A modern day Hemingway please!

Who are the contemporary male novelists writing about what it means to be a man in our modern world? I’m interested in novels dealing with masculinity, but not in a shallow machismo sense. I’m talking about something along the lines of a contemporary Hemingway, but not in the way his characters strove to prove or validate their manhood. His grace under pressure was artificially induced. He placed his characters in extraordinary circumstances in order to test their mettle.
I’m more interested in a sensibility that tries to show how difficulties and conflict arising from everyday life are met and overcome with grace, with a toughness which doesn’t preclude empathy for others and avoids self-obsession. I’m looking for male characters who are concerned with values, fairness and justice, with a manliness not only encapsulating strength and toughness but also acknowledges the need for reliance on others.
Maybe this is asking a lot, but hopefully you catch my drift. Any suggestions or recommendations of novels and novelists who might meet these criteria would be greatly appreciated.

I don't know. You're asking for a lot. How contemporary do you want? You mean still alive? I don't know what you want, so…

Some of the fiction authors I like include Cormac McCarthy (All the Pretty Horses is his least depressing and most accessible), Saul Bellow (e.g. Seize the Day and Mr. Samler's Planet), Walker Percy (e.g. The Last Gentleman), Gene Wolfe (fantasy), Mark Helprin, Fred Chappell, Robert Penn Warren, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man.

Walker Percy wrote that the philosopher Hegel had figured out everything in the universe except what it is to be a man, to live and to die, and to be an individual.

Yeah I guess am asking a lot and that occurred to me as I was writing, I suppose I wanted to suggest some themes that the modern author might tackle. And yes, I am looking for living writers. Thanks for your suggestions though, and for the Walker Percy comment.

Well, that narrows my list.

Bellow (dead)
Percy (dead)
Ellison (dead)
Warren (dead)

McCarthy (alive)
Helprin (alive)
Wolfe (alive)
Chappell (alive)

Maybe Fred Buechner and Larry Woiwode.

I don't that any of these have much in common with Hemingway.

Benjamin Percy in his short story collections The Language of Elk and Refresh, Refresh.

Wallace Stegner died a few years ago; however, I think his biographical fiction (Big Rock Candy Mountain and Recapitulation) captures what it means to be a man in a more pedestrian context than Hemingway placed his fictional characters.

I thought Forsyth's resent short story collection No comebacks has one Hemmingway like story in it - his the emporer is a very good retelling of the old man and the sea. maybe you'll like his other work. It does tend to feature the sort of themes you mentioned.

Richard Ford likes to play the Hemingway card.

What about Philip Roth?

#9 I was all set to add richard Ford & you got there first. Yes, Ford is closer to Hemingway than most modern writers -- his novels & short stories both have confident men as narraters who do what they think is right without a lot of agonizing about it.

#10 I think Philip Roth's characters tend to agonize too much.

Ford's men are more typical mid-westerners (even when they live in NJ) Roth's are more typical East Coast.

You won't find many Roth characters going hunting like in Ford stories. Ford even plays cute with Hemingwayesque titles in Women With Men. There's occasionally a frat-boyish side to Ford, though, that makes his characters more comfortable than Hemingway's.

Both Hem and Ford have a similar sensibility of restraint. Here's something catty Saul Bellow wrote about Hemingway:

"Hemingway wants to be praised for the offenses he does not commit. He is dependable; he never names certain emotions or ideas, and he takes pride in that—it is a form of honor. In it, really, there is a submissiveness, acceptance of restriction."

The same could be said of Ford.

I was on the verge of buying Walker Percy's The Last Gentleman but something held me back. I'm not sure exactly what, but I got the impression it's a little discursive and unfocused for my tastes. Am I wrong? For some reason I decided on James Salter's Light Years. Any comments?
As for the Roth/Hemingway comparison, to me Roth is very much a man of his community. He's so much more culturally and ethnically conscious than Hemingway who's more the individualistic adventurer. There's a spotaniety in Roth's writing that's lacking in Hemingway. #12 has it with his quote: he never names certain emotions or ideas. It's all under the surface. He almost reflects the stiff-upper-lip cliched Englishman. Speaking of which.....all of the suggested writers are American. Any thoughts on British novelists who address the issues of contemporary masculinity?

#3, I second marietherese on James Salter, especially, for your interests, The Hunters.

#13, David1312 Light Years is, in my opinion, his masterpiece, but could by no means be considered Hemingway-esque.

Light Years is wonderful. Solo Faces may be closer to Hemingway in terseness and manliness. Have started to read Roth, but let's face it, most of it is about sex and anxiety.

when i was young, I loved Hemingway. Something happened to my sense of masculinity, however, as I went through a few decades of living within society (not outside of it), and I now believe there is a living author who represents best what it is like to be a man today.

John Irving.

I think I erred by putting Hemingway's name in the title of this conversation. I wasn't trying discover who his contemporary heirs are. Rather I used his name because his writing style and content epitomizes masculinity. I guess what I seek is what constitutes current ideas of masculinity and which writers attempt to address these ideas in their novels. And as mentioned earlier I'm also looking for British writers as well as American.

That's something of a self-referential closed system that you're asking about. If you really want to look at what "masculinity" is all about, I'd urge you to start looking into gender studies, start talking to some trannies and check out issues in that vein.

But I don't think that's what you want.

Try Thom Jones, maybe...?

Jesse_wiedinmyer, I'm not sure what you mean by "self-referential closed system" but it doesn't sound very complimentary. Whatever it might be my guess is that's not what I'm asking about. As for "trannies", you've got me there too. Where I come from a trannie was something you listened to late at night under the bed covers, hoping to tune into Radios Luxemburg or Caroline. Anyway, thanks for the Thom Jones suggestion. Looks promising.

Have you read anything by Larry McMurtry? He is best known forLonesome Dove a novel of the American west which takes place in the 1870's. However, he has written novels set in the present which feature strong male protaganists. Personally, I prefer him to Hemingway & believe he is a much better writer.

I haven't read down the whole page to see what everybody says but the authors that come to mind right away are Cormac McCarthy and Tom Wolfe. Although McCarthy at times does put his characters in extraordinary circumstances, like in the post-apocalyptic setting of The Road for example. I love Hemingway...one of my favorite authors.

Whatever happened to Thom Jones? Three great short story collections, then nothing for about ten years now. I've heard he was working on a novel and screenplays, but I haven't seen any of it.

The first name that occurs to me is David Sedaris esp Me Talk Pretty One Day... Hemingway would have beat him senseless in an alleyway, I suppose, but maybe that's what it means to be a man in today's world: you can be openly gay and make the world laugh with you about your history of "if it doesn't move, swallow it" substance abuse. Sedaris is very much alive -- thank goodness. I'd contrast him to Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections, which IMO is more neurotically self-fascinated. Another cheerful iconoclast -- no hemingway -- is Christopher Moore. For living literature... Michael Chabon, esp. Yiddish Policemen's Union. Although it takes place in an alternate present, its anxieties and failings and joyful ya-gotta-laugh overview make a fine insight into today's psyche. Also, David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas and Black Swan Green.

For the male experience of music, sports and parenting, I'd also add Nick Hornby.

Cormac McCarthy is Papa's most obvious successor stylistically as well as thematically.