Distinctly Emasculated
April 26, 2015 10:37 AM Subscribe
[F. Scott] Fitzgerald saw homosexuality as a weakness—less a sexual predilection than something one undergoes in times of emotional distress. [Ernest] Hemingway used fiction to broadcast his virility after a sexually confusing childhood. Both were more sexually fluid than their contemporary reputations suggest. Cody C. Delistraty in The Paris Review
Displaying a picture of a male child dressed a la Little Lord Fauntleroy as if it means anything doesn't give me much confidence in the writer's ability to decipher gender norms of past generations.
posted by winna at 10:46 AM on April 26, 2015 [35 favorites]
posted by winna at 10:46 AM on April 26, 2015 [35 favorites]
Hemingway’s bull fighting and boxing, to say nothing of his string of submissive wives,
Where does Martha Gellhorn fit into this?
While I acknowledge that sexuality can be complicated (so I am not arguing against the writer's thesis exactly) I do think this writer is sort of clueless.
posted by Nevin at 10:53 AM on April 26, 2015 [5 favorites]
Where does Martha Gellhorn fit into this?
While I acknowledge that sexuality can be complicated (so I am not arguing against the writer's thesis exactly) I do think this writer is sort of clueless.
posted by Nevin at 10:53 AM on April 26, 2015 [5 favorites]
Discuss the art and not the writer
posted by Postroad at 10:58 AM on April 26, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by Postroad at 10:58 AM on April 26, 2015 [3 favorites]
"Both were more sexually fluid than their contemporary reputations suggest" is the obvious and most truthful fact in the article. I thought it was kind of facile and drew a lot of misinformed conclusions but also have wondered why I haven't read more articles like it. I get why Hemingway has a macho reputation but when someone refers to it as a foregone conclusion I also assume they haven't read much of his fiction, any of his personal correspondence and absolutely none of the more notable biographies.
His first novel was about a guy whose dick was blown off in the war (um, generally speaking) in love with an independent, titled woman with a man's first name. He plays with gender conventions in the majority of his fiction. He liked bullfighting.
posted by annathea at 11:01 AM on April 26, 2015 [19 favorites]
His first novel was about a guy whose dick was blown off in the war (um, generally speaking) in love with an independent, titled woman with a man's first name. He plays with gender conventions in the majority of his fiction. He liked bullfighting.
posted by annathea at 11:01 AM on April 26, 2015 [19 favorites]
At least we know that alcoholism is for geniuses and tough guys, though.
posted by thelonius at 11:02 AM on April 26, 2015 [6 favorites]
posted by thelonius at 11:02 AM on April 26, 2015 [6 favorites]
I've heard a lot of critics who I feel ought to know better make the argument that Hemingway's fraught relationship with masculinity stemmed from his being dressed and treated as a little girl. As Winna mentions, this was absolutely the norm at that time, and if it affected him it would have affected everyone else just as much.
But this widespread fantasy of Hemingway the hypermasculine he-man has always puzzled me. It's like the only thing people know about him is his depiction in Midnight in Paris and the jokes that high-schoolers crack after being made to read him in their AP English classes. Anyone who has actually read (for instance and especially) The Sun Also Rises ought to get that he was profoundly uncomfortable with masculinity and his own capacity for it. It's not really a point that one needs to go to a lot of work to establish, when it's all right there in the text.
On preview: what Annathea said.
I don't know much about Fitzgerald, though.
posted by Krawczak at 11:05 AM on April 26, 2015 [13 favorites]
But this widespread fantasy of Hemingway the hypermasculine he-man has always puzzled me. It's like the only thing people know about him is his depiction in Midnight in Paris and the jokes that high-schoolers crack after being made to read him in their AP English classes. Anyone who has actually read (for instance and especially) The Sun Also Rises ought to get that he was profoundly uncomfortable with masculinity and his own capacity for it. It's not really a point that one needs to go to a lot of work to establish, when it's all right there in the text.
On preview: what Annathea said.
I don't know much about Fitzgerald, though.
posted by Krawczak at 11:05 AM on April 26, 2015 [13 favorites]
but also have wondered why I haven't read more articles like it
Me too, actually. I feel like The Thing About Masculinity has always been in the room with conversations about Hemingway, and other writers often mentioned in the same paragraph as Hemingway, but upon reflection it was always sort of "and so masculinity was a theme there, but anyway let's talk about this other thing." It was almost like that masculinity thing's already beaten to death, except for it never being discussed.
posted by Lyn Never at 11:16 AM on April 26, 2015
Me too, actually. I feel like The Thing About Masculinity has always been in the room with conversations about Hemingway, and other writers often mentioned in the same paragraph as Hemingway, but upon reflection it was always sort of "and so masculinity was a theme there, but anyway let's talk about this other thing." It was almost like that masculinity thing's already beaten to death, except for it never being discussed.
posted by Lyn Never at 11:16 AM on April 26, 2015
Nthing Nevin - I've worked with the Hemingway archival materials at the JFK Library - there was nothing submissive about any of Hemingway's wives.
posted by mollymillions at 11:29 AM on April 26, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by mollymillions at 11:29 AM on April 26, 2015 [4 favorites]
I've heard a lot of critics who I feel ought to know better make the argument that Hemingway's fraught relationship with masculinity stemmed from his being dressed and treated as a little girl. As Winna mentions, this was absolutely the norm at that time, and if it affected him it would have affected everyone else just as much.
I don't know enough as to whether to lend the blatantly Freudian reading of the situation as much credence as a lot of folks do, but it's based on far more than the baptismal-gown-type stuff you can see Hemingway wearing as an infant in photographs. According to his sister Marceline's memoir, their mother, Grace Hemingway, had always wanted twins, and thus held Marceline back a year in school (to synchronize their apparent ages), dressed the two of them in identical outfits, and told strangers that Marceline and 'Ernestine' were twin sisters.
posted by shakespeherian at 11:36 AM on April 26, 2015 [8 favorites]
I don't know enough as to whether to lend the blatantly Freudian reading of the situation as much credence as a lot of folks do, but it's based on far more than the baptismal-gown-type stuff you can see Hemingway wearing as an infant in photographs. According to his sister Marceline's memoir, their mother, Grace Hemingway, had always wanted twins, and thus held Marceline back a year in school (to synchronize their apparent ages), dressed the two of them in identical outfits, and told strangers that Marceline and 'Ernestine' were twin sisters.
posted by shakespeherian at 11:36 AM on April 26, 2015 [8 favorites]
Obviously instead of doing these sort of botched analyses of Hemingway the person, we should concentrate on Parody Hemmingway. While not quite so historically accurate, Parody Hemingway is a much better subject for examining the causes and effects of fraught hypermasculinity.
posted by happyroach at 11:37 AM on April 26, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by happyroach at 11:37 AM on April 26, 2015 [3 favorites]
it's based on far more than the baptismal-gown-type stuff you can see Hemingway wearing as an infant in photographs.
I don't know enough about Hemingway's early biography to threadsit on this point, but I do know that in the late 19th century the feminization of infants and toddlers went beyond dressing them the same to fluid gender pronouns, etc. I don't doubt that Grace had her own stuff going on, but it's still not that outre from everything I know about it.
posted by Krawczak at 11:42 AM on April 26, 2015
I don't know enough about Hemingway's early biography to threadsit on this point, but I do know that in the late 19th century the feminization of infants and toddlers went beyond dressing them the same to fluid gender pronouns, etc. I don't doubt that Grace had her own stuff going on, but it's still not that outre from everything I know about it.
posted by Krawczak at 11:42 AM on April 26, 2015
Well, the author is directly quoting from a biography of Hemingway when they get to that part, so I'd assume there must be more basis to it than "lol, a little boy in a dress". It's certainly possible that biography isn't very good (I haven't a clue) but it's not like the author of this piece just threw it in there for fun or anything.
posted by dialetheia at 11:47 AM on April 26, 2015
posted by dialetheia at 11:47 AM on April 26, 2015
Displaying a picture of a male child dressed a la Little Lord Fauntleroy as if it means anything doesn't give me much confidence in the writer's ability to decipher gender norms of past generations.
People forget there was a practical aspect to putting little boys in dresses. There was no such as thing as Pampers or Luvs, and even cloth diapers could be impractical in that era. If a little boy doesn't have the manual dexterity to unhook buttons or unzip a zipper, then letting the kid go commando under a dress so that he doesn't have an "accident" sounds like a common sense thing to do.
That being said, I think Hemingway was raised while this practice was viewed as outmoded. Supposedly, he once whipped it out in front of his schoolmates, because they taunted him about the girly he stuff he had to wear.
posted by jonp72 at 11:56 AM on April 26, 2015
People forget there was a practical aspect to putting little boys in dresses. There was no such as thing as Pampers or Luvs, and even cloth diapers could be impractical in that era. If a little boy doesn't have the manual dexterity to unhook buttons or unzip a zipper, then letting the kid go commando under a dress so that he doesn't have an "accident" sounds like a common sense thing to do.
That being said, I think Hemingway was raised while this practice was viewed as outmoded. Supposedly, he once whipped it out in front of his schoolmates, because they taunted him about the girly he stuff he had to wear.
posted by jonp72 at 11:56 AM on April 26, 2015
I thought it was kind of facile and drew a lot of misinformed conclusions but also have wondered why I haven't read more articles like it.
Because you never looked? Lit crit is rife with this sort of underinformed, unsupported gender analyses, every critic wants to shove square pegs into their favorite round hole. This is the sort of rubbish I recall was once lampooned by Kurt Vonnegut when he was teaching at the Writer's Workshop. In one of his novels, a litterateur tells an author that he knows the author is gay by the way he wrote the book index.
posted by charlie don't surf at 12:02 PM on April 26, 2015 [2 favorites]
Because you never looked? Lit crit is rife with this sort of underinformed, unsupported gender analyses, every critic wants to shove square pegs into their favorite round hole. This is the sort of rubbish I recall was once lampooned by Kurt Vonnegut when he was teaching at the Writer's Workshop. In one of his novels, a litterateur tells an author that he knows the author is gay by the way he wrote the book index.
posted by charlie don't surf at 12:02 PM on April 26, 2015 [2 favorites]
I quite enjoyed reading Hemingway back in high school in Grade 11. In retrospect, I think I was quite lucky to have Jim O'Connell as my high school teacher at Mount Doug in Victoria back then. While we did plow through the requisite CanLit (Each Man's Son by Hugh MacLennan was bland, but Under the Ribs of Death, by John Marlyn was awesome), Mr. O'Connell also taught a lot of American Lit, including Hemingway and Robert Frost. It was obvious he loved it. Mr. O'Connell was actually from Britain originally. We also read Lord of the Flies, and Mr. O'Connell mentioned that when he was doing his teacher training William Golding actually supervised his class.
posted by Nevin at 12:35 PM on April 26, 2015
posted by Nevin at 12:35 PM on April 26, 2015
charlie don't surf: I guess i specifically meant breathless millennials writing in online magazines about their fascinating discovery that Hemingway might NOT have been the macho totem we all know him as but may have actually been complex. I'm familiar with a bit of the 60s-70s-ish era lit crit style unclosetings you describe. It's just for the past decade or so a lot of the online mags seem to refer to Papa Hemingway as only the masculine tarpon-hunting bullfight-cheering clipped sentence stereotype. At least it is starting to look like someone might actually be reading some of his work now.
posted by annathea at 12:50 PM on April 26, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by annathea at 12:50 PM on April 26, 2015 [2 favorites]
The author can't even get the basic facts right. The article claims Fitzgerald grew up middle-class in a wealthy St Paul suburb.
He actually was born in St Paul, they moved to Buffalo, spent about 10 years there, and moved back to rent a mansion on St Paul's most famous avenue.
It's not all St Paul, it's not exactly middle class, and is certainly was never suburban St Paul.
posted by littlewater at 1:00 PM on April 26, 2015 [3 favorites]
He actually was born in St Paul, they moved to Buffalo, spent about 10 years there, and moved back to rent a mansion on St Paul's most famous avenue.
It's not all St Paul, it's not exactly middle class, and is certainly was never suburban St Paul.
posted by littlewater at 1:00 PM on April 26, 2015 [3 favorites]
I can't even see the name "Hemingway" without feeling a boredom headache coming on. For all his tryhard brusque and bravado, Hemingway was able to tell a story in all kinds of flat, sterile and uninspired ways.
And yeah, this article could have used a better editor ...
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 1:28 PM on April 26, 2015 [5 favorites]
And yeah, this article could have used a better editor ...
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 1:28 PM on April 26, 2015 [5 favorites]
I recall the idea of Hemingway's masculinity coming up in an undergraduate course I was taking when we read The Sun Also Rises. It seems fairly obvious given some of the characters and the symbolism present in that novel with regard to Jake's impotency and his inability to "peform" in the way the other male bullriders are able to.
The idea of reading more into Hemingway's personal life and relating it to his fiction is troublesome to me. I've always felt that an attempt to separate text from authors should be made when critically analyzing a work.
posted by Fizz at 1:31 PM on April 26, 2015
The idea of reading more into Hemingway's personal life and relating it to his fiction is troublesome to me. I've always felt that an attempt to separate text from authors should be made when critically analyzing a work.
posted by Fizz at 1:31 PM on April 26, 2015
Next you guys are going to tell me OS Card is gay.
The thing this article has me pondering is why does it matter? I get that it matters to people who are currently the victims of homophobia, to have people they can look to or use as an example when someone tries to use said person as an example of "only a heterosexual could have done this!" But learning someone is gay doesn't really change their art--unless it's important to you to know that before "consuming" their oeuvre.
If you're doing that, you're just bringing your own prejudice to the piece, in any case.
posted by maxwelton at 1:57 PM on April 26, 2015 [2 favorites]
The thing this article has me pondering is why does it matter? I get that it matters to people who are currently the victims of homophobia, to have people they can look to or use as an example when someone tries to use said person as an example of "only a heterosexual could have done this!" But learning someone is gay doesn't really change their art--unless it's important to you to know that before "consuming" their oeuvre.
If you're doing that, you're just bringing your own prejudice to the piece, in any case.
posted by maxwelton at 1:57 PM on April 26, 2015 [2 favorites]
I can't even see the name "Hemingway" without feeling a boredom headache coming on. For all his tryhard brusque and bravado, Hemingway was able to tell a story in all kinds of flat, sterile and uninspired ways.
You're an Ogden Nash fan, aren't you?
posted by Nevin at 2:02 PM on April 26, 2015
You're an Ogden Nash fan, aren't you?
posted by Nevin at 2:02 PM on April 26, 2015
Principle/principal? Twice? In the Paris Review?
posted by scratch at 2:16 PM on April 26, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by scratch at 2:16 PM on April 26, 2015 [2 favorites]
Reads article.
Idly wonders if the author has read Sim's Going Home and Form and Void.
Wanders towards bookshelf. Thinks better of it, goes to medicine cabinet for an aspirin instead.
posted by Trinity-Gehenna at 2:21 PM on April 26, 2015
Idly wonders if the author has read Sim's Going Home and Form and Void.
Wanders towards bookshelf. Thinks better of it, goes to medicine cabinet for an aspirin instead.
posted by Trinity-Gehenna at 2:21 PM on April 26, 2015
I can't even see the name "Hemingway" without feeling a boredom headache coming on. For all his tryhard brusque and bravado, Hemingway was able to tell a story in all kinds of flat, sterile and uninspired ways.
I always had the impression that uninspired flat sterility was exactly what Hemingway strove for as a writer. Not that that's a good thing.
posted by Trinity-Gehenna at 2:28 PM on April 26, 2015 [2 favorites]
I always had the impression that uninspired flat sterility was exactly what Hemingway strove for as a writer. Not that that's a good thing.
posted by Trinity-Gehenna at 2:28 PM on April 26, 2015 [2 favorites]
But learning someone is gay doesn't really change their art--unless it's important to you to know that before "consuming" their oeuvre.
When someone spent so much of their writing talking directly and indirectly about masculinity, their own performance of and issues about masculinity becomes part of the picture.
posted by Dip Flash at 2:32 PM on April 26, 2015 [1 favorite]
When someone spent so much of their writing talking directly and indirectly about masculinity, their own performance of and issues about masculinity becomes part of the picture.
posted by Dip Flash at 2:32 PM on April 26, 2015 [1 favorite]
The macho mystique around Hemingway is also fueled by his interest (drunken enthusiastic participation, actually) in boxing and fisticuffs, and the sheer amount of bodily injury and serious illness he experienced later in life.
posted by werkzeuger at 2:47 PM on April 26, 2015
posted by werkzeuger at 2:47 PM on April 26, 2015
Haha, this makes me think of that crazy dissertation defense scene in the movie 'Getting Straight'.
I was very dismissive of Hemingway's writing for many years, I had thought that it was just some plain macho posing done in a kinda simplistic style. My views changed after reading more of his work, especially 'The Capital of the World'. Then I started to realize that he was actually being rather subversive about male masculinity. His protagonists go through the motions of presenting generic macho postures, but the plots tend to unfold in ways that reveals just how pointless and unrewarding this is.
posted by ovvl at 2:57 PM on April 26, 2015 [5 favorites]
I was very dismissive of Hemingway's writing for many years, I had thought that it was just some plain macho posing done in a kinda simplistic style. My views changed after reading more of his work, especially 'The Capital of the World'. Then I started to realize that he was actually being rather subversive about male masculinity. His protagonists go through the motions of presenting generic macho postures, but the plots tend to unfold in ways that reveals just how pointless and unrewarding this is.
posted by ovvl at 2:57 PM on April 26, 2015 [5 favorites]
You're an Ogden Nash fan, aren't you?
No, Hemingway just didn't really speak to me.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 3:04 PM on April 26, 2015
No, Hemingway just didn't really speak to me.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 3:04 PM on April 26, 2015
I think I might finally read Hemingway. I was turned off by his public image as a macho doofus, but now it seems like it's more complicated than that. Good read.
posted by gehenna_lion at 3:18 PM on April 26, 2015
posted by gehenna_lion at 3:18 PM on April 26, 2015
I was very surprised to discover his strong, capable female characters.
posted by brujita at 4:51 PM on April 26, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by brujita at 4:51 PM on April 26, 2015 [1 favorite]
There's a lot of Hemingway to roll one's eyes at (For Whom the Bell Tolls, for example), but The Sun Also Rises is a fantastic piece of literature, and one with some very easy-to-come-to feminist readings.
posted by shakespeherian at 5:57 PM on April 26, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by shakespeherian at 5:57 PM on April 26, 2015 [2 favorites]
Next you guys are going to tell me OS Card is gay
Well, self-loathing would certainly explain his obsession with the buttsecks
posted by Ber at 6:15 PM on April 26, 2015
Well, self-loathing would certainly explain his obsession with the buttsecks
posted by Ber at 6:15 PM on April 26, 2015
I can't even see the name "Hemingway" without feeling a boredom headache coming on. For all his tryhard brusque and bravado, Hemingway was able to tell a story in all kinds of flat, sterile and uninspired ways.
I always had the impression that uninspired flat sterility was exactly what Hemingway strove for as a writer. Not that that's a good thing.
posted by Trinity-Gehenna at 2:28 PM on April 26 [2 favorites +] [!]
Yes, that is why I love Death in the Afternoon - kinda epitomises his epithet "Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque age is over" where the deep structure unfolds the meaning (death, sacrifice etc) rather than the surface, drier manual on bullfighting it appears initially to be.
I think this kind of architectural approach to his representation of gender is also apposite - what appears to be a dry enunciation of masculinity is destabilised when the 'architecture' of his work is explored.
posted by honey-barbara at 7:16 PM on April 26, 2015 [2 favorites]
I always had the impression that uninspired flat sterility was exactly what Hemingway strove for as a writer. Not that that's a good thing.
posted by Trinity-Gehenna at 2:28 PM on April 26 [2 favorites +] [!]
Yes, that is why I love Death in the Afternoon - kinda epitomises his epithet "Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque age is over" where the deep structure unfolds the meaning (death, sacrifice etc) rather than the surface, drier manual on bullfighting it appears initially to be.
I think this kind of architectural approach to his representation of gender is also apposite - what appears to be a dry enunciation of masculinity is destabilised when the 'architecture' of his work is explored.
posted by honey-barbara at 7:16 PM on April 26, 2015 [2 favorites]
Wow, Paris Review has slipped.
I'd hoped to find something more interesting than a half-boiled "Ernest Hemingway: Tom of Finland?" thumbsucker, but the whole thing is a weird mix of obvious (sexuality is complicated) and weird, poorly edited grasping.
One of the weirdest assumptions is that historical sexual identity can be well understood by current identity models, despite the overwhelming evidence that sexual identity is separate from sexual behavior. Because of that, the answer to "Was X historical figure 'gay'?" is almost always both "No," and separate from the question of whether they had same-sex sexual intimacy or romantic love. It's like asking whether Memnon was an African-American.
posted by klangklangston at 11:10 PM on April 26, 2015 [3 favorites]
I'd hoped to find something more interesting than a half-boiled "Ernest Hemingway: Tom of Finland?" thumbsucker, but the whole thing is a weird mix of obvious (sexuality is complicated) and weird, poorly edited grasping.
One of the weirdest assumptions is that historical sexual identity can be well understood by current identity models, despite the overwhelming evidence that sexual identity is separate from sexual behavior. Because of that, the answer to "Was X historical figure 'gay'?" is almost always both "No," and separate from the question of whether they had same-sex sexual intimacy or romantic love. It's like asking whether Memnon was an African-American.
posted by klangklangston at 11:10 PM on April 26, 2015 [3 favorites]
This far into the thread and no one's posted this? For shame.
posted by pxe2000 at 12:45 PM on April 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by pxe2000 at 12:45 PM on April 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
This far into the thread and no one's posted this? For shame.
Thank you for correcting that terrible oversight! I'd never read that account before and it is my new favorite thing in the universe.
posted by dialetheia at 1:39 PM on April 28, 2015
Thank you for correcting that terrible oversight! I'd never read that account before and it is my new favorite thing in the universe.
posted by dialetheia at 1:39 PM on April 28, 2015
« Older Denim cut-offs, floral garlands, fashion wellies -... | November: The Able Archer Wargames take place in... Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
Huh?
posted by Nevin at 10:45 AM on April 26, 2015 [3 favorites]