The writer Ernest Hemingway cultivated a tough, heroic persona — a boxer, fisherman, heavy drinker, big-game hunter and bullfighting aficionado. Yet he also embodied contradictions, marked by emotional vulnerability and deep anxieties about masculinity, war and mortality.
It’s those contradictions that John Dennis Anderson will highlight when he portrays Hemingway in four admission-free performances for Greenville Chautauqua, Feb. 5-8.
“I’m fascinated by Hemingway’s complexity,” said Anderson, a longtime scholar-performer. “He created a public persona that was brash and larger than life. But in some respects, that’s a mask he hid behind. He seems to be one thing on the surface but there’s a lot of depth. He’s a multifaceted figure.”…