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literary guidelines suggest that Hefner and Spectorsky believed that literary selections were a crucial component of the ethos of ‘’Playboy.’’ Spectorsky instructed his fiction staff to discard any “castration-defeat-doom stories” in favor of “Hemingway heroes . . . who deal with the world instead of cringing and having high-tone failures” (Gilbert 208). Spectorsky also based much of his criteria for quality fiction on Hemingway’s writing style—clear, economical prose, machismo or womanizing, rich imagery, and simple, albeit vigorous, word choice. Using Hemingway, the author and the man, to advertise the magazine’s commitment to masculinity, Spectorsky helped resurrect the masculine, intellectual man during the 1950s gender debates.

In order to promote ‘’Playboy’s’’ macho literary persona and maintain a heavy dose of Hemingway, Spectorsky commissioned Norman Mailer for various publications. For instance, the January 1963 issue contains a special portfolio on “man’s politics and sport, his business and pleasure, his competition and credo” that couples Hemingway’s “A Man’s Credo” with Mailer’s debate on right-wing American politics. And, in the laudatory introduction to the ‘’Playboy’’ Interview with Norman Mailer, the editors claim that “Mailer is as colorful and publicized as any writer since Ernest Hemingway”(69, Jan. 1968). Featuring Hemingway first, followed by Mailer, ‘’Playboy’’ editors could assure readers that elite literature would not negate readers’ masculinity. Spectorsky could easily use Mailer in this capacity because of the multiple themes and concerns connecting these literary giants, including their iconoclastic status.

As articles in the 2010 issue of the ‘’Norman Mailer Review’’ illustrate, the connections between Ernest Hemingway and Norman Mailer range from bullfights to multiple wives. Erik Nakjavani argues that Hemingway’s influence on Mailer was so acute that the younger author “came to ‘’embody’’ Hemingway’s influence, identifying with him” and developing affinities with him (166, emphasis original). Scholars such as J. Michael Lennon, James Meredith, Mark Cirino, and Barry Leeds prove that themes of boxing, war, violence, and firearms unite two of the most famous twentieth-century century writers. Constructing female characters as objects also links them. In “Norman, Papa, and the Autoerotic Construction of Woman,” Mimi Glad- stein chronicles how both authors became “favorite whipping boys for feminist critics” for creating a “certain kind of fantasy woman, a projection of autoerotic impulses, by which they allow themselves, imaginatively, privileges that they did not have in life” (288-89). And, in “Hemingway, Mailer,

Hemingway’s literary presence dictated much of ‘’Playboy’s’’ editorial content, even though his words appeared minimally in the magazine. According to Thomas Weyr’s ‘’Reaching for Paradise’’, Hefner desperately wanted to include a Hemingway original in the inaugural 1953 issue (10). Yet due to the magazine’s content and budgetary restraints—‘’Playboy’s’’ first issue’s editorial content only cost $2,000—Hefner could not obtain the Hemingway, John O’Hara, or James Thurber pieces he so desired (Weyr 10). ‘’The New Yorker’’ “haughtily” refused to sell Hefner reprint rights for a Thurber piece and Hemingway’s publisher rejected Hefner’s request “because his magazine had not ‘demonstrated its character’” (Miller 35). It would take three years and over 300,000 subscribers until Hefner and Spectorsky could include Hemingway’s presence in the magazine. They commissioned Jed Kiley for his unauthorized Hemingway biography, which was serialized over eight issues. Beginning with the first installment of Kiley’s “Hemingway: A Title Bout in Ten Rounds,” Hefner and Spectorsky added to the myths of Papa. In the September 1956 “Playbill,” editors proclaimed Hemingway as a man of “unim- peachable morals” and possibly the “greatest writer in the world”(4). Editors reminded readers that Hemingway has, for many years, “hit the bottle, tum- bled wenches” and “enjoyed such organized carnage as war and bullfighting” (2). Quick to dismiss his actions as neither immoral nor sinful, editors described Hemingway as a cheater of death who became “a scarred and bearded American legend, a Great White Hunter, a husband of four wives, a winner of Nobel and Pulitzer Prizes” (2). They quoted Kazin’s praise of Hemingway as “the bronze god of the whole contemporary literary experience in America” (2). But what seems most important about the Hemingway myth is that he hails from a Midwest, middle-class family—the same family history as Hefner and many ‘’Playboy’’ readers. His roots and eventual fame make Hemingway the quintessential ‘’Playboy’’ author: growing out of middle- class America and a devoutly Christian home, Hemingway became “the

hard-drinking, death-happy . . . swaggering, irresponsible author of bestselling Hollywood fodder” (2). This image of Hemingway, a Midwestern everyman turned courageous, financially successful, and intellectual, sup- ports the grand narrative ‘’Playboy’’ presented for its readers—every male has the potential to get the woman of his choice if he works hard, participates in capitalism, and reads quality fiction.

‘’Playboy’’ editors amplified the Hemingway myth throughout the 1960s. In January 1961, ‘’Playboy’’ published “Hemingway Speaks his Mind,” quotations from a variety of Hemingway’s collected works. Editors thoroughly searched Hemingway’s works for scraps of prose that would suggest that his life style mimics those of a Playboy. Introduced as “a philosophy of life,” ‘’Playboy’’ used this four-page feature to present Hemingway as an honorary Playboy (95, Jan. 1961). There are quoted topics range from musings on Cuban women to his many cats, but the myth of the man that emerges is one of strength and smarts. For instance, Hemingway’s observations about war, being hit with a mortar shell, drinking, boxing, bullfighting, cooking a lion steak, deep-sea fishing, gate-crashing, and cursing remind readers of his masculine persona. His ruminations on hunting are particularly insightful: “You must be calm inside, as if you were in church, when a lion or a rhino is coming at you” (96, Jan. 1961). Hemingway’s use of the second person oddly addresses ‘’Playboy’’ readers, in the comforts of their suburban homes or urban bachelor pads.

Hemingway’s quotations concerning sexual relationships also support the ‘’Playboy’’ lifestyle. In “On Love,” for example, Hemingway writes that love is “an old word, and each man takes it new and wears it out himself” (96, Jan. 1961). This musing suggests that each man observes relationships differently—those Playboys that reject the monogamous life of the nuclear family can still find their own kind of love. In this passage, Hemingway blesses male readers to wear out their own version of love. Even in his dreams, Hemingway was the spitting image of a Playboy: “In my nocturnal wanderings I am always between twenty-five and thirty years old and am irresistible to women, dogs, and on one occasion, to a very beautiful lioness, who subsequently became my fiancée” (96, Jan. 1961). As tamers of women, dogs, and wild cats, readers could model their behavior on Hemingway’s actions in order to obtain their next catch. The things Hemingway deemed good are equivalent to what ‘’Playboy’’ readers should want: wine, bread, bed, early mornings, the sea, women, love, and honor (97). In this list, Hemingway

conflates necessities, like food and sleep, with amenities like women and early mornings. Much of ‘’Playboy’s’’ editorial content, like its monthly Playmate, promoted similar notions—sex and honor were both necessary and attainable.

After the success of “Hemingway Speaks his Mind,” ‘’Playboy’’ continued to use the myth of Hemingway to advance its literary selections and grand narrative. Editors even applied parodies of Hemingway’s famous titles to pictorials and satire pieces. For example, in the July 1961 issue editors published Barry Spacks’s “For Whom the Booth Tolls.” Editors meticulously labeled Spacks’s work “outrageous” in its “attention getting (and moneymaking) device” (5). Unlike satires and parodies of other authors, editors were careful to honor Hemingway. Later that same year, Spectorsky serialized Hemingway’s first authorized biography. Spectorsky paid a reported $25,000—approximately equivalent to $160,000 in current U.S. dollars— for the serialization rights (Hale). Beginning in December 1961, Leicester Hemingway’s “My Brother Ernest,” spanned four issues and over sixty pages. Published only eight months after Hemingway’s suicide, “My Brother Ernest” received favorable reviews from ‘’Playboy’’ readers. The text was later expanded, published by Pineapple Press, and reached the ‘’New York Times’’ list of 100 outstanding books for summer reading in 1962. ‘’Playboy’’ continued the Hemingway trend with “Papa and the Playwright,” a review of Hemingway and Tennessee Williams, Evgeny Evtushenko’s “Meeting with Hemingway,” Patrick Hemingway’s “My Papa, Papa” and Hemingway’s only play, ‘’“The Fifth Column.”’’

Readers responded so well to the Hemingway material that Spectorsky published Hemingway’s “Advice to Young Men” in 1964. Consisting of previously unpublished observations on some of the ground rules of life and literature, this piece is eerily similar to the earlier “Hemingway Speaks His Mind,” sans the heavy dose of observation on traditional masculine activities like boxing, big-game hunting, and fishing. The main focus of “Advice to a Young Man” was on the art of writing and responding to critics. In this piece, Hemingway shared his wisdom on other topics, most notably education, achieving success, happiness, living with honor, prejudice, death, faith, and the future. The feature concludes with a Hemingway quotation that reinforces ‘’Playboy’s’’ call for its readers: “All the glory of life, all the romance of living, all the deep and true joys of the world, all the splendor and the mystery are within our reach” (225, Jan. 1965). Hemingway’s posthumous advice