James Irwin on one of the twentieth century's great writers

Ernest Hemingway is alleged to have said that you must do four things in order to be a real man: plant a tree, fight a bull, father a son and write a novel.

Of course this makes Hemingway a man many times over, by his own definition. To others Hemingway is an aspiration; rather than being defined by perceptions of masculinity, Hemingway embodies them. He has written a Nobel Prize winning novel (not even his most acclaimed), he has lived and travelled across the globe, fought in wars, befriended film stars, artists, revolutionaries and of course contemporary writers. He has spawned imitators, influenced generations of writers, was married to three different women and committed suicide in spectacular fashion.

It is said that the reason Hemingway is still as revered today as he was when he was writing in Parisian cafes and Cuban verandas owes as much to his lasting image as it does to his writing. His reputation for drinking and his suicide, when at 7.00 am on the second morning of July 1961 he put the barrels of his shotgun in his mouth and pulled both triggers, are tales almost as famous and well-loved as For Whom The Bell Tolls and A Farewell to Arms.

Forty four years later another writer famous for his enthusiasm towards guns and alcohol blew his brains out. He was hugely inspired by the Hemingway legend and had stolen the elk horns adorning the ranch in Ketchum where Hemingway ended his life. He was Hunter S Thompson, a writer who used an alter ego in much of his writing to separate his true self from his public image.

Ernest Hemingway never used an alter ego, (though many of his novels contained autobiographical elements), but the Hemingway the public knew and the Hemingway his true friends and family knew were very different people. Like Thompson after him in the 70s, Hemingway was almost a victim of his own perpetuated image. Just as Thompson’s readers expected him to be high, hallucinating and drunk whilst savaging Nixon twenty four hours a day the public expected, nay demanded, the hard drinking, bull fighting, womanising Hemingway.

For all that Hemingway embodied the perception (and fantasy) of masculinity with his drinking and hunting, globe-striding, novel writing lifestyle there was more to him; the real Hemingway. In the famous words of Don Vito Corleone,"a man who doesn’t spend time with his family can never be a real man.’’ Even at the most primitive time in man’s history the caring of and providing for the family was just as important as lobbing sharpened flint into cattle and beating the life out of invaders, intruders and other threats.

And Hemingway was a family man. Part of his image and legend is Hemingway the womaniser, but as his niece mentioned in a Sunday Times interview in 2003, every affair conducted by Hemingway ended in marriage. Indeed his third and final wife, Martha Gellhorn, was only Hemingway’s fifth sexual partner; more a serial monogamist than promiscuous playboy.

He was also far from the alcoholic many people like to perceive him as, and unlike many writers never drank whilst he was writing. In A Moveable Feast, reflecting on his time in Paris he explains that he would only start drinking once he knew he was done writing. Whilst he wrote, at a strict schedule of 6am to 12pm, he was as sober as a Cromwellian Christmas.

And although he never went to university (and always remained strongly anti-academia) he was something of a secret scholar, voracious reader and fluent Spanish speaker. Combined with his appreciation of fine French wines, family life and interest in many foreign cultures Hemingway could be considered the epitome of metrosexuality.

Both sides of Ernest Hemingway are followed and influential codes of masculine characteristics and definitions of two differing aspects of masculinity. Only one of his four rules, fighting a bull, applies to Hemingway the macho man, perhaps suggesting which aspect of masculinity Hemingway felt was most important in reality. Naturally he is most remembered for his more macho personality. Whilst many men fall into the role of dutiful husband and father, it is the hard drinking, womanising, hunting man men want to be, always have done and probably always will do; and this is why Ernest Hemingway has survived and endured popularity unlike any other writer of his time.

The big difference however was that whilst Thompson felt trapped by his own alter ego Hemingway revelled in playing up to his image. He drank and he brawled and he argued. He fished and he fought and he drank some more. Hemingway played the man everyone wanted to be, including himself. Although he was an excellent sportsman, fisherman, drinker and fighter it was a façade, one he created and wanted to be seen. In later life his nickname was ‘Papa’ and he saw himself, and wanted to be seen, as a father-figure.

In many respects he was; perhaps not biologically but certainly he was the spiritual father of numerous writers to come, including Thompson. Men wanted to be him, women wanted to be with him, but crucially men also liked and admired him. There are of course many rumours that men wanted to be with him as well, and he with them, although there isn’t any evidence to support this. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s wife Zelda accused Hemingway of having a homosexual affair with Fitzgerald, but then she was often drunk and several pages short of a novel. However, not to in anyway endorse these unfounded rumours, in the last few chapters of Hemingway’s final books he describes a stay in a French hotel with Fitzgerald which reads more like the bickering of an old married couple than two of the twentieth century’s greatest writers.