Title
Hemingway and Anorexia: A New Lens
Document Type
Article
Annotation
This essay provides a fresh understanding of Hemingway’s overt self-fashioned masculinity expressed in both his life and minimalist writing style. It affirms Leslie Heywood’s claim that behind the hard, minimalist aesthetic ideals of late modernism was an “anorexic logic” that ensured the cutting away of the feminine—culture-personality, excess—from the text. Rather than simply adding Hemingway to the list of authors who propagate this logic, however, this essay demonstrates how he was also a victim of a system that compelled him to uphold a predetermined masculine code. His art was formed in an anxiety filled paradox where he was simultaneously perpetrator and victim. It is this paradox, it is argued, that lead Hemingway to have considerable anxiety over his own weight and an unhealthy obsession with hunger.
Published in
Hemingway Review
Volume
39
Issue
1
Date
Fall 2019
Pages
81-96
Citation
Neville, Ethan. “Hemingway and Anorexia: A New Lens.” Hemingway Review 39, no. 1 (Fall 2019): 81-96.