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All Man!: Hemingway, 1950s Men's Magazines, and the Masculine Persona
During the 1950s, Hemingway was in two plane crashes, won a Nobel Prize, published a best-selling novel, and had five movies released based on his work. He had always been a public figure, but during these years his fame rose to that of celebrity.
Splashed on the pages of men’s magazines were articles titled “Hemingway, Rogue Male,” “Hemingway: America’s No 1 He-Man,” “Hemingway: War, Women, Wine, and Words,” and “Hemingway: King of the Vulgar Words and Seduction.” These articles appeared not in the mainstream men’s magazines like Esquire, Field & Stream, and Playboy, but in the pulp men’s adventure magazines of Vagabond, Rogue, Modern Man, Male, Bachelor, Sir Knight!, and Gent. Kitschy, extreme, and often misogynistic, these magazines capture the hyper-masculinity of the postwar decade. And Hemingway was portrayed as a role model in all of them.
Using these overlooked and sensational magazines, David M. Earle explores the popular image of Ernest Hemingway in order to consider the dynamics of both literary celebrity and midcentury masculinity. Profusely illustrated with magazine covers, article blurbs, and advertisements in full color, All Man! considers the role that visuality played in the construction of Hemingway’s reputation, as well as conveys a lurid and largely overlooked genre of popular publishing. More than just a contribution to Hemingway studies, All Man! is an important addition to scholarship in the modernist era in American literature, gender studies, popular culture, and the history of publishing.
Splashed on the pages of men’s magazines were articles titled “Hemingway, Rogue Male,” “Hemingway: America’s No 1 He-Man,” “Hemingway: War, Women, Wine, and Words,” and “Hemingway: King of the Vulgar Words and Seduction.” These articles appeared not in the mainstream men’s magazines like Esquire, Field & Stream, and Playboy, but in the pulp men’s adventure magazines of Vagabond, Rogue, Modern Man, Male, Bachelor, Sir Knight!, and Gent. Kitschy, extreme, and often misogynistic, these magazines capture the hyper-masculinity of the postwar decade. And Hemingway was portrayed as a role model in all of them.
Using these overlooked and sensational magazines, David M. Earle explores the popular image of Ernest Hemingway in order to consider the dynamics of both literary celebrity and midcentury masculinity. Profusely illustrated with magazine covers, article blurbs, and advertisements in full color, All Man! considers the role that visuality played in the construction of Hemingway’s reputation, as well as conveys a lurid and largely overlooked genre of popular publishing. More than just a contribution to Hemingway studies, All Man! is an important addition to scholarship in the modernist era in American literature, gender studies, popular culture, and the history of publishing.
192 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 3, 2015
David M Earle’s studies of popular culture, its distribution, and its relationships with modernist literature have prepared him very well for this study of an iconic American modernist and the way he represented manliness, courage, and dignity for millions of his contemporaries. His introduction is likes map of newsstand material in mid-century America. And the question with which it concludes is pursued aggressively on every subsequent page.
There is not a single image (colorfully reproduced) in this book that is not there to show the reader something important about the popular press and thus the culture, high and/or low, of the mid 20th century. Only through a discussion of the definitions of masculinity espoused by Esquire, its spin-offs, and Playboy and its spin-offs, could someone who appreciates Hemingway contrast and compare his own understanding of a great writer with a commercial, venal one. Earle is especially good at discussing how important voyeurism and prurience were to the rise of pictorial magazines, and to men’s magazines in particular.
Earle explores the way self-marketing works, and how it “elevates” a public figure so that he has not only financial, but more important, cultural capital. He shows us how this worked with Hemingway by explaining the reasons Hemingway’s novels and short stories dealing with war, bullfighting, and crime got into the public mind in a way that (IMO) The Great Gatsby and The Day of the Locust did not.
Naturally, publicity is at least in part “publousity,’” as Walter Winchell, a master of it, put it. Read the final chapters to understand how Hemingway labored under a persona that he actually rejected in his investigations of virility. Harry Morgan, Jakes Barnes, Nick Adams, and Santiago were such contrasts to the public Hemingway persona that it would make a good class exercise to juxtapose them.
There is not a single image (colorfully reproduced) in this book that is not there to show the reader something important about the popular press and thus the culture, high and/or low, of the mid 20th century. Only through a discussion of the definitions of masculinity espoused by Esquire, its spin-offs, and Playboy and its spin-offs, could someone who appreciates Hemingway contrast and compare his own understanding of a great writer with a commercial, venal one. Earle is especially good at discussing how important voyeurism and prurience were to the rise of pictorial magazines, and to men’s magazines in particular.
Earle explores the way self-marketing works, and how it “elevates” a public figure so that he has not only financial, but more important, cultural capital. He shows us how this worked with Hemingway by explaining the reasons Hemingway’s novels and short stories dealing with war, bullfighting, and crime got into the public mind in a way that (IMO) The Great Gatsby and The Day of the Locust did not.
Naturally, publicity is at least in part “publousity,’” as Walter Winchell, a master of it, put it. Read the final chapters to understand how Hemingway labored under a persona that he actually rejected in his investigations of virility. Harry Morgan, Jakes Barnes, Nick Adams, and Santiago were such contrasts to the public Hemingway persona that it would make a good class exercise to juxtapose them.
February 24, 2015
All Man! looks at the immensely popular men's magazines of the 1950s, which boasted a particularly aggressive form of masculinity. Papa Hemingway is the natural model for this type of masculinity - a hard drinking, womanizing, quick to fight, veteran (a regular "man's man") - so it's no surprise that he was such a frequent topic of admiration. David M. Earle studies these magazines as artifacts of their time, analyzing them for what they can tell us about the people and culture that created them. This is no easy task when considering the two topics - Hemingway and the 1950s - are so heavily idolized in our culture. I find a lot of these men's magazines hard to stomach, but I appreciated Earle's effort to bring them nuance.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews