Hemingway and Agamben: Finding Religion Without God by Marcos Antonio Norris (review)

Reviewed by: Hemingway and Agamben: Finding Religion Without God by Marcos Antonio Norris Thomas Bevilacqua Hemingway and Agamben: Finding Religion Without God, By Marcos Antonio Norris. Edinburgh UP, 2023. 288 pp. Paperback, 102. 00. The Ernest Hemingway scholarly discourse is rich with queries into the author's philosophical and religious orientation. Should we read Hemingway as essentially a Christian writer or an atheist? Was Hemingway an existentialist? A nihilist? Did he possess any kind of overarching philosophical outlook? What did he really believe? Marcus Antonio Norris enters into this discussion with his book, Hemingway and Agamben: Finding Religion Without God. Norris's work provides a worthwhile and much-needed contemporary contribution to this larger conversation, seeking to articulate the complexities rather than claiming one binary or another. The key concept that informs Norris's work on Hemingway is that of a "secularized theism. " Referencing the philosophers Giorgio Agamben and Charles Taylor, Norris establishes the concept as "a point of view that hollows out the transcendent metaphysical structure of Christianity, for example, to eliminate or significantly transform its ideational content. In effect, theological notions like the imago Dei, virtue, and sin may be transformed, respectively, into secular notions like human worth, good, and evil, which are then subsequently ascribed an a priori, metaphysical value" (19). After establishing this, Norris moves into discussing how Hemingway fits within that conception. After first noting Hemingway's existentialist bona fides, Norris moves into highlighting "recent scholarship maintains that Jean-Paul Sartre's existential atheism was itself a secularized version of Catholic mysticism, " after which he posits that "iIt may be that Hemingway's existentialism, which is characteristically Sartrean, shares the same elements of Catholic mysticism that Sartre is believed to have secularized, " allowing us to grasp how "binary debates over Hemingway's religious orientation miss the point, as Hemingway might be best understood as neither an atheist nor a theist, strictly speaking, but as a secularized theist, which is a nuanced combination of the two" (25). Norris situates Hemingway in this in-between space, as someone for whom religious practice carries an importance yet whom we should not understand as a believer in the most literal or definitive sense. Norris examines Hemingway's biography through the lens of Agamben and Sartre, identifying the ways in which this secularized theism manifested itself in the author's life. Following his examination of Hemingway's upbringing in Oak Park, his experience during the first World War, and his conversion End Page 108 to Catholicism, Norris writes "Hemingway retains a belief in sovereign moral choice and, with it, a belief in sacred human identity. This means that Hemingway's atheism, whatever its extent, is a failure; he secularizes divine morality through his masculine volition and commissions the imago Dei, or a secularized version of it, to authorize his choices" (115–16), hinting at the ways in which this secularized theism would reach out into other realms of interest for Hemingway, like masculinity, humanity, and the natural world. Norris then turns to an exploration of Hemingway's literary output and how his writing fits within this construction of a secularized theism, drawing on novels, short stories, and nonfiction pieces from throughout Hemingway's career. Norris's reading, in particular, of "Now I Lay Me, " is compelling as he does investigates that story alongside the others that engage with Nick Adams's time during the War. Recounting how "Nick recites Catholic prayers and engages in ritual practices" as "he hopes to achieve the 'religious feeling'" (186), Norris articulates this in-between characteristic and how it is present in Hemingway's fiction. It would be a mistake to "declare the Hemingway hero a full-blown atheist who rejects the imago Dei, the afterlife, and everything that religion entails, " but "there is a marked ambiguity" (185) within Hemingway and his characters in terms of their belief. Norris's book stands as an important contribution to Hemingway studies because this notion of a secularized theism, which resists binary readings of Hemingway as either definitive believer or definitive unbeliever, is both particularly relevant and useful for wrestling with such a complex topic. Norris correctly highlights that "scholars on both sides of the debate. . .