Hemingway Knocked Wallace Stevens into a Puddle and Bragged About It
I first heard of the fist-fight between Ernest Hemingway and Wallace Stevens in KWLS co-founder Lynn Kaufelt's book, Key West Writers and Their Houses. It didn't ring quite true, somehow, and yet the story's skeleton alone begged frequent repetition. Hemingway, man of action and hard drinking, fan of violence in so many forms, and Stevens, cerebral, executive, ironic, each gave as much to American writing in the 1930s as any. That they both spent considerable time that decade in tiny Key West was improbable enough. That they actually came to blows over their no-doubt-innumerable differences was gravy, perhaps a fiction but, with apologies to Wallace, a supremely pleasurable one.It turns out the story is true. Let's let Hem tell it:
The story is confirmed by Stevens's biographer Joan Richardson, who reports that Stevens returned home to his wife and daughter in Hartford that March with a still-puffy eye and broken hand, and that Stevens himself told versions of the story throughout his life. It's Hemingway's, though, that survives:
Anyway last night Mr. Stevens comes over to make up and we are made up. But on mature reflection I don't know anybody needed to be hit worse than Mr. S. Was very pleased last night to see how large Mr. Stevens was and am sure that if I had had a good look at him before it all started would not have felt up to hitting him. But can assure you that there is no one like Mr. Stevens to go down in a spectacular fashion especially into a large puddle of water in the street in front of your old Waddel Street home where all took place. ... I think he is really one of those mirror fighters who swells his muscles and practices lethal punches in the bathroom while he hates his betters.
Hemingway implies elsewhere a familiarity with Stevens's poetry, and in a way his characterization of Stevens is not as unkind as it may seem. After all, Stevens was in his late fifties when the fight took place, Hemingway his thirties. Would Stevens, the author of such poems as "Poetry is a Destructive Force," "Men Made out of Words," and "The Good Man Has No Shape," have objected to a characterization of himself as a "mirror fighter" practicing "lethal punches in the bathroom?" I think he'd rather chuckle at the shape of this image, see in it a metaphor for his work, and collect enjoyment life-long from this most unlikely of modernist battles.
Hemingway's story is from a letter to Sara Murphy, printed in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917-1961, ed. Carlos Baker
4 Comments
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Bravo!
That first hand account of the fisticuff on Wadell St. is not to be missed. That has to be the Daddy of literary connections!
The whole site is spectacular in its breadth and depth. I think it is a treasure trove for anyone who cares about American literature and poetry (not to mention the Key West connections), and puts the Seminar squarely on the literary map.
I wish I had time to read it all(and some of the books too!).
How do you do it?
Paul
time. yes that's the challenge.
loved reading this tho it hurt me as i guess if i had to choose i choose for wallace and i hate to think of his broken hand and cant even imagine this beautifully cerebral guy ever engaging in fisticuffs, but there now i must off and hope to see you, arlo, tonight. d
That is a great story, and it seems, what's missing from modern lit. What do we have now? Dave Eggers throwing eggs at cars, hiding like a little child behind a hedge? Then you had Kerouac, on TV with William F. Buckley, basically punching himself in the face with all that liquor and to quote Podhertz "typing." Papa would've knocked them out. Gelhorn could take Eggers for God's sake.
Excellent! Great story and what a letter writer! I can just picture Mr. Stevens flexing his muscles in front of the mirror. Thanks for tracking me down and passing this story on!