"Hemingway" in the Twenty-First Century, II

"How much of Hemingway’s place is ours?"

A life-sized statue of Hemingway by José Villa Soberón at El Floridita, a bar in Havana. Photo: Frederic Schmalzbauer, own picture.

Read part I, “a Reconsideration,” here.

Personal regard for the great figure diminished quickly after his death, and while there has been continuing respect for the writer as craftsman, responsiveness to him as an artist seemed to track the personal disregard. Revelations from the posthumously published writing and personal papers, of Hemingway’s sexual role play and masked gender fluidity certainly complicate and enrich the characterology—material for more scholarship—but at best they have only kept track with independent cultural evolution. At worst, they have served more to confirm what many derisively presumed all along, that the masculine show and violent contests of courage were self-destructive and culturally harmful performative deceptions.

The evidence shows: it wasn’t that Hemingway didn’t know himself. Of his youngest son Gregory, whose own sad st…