Father's Day is almost here, and who else to dispel some worldly advice on being a man than Big Papa himself? Marty Beckerman has assembed a funny collection of all-things Ernest Hemingway, or "history's ultimate man," that may give Dad a chuckle in The Heming Way: How to Unlease the Booze-Inhaling, Animal-Slaughtering, War-Glorifying, Hairy-Chested, Retro-Sexual Legend Within...Just Like Papa!
Here, an excerpt from the chapter "Death in the Afternoon...Lunch is Served."
A meal without meat is like sex without an orgasm. No wonder so many women are vegetarians!
But it’s not just women. An increasing (and disturbing) number of men now sacrifice meat instead of sacrificing various creatures to get meat. Excess compassion overrides their logic centers and taste buds.
Acclaimed novelist Jonathan Safran Foer, a propagandist for the radical antiprotein agenda, wrote an insidious manifesto titled Eating Animals. The book, deceptively not a how-to manual, converted thousands of impressionable readers to his filthy vegan ideology.
Not so long ago, however, the most acclaimed novelist knew that animals “were made to shoot and some of us were made to shoot them,” because a truly moveable feast is no longer moving.
PAPA’S FAVORITE BEASTS TO VANQUISH
At age three Hemingway was a precocious killing machine: while his peers scribbled with crayons and drooled on themselves, he could load, cock, and shoot a Musket. He once caught a bigger fish than did his father, who instructed: “If you kill a thing you must eat it.” When the wunderkind toddler wantonly killed a porcupine, Papa’s father actually forced him to devour the animal. (Scholars are unsure whether Hemingway then sneered, choking down quills, “It tickles.”)
Even worse, young Ernest had to pay a hefty fine for blasting an endangered bird to bits. He learned an important lesson: you cannot take pleasure from hunting endangered species; the pleasure comes from making them endangered. Pathological bloodlust is so cute.
As an adult Hemingway once killed four hundred rabbits in a day, putting Elmer Fudd to shame. On a single boating trip Papa hooked nearly two thousand pounds of fish, including “the largest caught on rod and reel in the Atlantic.” This meant nothing to him because “I fish for fun, not for records.” (Exactly what a man says when he is fishing solely for records.)
THE MORALITY OF MEAT
You might not like that your dinner used to trot and frolic, but you have no right to criticize hunters if you purchase meat from a supermarket. Papa scoffed at grocery stores; his grocery store was the great outdoors.
“[E]veryone who has ever eaten meat must know that someone has killed it,” Hemingway said. “Those who never catch fish…should not condemn those who kill to eat.”
The definition of hypocrisy is holding others to a higher standard than yourself; therefore you should have no standards at all. Are you an ethical omnivore? No hormones or antibiotics to keep your family strong and healthy? Fair enough, hippies: what is more free range than the jungle?
The outdoorsman is not callous. He “loves the animals he hunts” far more than a vegetarian loves the animals (s)he doesn’t hunt. Because he must get inside their heads, literally and figuratively.
Hemingway studied his prey’s anatomy to minimize its suffering. His ability to calm gorillas and bears with his grunts and growls shocked professional animal handlers. He built this heartwarming rapport while also building his massive taxidermy collection. No PETA member could possibly share such a tender crossspecies bond.
Just like Snow White.
Science has proven what Hemingway always knew: hunting is the greatest expression of our collective spirit. In 2009 UCLA biologists discovered that our Homo sapien ancestors evolved from lower primates because they preferred meat to berries, allowing for “the development of the massively superior human brain.” In other words: vegetarianism is treason to humanity.
And it’s treason to animals. The wilderness requires culling to keep its delicate balance in sync. As Honorary Game Warden of Kenya in 1954, Hemingway learned that “control of marauding animals, predators and vermin…was necessary and someone must do it,” or else magnificent creatures “increased until they became such a problem…that they had to be slaughtered.”
You kill some of them so you don’t have to kill all of them. Much like Wall Street, the animal kingdom cannot regulate itself. (Your post-crash stock portfolio makes a case for regulating them in the same manner.)
Excerpt used with the author's permission.
Marty Beckerman, America’s Luscious Beacon of Truth, has written for Esquire (where he served as an editor), Playboy, Salon, Discover, Gawker, AOL, the Daily Beast, and every other worthwhile publication of our time. His literary masterpieces include Generation S.L.U.T. (MTV Books / Simon & Schuster) and Dumbocracy: Adventures with the Loony Left, the Rabid Right, and Other American Idiots (The Disinformation Company). You can find shirtless pictures of him at www.martybeckerman.com.