A Mentor in Modernism: The Influence of Ernest Hemingway on the Works of Harry Sylvester

Abstract: Harry Sylvester's 1950 novel A Golden Girl centers around a season of bullfights, just as Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises had done 25 years earlier. Both stories offer a commentary on character, art, and moral action, using the toreo in a Modernist manner to explore American religious life in foreign place, bringing the old and the new together. Sylvester used Modernist techniques to tell of young Americans in need of something from the past, something to anchor them in a crisis-laden world. His approach to this kind of writing is best understood through his friendship with Hemingway, which helps explain Sylvester's development as a writer.