Ernest Hemingway was about the least-contradictory human being to walk the planet. He was what we used to refer to as a “man’s man,” a hard-drinking, hard-living S.O.B. who didn’t care what you thought of him. (On the downside, he was also a clinically depressed alcoholic who took his own life, so there’s some brickbats in there along with the bouquets.) Papa is the archetypical macho man for many of us, the very antitheses of the metrosexual or “sensitive guy” of the seventies. No Alan Alda/worry about his “feminine side” for Hemingway. It’s hard to imagine Hemingway even dealing with the question, in any way other than beating the questioner bloody, then standing over the mangled body and ordering another bottle of hooch.
