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MUSIC TELEVISiON
Daily Nebraskan
Wednesday, August 27, 1986
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rex
Protagonist development
rewarding in new Hemingway
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A NOV I I
cover courtesy of Charles Scribner and Sons
Review by Ken DiMaggio
Staff Reporter
"The hardest thing in the world to do," wrote
Ernest Hemingway, "is to write straight honest
prose on human beings." It's fitting for the man
who wrote those words to leave us a posthumous
novel about sexual ambiguity. It's even more
fitting that his novel, where the male protagonist
plays a feminine role to satisfy his wife's new
adopted masculinity, should come at a time of
Reagan, Rambo and cheap, easy conquests like
the Grenada invasion.
I feel that manhood in America has presently
reached its lowest point. The American male has
become a caricature. Once again he's become
the Man in the Grey Flannel Suit see GQ for
the updated version. But few movies, books and
plays show little, if anything, of what the inside
of this successful American man is like.
In "The Garden of Eden", Hemingway makes
his young successful author, David Bourne, play
a contrary role. He cuts his hair short like his
wife Catherine's, dyes it the same blonde color
and becomes her female partner in bed.
Later, Catherine will take a young Spanish
woman named Marita for a lover. But because
she is never secure in this relationship, her
husband seduces Marita away from his wife, who
then has a nervous breakdown.
But the internal struggle in this novel is
rooted in the short story the protagonist is writ
ing. While David Bourne is trying to become a
woman, he tries to fight off his father's influence
when he is a small child and they are on a
hunting trip in Africa. By the end of the novel,
David will reject the feminine role his wife has
tried to impose on him, and will reaffirm his
masculine role in his new relationship with Mar
ita. But he will have done so by rejecting the
strong patriarchal values of his father, who
always makes conquests of nature.
This is the only Hemingway hero for me that is
triumphant. The older and succassful David
Bourne comes to full maturity in the child that
stands up against his father and refuses to kill
an elephant that he has grown sympathetic
towards and comes to love. The young David
Bourne gives the older one the virtues to make
him a man love, compassion and communion
with nature. For once, the warrior in Heming
way's fiction finds greater virtue in laying down
his weapon, resisting the will to conquer and
kill. For once the hero in Hemingway's fiction
wins in losing the contest, the hunt, the fight.
And it is both significant and ironic that Hem
ingway should choose a child to withstand the
pressures of a compelling and authoritarian
nature. '
His father waited for him to come up
and said very gently, "He rested here.
He s not travelling as he was. We 11 be up
on him anytime now. "
"Fuck elephant hunting, " David had
said very quietly.
"What's that?" his father asked.
"Fuck elephant hunting, "David said
softly.
"Be careful you don 't fuck it up, " his
father had sa id to him and looked at him
flatly.
That's one thing, Davidhadthxmgfd- -
He knows all about it now and he will
never trust me again. That's good,
because I'll never tell him or anybody
anything again never anything again.
Never ever never.
But the older David finally comes of age by
placing himself in a sexual role that his father
could never conceive of. In the end, it is David
who becomes a man, his father, the boy that lived
in fear and confusion inside a man's body.
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