EXCLUSIVE excerpt from Marty Beckerman’s “The Heming Way”
Marty Beckerman
Death in the Afternoon… Lunch is Served
An excerpt from Marty Beckerman’s new guide to life and masculinity based on the works of Ernest Hemingway, The Heming Way: How to Unleash the Booze-Inhaling, Animal-Slaughtering, War-Glorifying, Hairy-Chested, Retro-Sexual Legend Within… Just Like Papa!
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.
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. Hemingway 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,” Papa wrote in True at First Light. “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 you hold yourself, and 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 untamed 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, according to friend and biographer A.E. Hotchner. No PETA member could possibly share such a tender cross-species bond, for Hemingway built this heartwarming rapport while also building his massive taxidermy collection.
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 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 both in the same manner.)
The greatest enjoyment in life is depriving other creatures of it. “[N]o one is as happy as hunters,” Hemingway wrote, because “men, if they have meat to eat, retain their ability to make love well after they are seventy.” (Venison: Nature’s Viagra®.)
Unfortunately, it’s possible that mankind will go vegetarian someday. Scientists are researching lab-grown, cloned tissue; mass production — if feasible — would provide sustenance to the world’s poor, slash carbon emissions, and alleviate the suffering of livestock. Future generations would view eating meat as a shameful, unconscionable crime. They would look back at our contemporary diets with the same disgust and outrage that we hold for monsters such as the slaveholders, the Nazis, and the music producers of the 1980s.
How? our vegan progeny will ask us. How could you kill innocent animals?
Through the sands of history, one clarion voice shall answer with righteousness: “I spend a hell of a lot of time killing animals and fish so I won’t kill myself.”
In the end, Hemingway was his own final trophy.
To get your own copy and read more of The Heming Way: How to Unleash the Booze-Inhaling, Animal-Slaughtering, War-Glorifying, Hairy-Chested, Retro-Sexual Legend Within… Just Like Papa!, click here.
comment on this story
blog comments powered by Disqus