The performance of masculinity, and its conflation with genius, has not been a great thing for women, who are simultaneously the genius’s victims and forever excluded from the club of genius. But The Garden of Eden makes us wonder about the cost to the genius himself. What did it cost Hemingway to be so much one thing (a man) and never its opposite? Why does all this matter? Because genius informs our idea of who gets to do what. Who gets to have license. Who gets to give in to their impulses. Whom we choose to aid and abet when they do indulge in those impulses. When genius is tied to
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