At first glance it might seem a bit of cultural dissonance to refer to one of the most famous American authors by a term that only came into popularity some years after he died. Yet, in many ways, Hemingway's life and career was the template for so many to be called rock stars in the decades immediately following his death in 1961.

Hemingway is well placed on our list of top 20 most famous American authors . He deserves his place for his literary accomplishments, but the significance of his literary achievement is transcended by his role as the model of artistic celebrity that shaped the 20th century.

Hemingway would still have qualified for registration at most youth hostels when his brooding and anguished novella of restless ennui, The Sun Also Rises, became an instant darling of the literary critics. Then, miraculously, only three years later, still soaking up the glow of critical acclaim, his novel, A Farewell to Arms, became a popular best seller. And this new best seller status was backed by a pair of short story collections, in the years just prior and subsequent to the novel that revealed Hemingway as nothing less than the re-inventor the short story form. Such stories as A Day's Wait, A Clean and Well-Lighted Place and Hills Like White Elephants were heartbreaking glimpses into mundane injuries that leave ordinary people scarred and broken.

This remarkable accomplishment of simultaneous critical and commercial success became the dream of generation after generation of artistically inclined youth throughout the 20th century. And to have achieved all this while still in fact a very young man was the almost fairytale-like part of the story. There were a variety of factors that converged to allow for his success.

For one thing, like so many of the most successful rock artists to follow in the decades soon after his death - think of David Bowie, David Byrne and Madonna - he showed an astute ability to absorb valuable lessons from avant garde and experimental artists, outside the mainstream, and yet recognized how to leverage those insights while still appealing to a mass audience. In Hemingway's case, he drew from the work of Ezra Pound, James Joyce and Gertrude Stein, among others, while still crafting stories that captured the spirit of his time.

And capture it, he did. In a way quite similar to how rock and roll captured the rebelliousness and idealism of the highly educated and materially privileged 1960s baby boom generation, Hemingway's stories captured the sullen ennui and restlessness of the post-WWI cohort that came to be known as the lost generation.

Meteoric success at a young age, though, poses its challenges: how does one repeat the feat? What do you do for an encore? He did have some modest "hits" in the 30s, capped off with the success of For Whom the Bell Tolls in 1940. Perhaps not a work equal to what he'd accomplished previously, but it sold. The 40s dragged out though as long a decade in which Hemingway's publications became less and less impressive and relevant.

For all that, though, Hemingway never ceased to be a household name and a source of constant popular fascination. Further, not only was he aware of this aspect of his fame, but he seems to have taken no small effort in cultivating it. He nurtured relationships with influential gossip columnists and photographs of him hunting or fishing big game always had a way of finding their way into the glossy magazines of the period.

It might come as a surprise for many people today to know this, but Hemingway was endorsing commercial products, such as pens, airlines and beer, long before the actors and athlete's with whom we associate such activity today. Additionally, Hemingway was a frequent source of letters to both literary and other publications, providing him the occasion to refine his well honed image as the proverbial man's man and the anti-intellectual's intellectual.

There certainly were those, even among his contemporaries, who claimed that Hemingway had grown a sad and tired parody of himself by the mid-point of the century. Again, it wouldn't be too overstretching an analogy to compare this perception of him as resembling the attitude today to 60s and 70s rock and pop bands, grey and flabby, that cash in on their past glories with nostalgia tours of casinos and community halls.

In Hemingway's case, however, one last triumph was still awaiting. Imagine those hanging-on senior citizen rock bands that, instead, of just endlessly playing the feel good greatest hits, actually had the brashness to insist on playing new material. And, to everyone's amazement, produced yet one more gold record.

Just when it seemed that the world had seen all the original and powerful work an elderly Hemingway had to offer, suddenly, in 1952, he did it again. The Old Man and the Sea took the literary world by storm and once again made Hemingway artistically relevant.

Yet, in that tragic way in which Hemingway's work always told more about him than perhaps he realized, one can't help noting the theme of this last great novella. It tells the story of an elderly man who sees his last hope for greatness slip away out of his grasp. The moment of its apparent possession revealed as but a mirage. By the 50s, there was something tragically broken in the heart of Hemingway.

And of course he molded that template for 20th century artistic celebrity right to the end. Anticipating all the tragic rock star youths which would follow the path he'd beaten, in 1961, in an isolated home, Hemingway succumbed to his own misdoing, in a suicidal fog of depression and substance abuse. The world lost one of the most important artists of the 20th century. In the process, the template of artistic celebrity which Hemingway made, received its finishing touch. And it would be a mold, simultaneously triumphant and tragic that informed the aspirations of dreamy youth throughout the rest of the century.

And it still does.