Faulkner and Hemingway: Biography of a Literary Rivalry - Paperback

by Joseph Fruscione (Author)

In the first book of its kind, Joseph Fruscione examines the contentious relationship of two titans of American modernism--William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway. At times, each voiced a shared literary and professional respect; at other times, each thought himself the superior craftsman and spoke of the other disparagingly. Their rivalry was rich, nuanced, and vexed, embodying various attitudes--one-upmanship, respect, criticism, and praise. Their intertextual contest--what we might call their modernist dialectic--was manifested textually through their fiction, nonfiction, letters, Nobel Prize addresses, and spoken remarks.
Their intertextual relationship was highly significant for both authors: it was unusual for the reclusive Faulkner to engage so directly and so often with a contemporary, and for the hypercompetitive Hemingway to admit respect for--and possible inferiority to--a rival writer. Their joint awareness spawned an influential, allusive, and sparring intertext in which each had a psychocompetitive hold on the other. Faulkner and Hemingway: Biography of a Literary Rivalry--part analytical study, part literary biography--illustrates how their artistic paths and performed masculinities clashed frequently, as the authors measured themselves against each other and engendered a mutual psychological influence.

Author Biography

Joseph Fruscione is adjunct professor of English at Georgetown University and adjunct assistant professor of First-Year Writing at George Washington University.