Hemingway & Catholicism

"Few American writers have become critical clay as often as Ernest Hemingway. The wide space between his bare, declarative prose and his masculine mythos is often filled with critical assumptions and declarations. Hemingway’s religion has become especially flexible for scholarly usage. Biographer Jeffrey Meyers’s summary is representative of contemporary perceptions: “[Hemingway’s] Catholicism was a way of distancing himself from and expressing his contempt for the Protestantism of his family and the moral values of Oak Park; it was a means of identifying himself with the Latin ritual, customs, and culture of Italy, France and Spain; it provided a kind of insurance and satisfied the medieval superstition he nourished in place of religious belief; it was a convenient accommodation that pleased [his second wife] Pauline.” A rhetorically appealing position, but one that Matthew Nickel, author of this much-needed critical reconsideration, would likely find a bit too clean. Hemingway’s Dark Night is an even-tempered, thorough appraisal of Hemingway’s evolution as a Catholic writer."


My full review of Hemingway's Dark Night at Catholic Fiction