Hesse and Hemingway both write with influences from existential philosophy; however, each writer also fails to address the embedded paradox of isolation and meaningfulness is his writing. What emerges in this analysis is the way denial functions in the authors’ texts. This denial works at a deep level, where each author writes in ways that presume a logic of transparency to writing. In other words, the assumption that the author is absent from the writing functions as a denial of writing at all. As such, both texts are drained of effect, revealing too much of the author’s own rationalizations and too little of the ethical issues being addressed.