Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Bliss

A writer is judged by their ability to tolerate a bliss state in which transcendent thought and spiritual emotion are reified into text.  Fitzgerald’s tolerance of this state of mind was far greater than Hemingway’s tolerance of his own bliss.  Hemingway may have had grace under pressure but the pressure of grace and its sublimity was too great for his constitution whereas Fitzgerald was a conduit throughout most of Paradise, much of Gatsby and considerable portions of Tender is the Night.  Fitz had lost it by Tycoon to that relentless Hemingway popular bandwagon and to alcohol.  Protestants fear bliss and transcendence so Catholic Fitzgerald had to be dismissed as second fiddle to solid, stolid, down to earth Ernest.