Ryan Hediger on "A Natural History of the Dead"

We are joined by Ryan Hediger to get to the bottom of Hemingway's genre-bending and gruesomely descriptive "A Natural History of the Dead."

First published in Hemingway's bullfighting treatise Death in the Afternoon in 1932 and then reprinted a year later in Winner Take Nothing, this work gives us a chance to consider Hemingway's treatment of death in his work, as well as the artist's obligation to depict violence with a scientific objectivity. 

Hediger discusses the way "A Natural History of the Dead" simultaneously satirizes the nature writers that preceded Hemingway, while also providing a window into Hemingway's own complex engagement with the natural world.