Title
Hemingway and Pleasure
Document Type
Book Chapter
Annotation
In his consideration of the way pleasure has become a recent topic of critical attention, as opposed to earlier generations' fixations on the codes, the wound, or "the repressions of the iceberg," Wyatt locates an early signal, from 1919, in a Hemingway letter to his sister: "Taste everything," he advises. Recognizes how publication of The Garden of Eden triggered a wave of critical investigation into sensuality and related threads and how, in light of recent scholarship on Hemingway and food, consumer preference for "provenance and authenticity" have driven parallel cultural trends in gastronomy and artisanal liquid refreshments. Once again, the author finds instances of epicurean delight throughout Hemingway's work, no example more insightful than a quote and comment on a line from "The Battler": "'As the skillet grew hot the grease sputtered and Bugs…turned the ham and broke the eggs into the skillet, tipping it from side to side to baste the eggs with the hot fat.'" Here the repeated s's catch the moment's hot sizzle, and the t's enforce the happy smacking of the lips, demonstrating Hemingway's pleasure in food and in writing about food. Returns to the post-The Garden of Eden scholarship, which began to take Hemingway's complicated sexual and sensual pleasures more seriously.
Published in
Date
2020
Pages
115-29
Citation
del Gizzo, Suzanne and Kirk Curnutt, eds. The New Hemingway Studies. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020.