I first wrote about Ernest Hemingway's sexuality in, it looks like from previous posts, 2014. I just googled "Ernest Hemingway," looking for that photo of him I have in my mind, and up came this, from 2018. The Queerness of Ernest Hemingway
I love Ernest Hemingway very much, which is unfashionable of me. Hemingway does not pass in my queer, feminist circles.
...
But Hemingway’s writing itself does not fit any straightforwardly heterosexual, masculine mold, and the general perception of him as such is one of the lit world’s most distorted misrepresentations.
...
Hemingway’s biography as a womanizer has blocked many opportunities for queer readings of his work, but I’m not sure that a string of failed marriages precludes queerness. In fact, the queerness in Hemingway’s work is tied to retreat and fear...Shying away from explicit queer content and instead illuminating the paths that fear or convention force you to take was—and is—sometimes the only option available for writers unwilling or unable to acknowledge the queer themes in their work.
...in A Moveable Feast...[q]ueer desire and fear of that queer desire lie intertwined on Hemingway’s pages: writing about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “delicate long-lipped Irish mouth that, on a girl, would have been the mouth of a beauty”, he adds, “The mouth worried you until you knew him and then it worried you more.”
...His writing uses stand-ins, plays with gender, and ties his physical and romantic attraction to men back to women.
...
When Hemingway turns against men—and he frequently does—he is malicious in undercutting them, as in Fitzgerald’s depiction as a weak hypochondriac in A Moveable Feast.
...
In the posthumously-published Garden of Eden, queer romance is at once more explicit and, like Fitzgerald’s mouth, more worrying. The novel is about newly-married couple David and Catherine Bourne on their extended European honeymoon, spending their days eating, drinking, swimming, and having sex.” And then Catherine comes up with a “wonderful dangerous surprise”: she cuts her hair very short.
“I’m a girl,” Catherine explains. “But now I’m a boy too and I can do anything and anything and anything.” The novel descends into a strange, erotic half-dream where Catherine and David meld and melt into each other. The sex they have changes:
He lay there and felt something and then her hand holding him and searching lower and he helped with his hands and then lay back in the dark and did not think at all and only felt the weight and the strangeness inside and she said, “Now you can’t tell who is who can you?”
“No.”
[I got that wrong to same effect in previous post.]
“You are changing,” she said. “Oh you are. You are. Yes you are and you’re my girl Catherine. Will you change and be my girl and let me take you?”
“You’re Catherine.”
“No. I’m Peter. You’re my wonderful Catherine. You’re my beautiful lovely Catherine. You were so good to change. Oh thank you, Catherine, so much. Please understand. Please know and understand. I’m going to make love to you forever.”
...
...Catherine and David play with gender, they are not just a straight couple wandering into faintly kinky waters. They are transforming, hiding shifting bodies, loves and queerness...
...Hemingway instead allows his characters to become genderqueer, genderfluid, to play with roles and switch sides.
...
It is my hope that one day...Hemingway's fame [will live]...happily-ever-after on the shelves of great queer literature.
I love Ernest Hemingway very much, which is unfashionable of me. Hemingway does not pass in my queer, feminist circles.
...
But Hemingway’s writing itself does not fit any straightforwardly heterosexual, masculine mold, and the general perception of him as such is one of the lit world’s most distorted misrepresentations.
...
Hemingway’s biography as a womanizer has blocked many opportunities for queer readings of his work, but I’m not sure that a string of failed marriages precludes queerness. In fact, the queerness in Hemingway’s work is tied to retreat and fear...Shying away from explicit queer content and instead illuminating the paths that fear or convention force you to take was—and is—sometimes the only option available for writers unwilling or unable to acknowledge the queer themes in their work.
...in A Moveable Feast...[q]ueer desire and fear of that queer desire lie intertwined on Hemingway’s pages: writing about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “delicate long-lipped Irish mouth that, on a girl, would have been the mouth of a beauty”, he adds, “The mouth worried you until you knew him and then it worried you more.”
...His writing uses stand-ins, plays with gender, and ties his physical and romantic attraction to men back to women.
...
When Hemingway turns against men—and he frequently does—he is malicious in undercutting them, as in Fitzgerald’s depiction as a weak hypochondriac in A Moveable Feast.
...
In the posthumously-published Garden of Eden, queer romance is at once more explicit and, like Fitzgerald’s mouth, more worrying. The novel is about newly-married couple David and Catherine Bourne on their extended European honeymoon, spending their days eating, drinking, swimming, and having sex.” And then Catherine comes up with a “wonderful dangerous surprise”: she cuts her hair very short.
“I’m a girl,” Catherine explains. “But now I’m a boy too and I can do anything and anything and anything.” The novel descends into a strange, erotic half-dream where Catherine and David meld and melt into each other. The sex they have changes:
He lay there and felt something and then her hand holding him and searching lower and he helped with his hands and then lay back in the dark and did not think at all and only felt the weight and the strangeness inside and she said, “Now you can’t tell who is who can you?”
“No.”
[I got that wrong to same effect in previous post.]
“You are changing,” she said. “Oh you are. You are. Yes you are and you’re my girl Catherine. Will you change and be my girl and let me take you?”
“You’re Catherine.”
“No. I’m Peter. You’re my wonderful Catherine. You’re my beautiful lovely Catherine. You were so good to change. Oh thank you, Catherine, so much. Please understand. Please know and understand. I’m going to make love to you forever.”
...
...Catherine and David play with gender, they are not just a straight couple wandering into faintly kinky waters. They are transforming, hiding shifting bodies, loves and queerness...
...Hemingway instead allows his characters to become genderqueer, genderfluid, to play with roles and switch sides.
...
It is my hope that one day...Hemingway's fame [will live]...happily-ever-after on the shelves of great queer literature.
