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Contrasting takes on masculinity in David Szalay’s Flesh and Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein
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Hungarian-British author David Szalay (left) with his book, Flesh, and Frankenstein director Guillermo del Toro.
PHOTOS: AFP, NETFLIX
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SINGAPORE – There is a distinct strain of masculine sentimentality in literary fiction that cloaks its bathos with spare prose.
My first encounter with this genre was Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 debut, The Sun Also Rises. Often regarded as the American novelist’s greatest work, this tale of physically and emotionally stunted men wrestling with their masculine identities did not appeal to me when I encountered it as a young woman. With the judgmental confidence of youth, I dismissed it as Mills & Boon for men.
