- Parameter error in {{ISBNT}}: length |
| 813/.52 20 | |
| LC Class | BQ9288.C375 2010 |
Passage to Nirvana is a memoir by Lee Carlson, written over a several year period from 2005-2010 primarily on board his 60-foot sailboat Nirvana that he shared with his fiancée Meg and published in 2010. It was his first book, although he had made his living as a writer for most of his adult life, working first as a journalist, magazine editor and freelance writer, and then moving into advertising and marketing copywriting. The book centers around Carlson's Traumatic Brain Injury and subsequent recovery, as well as his mother's death from a Traumatic Brain Injury. However the book is much more far-ranging, delving into such subjects as Zen Buddhism, sailing, divorce, children, family and even poetry. Ultimately it is a book about finding peace and happiness after a traumatic life event, a book about finding the joy in living.
Plot summary
Passage to Nirvana begins with Carlson's accident, when he was hit by a car standing outside a car wash, striking his head violently on the pavement, fracturing his skull, lapsing into a light coma and sustaining a Traumatic Brain Injury, with bleeding on the brain and other damage.
Background and publication
Written in 1951, and published in 1952, The Old Man and the Sea is the final work published during Hemingway's lifetime. The book, dedicated to Hemingway's literary editor Maxwell Perkins,[1] was featured in Life Magazine on September 1, 1952, and five million copies of the magazine were sold in two days.[2] The Old Man and the Sea also became a Book-of-the Month selection, and made Hemingway a celebrity.[3] Published in book form on 1 September 1952, the first edition print run was 50,000 copies.[4] The novella received the Pulitzer Prize in May, 1952,[5] and was specifically cited when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.[6][7] The success of The Old Man and the Sea made Hemingway an international celebrity.[3] The Old Man and the Sea is taught at schools around the world and continues to earn foreign royalties.[8]
No good book has ever been written that has in it symbols arrived at beforehand and stuck in. ... I tried to make a real old man, a real boy, a real sea and a real fish and real sharks. But if I made them good and true enough they would mean many things.
— Ernest Hemingway in 1954[9]
Hemingway wanted to use the story of the old man, Santiago, to show the honor in struggle and to draw biblical parallels to life in his modern world. Possibly based on the character of Gregorio Fuentes, Hemingway had initially planned to use Santiago's story, which became The Old Man and the Sea, as part of an intimacy between mother and son and also the fact of relationships that cover most of the book relate to the Bible, which he referred to as "The Sea Book". (He also referred to the Bible as the "Sea of Knowledge" and other such things.) Some aspects of it did appear in the posthumously published Islands in the Stream. Positive feedback he received for On the Blue Water (Esquire, April 1936) led him to rewrite it as an independent work. The book is generally classified as a novella because it has no chapters or parts and is slightly longer than a short story.
Literary significance and criticism
The Old Man and the Sea served to reinvigorate Hemingway's literary reputation and prompted a reexamination of his entire body of work. The novella was initially received with much popularity; it restored many readers' confidence in Hemingway's capability as an author. Its publisher, Scribner's, on an early dust jacket, called the novella a "new classic," and many critics favorably compared it with such works as William Faulkner's "The Bear" and Herman Melville's Moby-Dick.
Following such acclaim, however, a school of critics emerged that interpreted the novella as a disappointing minor work. For example, critic Philip Young provided an admiring review in 1952, just following The Old Man and the Sea's publication, in which he stated that it was the book "in which Hemingway said the finest single thing he ever had to say as well as he could ever hope to say it." However, in 1966, Young claimed that the "failed novel" too often "went way out." These self-contradictory views show that critical reaction ranged from adoration of the book's mythical, pseudo-religious intonations to flippant dismissal as pure fakery. The latter is founded in the notion that Hemingway, once a devoted student of realism, failed in his depiction of Santiago as a supernatural, clairvoyant impossibility.
Joseph Waldmeir's essay entitled "Confiteor Hominem: Ernest Hemingway's Religion of Man" is one of the most famed favorable critical readings of the novella—and one which has defined analytical considerations since. Perhaps the most memorable claim therein is Waldmeir's answer to the question—What is the book's message?
- "The answer assumes a third level on which The Old Man and the Sea must be read—as a sort of allegorical commentary on all his previous work, by means of which it may be established that the religious overtones of The Old Man and the Sea are not peculiar to that book among Hemingway's works, and that Hemingway has finally taken the decisive step in elevating what might be called his philosophy of Manhood to the level of a religion."[10]
Waldmeir was one of the most prominent critics to wholly consider the function of the novella's Christian imagery, made most evident through Santiago's blatant reference to the crucifixion following his sighting of the sharks that reads:
- "‘Ay,′ he said aloud. There is no translation for this word and perhaps it is just a noise such as a man might make, involuntarily, feeling the nail go through his hands and into the wood."[11]
Supplemented with other instances of similar symbolism, Waldmeir's criticism stands as one of the most durable, positive treatments of the novella.
On the other hand, one of the most outspoken critics of The Old Man and the Sea is Robert P. Weeks. His 1962 piece "Fakery in The Old Man and the Sea" presents his claim that the novella is a weak and unexpected divergence from the typical, realistic Hemingway (referring to the rest of Hemingway's body of work as "earlier glories").[12] In juxtaposing this novella against Hemingway's previous works, Weeks contends:
- "The difference, however, in the effectiveness with which Hemingway employs this characteristic device in his best work and in The Old Man and the Sea is illuminating. The work of fiction in which Hemingway devoted the most attention to natural objects, The Old Man and the Sea, is pieced out with an extraordinary quantity of fakery, extraordinary because one would expect to find no inexactness, no romanticizing of natural objects in a writer who loathed W.H. Hudson, could not read Thoreau, deplored Melville's rhetoric in Moby Dick, and who was himself criticized by other writers, notably Faulkner, for his devotion to the facts and his unwillingness to "invent."[12]
Some critics suggest "The Old Man and the Sea," was Hemingway's reaction towards the criticism of his most recent work, Across the River and into the Trees.[13]The negative reviews for Across the River and into the Trees distressed him, but were likely a catalyst to his writing of The Old Man and the Sea.
Footnotes
- ^ Perkins, Maxwell (2004). Bruccoli, Matthew J.; Baughman, Judith (eds.). The sons of Maxwell Perkins: letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, and their editor. University of South Carolina Press. p. xxvii. ISBN 1570035482.
- ^ "A Hemingway timeline Any man's life, told truly, is a novel". The Kansas City Star. KansasCity.com. 06/27/99. Retrieved 2009–08–29.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=and|date=(help) - ^ a b Desnoyers, p. 13
- ^ Oliver, p. 247
- ^ Meyers 1985, p. 489
- ^ "Heroes:Life with Papa". Time. November 8, 1954. Retrieved 2009–12–12.
{{cite journal}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help) - ^ "The Nobel Prize in Literature 1954". Nobelprize.org. Retrieved 2009-10-04.
- ^ Meyers 1985, p. 485
- ^ "Books: An American Storyteller". Time. December 13, 1954. Retrieved 2011-02-01.
- ^ *Joseph Waldmeir (1957). "Confiteor Hominem: Ernest Hemingway's Religion of Man". Papers of the Michigan Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. XLII: 349–356.
- ^ Hemingway, Ernest (0000). The Old Man and the Sea. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
{{cite book}}: Check date values in:|year=(help) hardcover: ISBN 0-684-83049-3, paperback: ISBN 0-684-80122-1 - ^ a b Robert P. Weeks (1962). "Fakery in The Old Man and the Sea". College English. XXIV: 188–192.
- ^ Meyers 1985, p. 440
References
- Baker, Carlos (1972). Hemingway: The Writer as Artist (4th ed.). Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-01305-5.
{{cite book}}: Unknown parameter|note=ignored (help)CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link) - Meyers, Jeffrey (1985). Hemingway: A Biography. London: Macmillan. ISBN 0-333-42126-4.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link) - Mellow, James R. (1992). Hemingway: A Life Without Consequences. New York: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-395-37777-3.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link) - Oliver, Charles M. (1999). Ernest Hemingway A to Z: The Essential Reference to the Life and Work. New York: Checkmark. ISBN 0-8160-3467-2.
{{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help)
Further reading
- Young, Philip (1952). Ernest Hemingway. New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston. ISBN 0-8166-0191-7.
- Jobes, Katharine T., ed (1968). Twentieth Century Interpretations of The Old Man and the Sea. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall. ISBN 0-13-633917-4.
{{cite book}}:|author=has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - "Michael Palin's Hemingway Adventure: Cuba". PBS. Retrieved January 21, 2006.
- Ivan Kashkin (1959). Commentary (in Ernest Hemingway—Selected works in two volumes). Moscow: State publisher for literature.
External links
- The Old Man and the Sea—slide show by LIFE magazine
- Photos of the first edition of The Old Man and the Sea from pprize.com