A few years ago, my older son expressed an interest in hunting.
I was immediately turned off — killing animals? How disgusting! Never mind that this former 12-year vegetarian now eats chicken, fish, pork and the occasional burger without any hesitation, not to mention my (somewhat extensive) collection of leather shoes. If I eat animals, why would I object to those who kill animals for food? Perhaps it was the image in my head of the stereotypical hunter that I objected to. Nevertheless, as fully aware as I was of my hypocrisy, I told him, “No!”
(Of course, not long after he told me that we all went fishing — skills my boys learned on their NOLS trips — and enjoyed several wonderful meals from our catch.)
As Ernest Hemingway said, “(E)veryone who has ever eaten meat must know that someone has killed it. Those who never catch fish … should not condemn those who kill to eat.” 
Got it.
Of course, Papa was a big hunter and all-around macho man, something Esquire writer Marty Beckerman talks about in his new book, The Hemming Way: How to Unlease the Booze-Inhaling, Animal-Slaughtering, War-Glorifying, Hairy-Chested, Retro-Sexual Legend Within … Just Like Papa! And, although it’s a humor book, Beckerman has a lot to say about men, as well as marriage, porn, women, beards and, of course, hunting.
“I think there’s a lot of lessons that Hemingway taught that definitely could apply to modern guys. I think that guys today aren’t really living on our own terms and have lost a certain passion. Everything we know comes from Wikipedia, and everything Hemingway knew came from adventure. Get off your iPad and get off your smartphone and go slaughter some bulls and some lions!”
I don’t know about slaughtering bulls or lions — remember what happened to GoDaddy chief Bob Parsons, who videotaped himself shooting an elephant earlier this year? But, I do agree that experiencing life digitally and online instead of living it by doing things, meeting people and having adventures is an increasing problem for many of us, male and female, especially those my kids’ age, 17 and 20.
I’m not sure Hemingway is a model of manhood, either, but much of what Beckerman says makes sense, at least for me — a mom of two boys. Who are good role models for young men today?
In a LA Times article on Hemingway, Maryville University professor Jesse Kavadlo points out that some of today’s new male writers like Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club) — while still influenced by Papa’s “macho posturing” — are “expressing a desire among men to find deeper forms of connection and communication than, say, staging fistfights or firing shotguns.”
I sure hope that’s true.
But for those who want to fire shotguns — pointed at animals — what does a mother say? As Beckerman writes in the Daily Beast:
“Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg shocked everyone by announcing that he butchers animals to fully appreciate his omnivore diet, but we should applaud him. He is such a technological icon — Facebook is the ultimate vicarious existence — yet he’s performing an intense real-world action from which most of us would recoil. We delude ourselves into believing that meat is a product wrapped in plastic at the grocery store, but Zuckerberg (like Hemingway before him) wants to know the truth, wants to feel the truth, instead of paying someone to do it for him, even though he has more money than God.”
My son is almost 21 now — he certainly doesn’t need his mother’s approval if he wants to hunt. That said, I’m not going to buy him a gun. But I just may buy him Beckerman’s book.
Do you think Papa is a good role model for young men?
And, is Beckerman right — have guys today “lost a certain passion”?
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