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Articles

Hemingway and the Hero

L.A. Rowland campaigns to instate Ernest Hemingway as a philosopher-hero.

Talented famous people who blow their heads off with shotguns are not usually forgotten quickly. They are more commonly the object of empathy for their tortured souls and reverence for their otherworldly genius, and consequently secure a high position in the pantheon of great artists and brilliant minds. But Ernest Hemingway’s suicide whilst in forced exile at the age of sixty-one has been followed by increasing neglect by the cognoscenti. I was shocked to discover that many university courses on modernist literature do not even mention Hemingway, despite his vital contribution to the development of the novel in the early twentieth century. His enormously popular A Farewell to Arms (1929) is unquestionably a classic – “one of the great modern novels” according to Malcolm Bradbury – and in recognition of his originality Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954.

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