After Wallace Stevens openly informed Ursula Hemingway that her brother was “no man” and a “sap” during a party in Key West, the easily incensed Ernest chased down the modernist poet. Both men were drunk at the time, and although Stevens had previously been an amateur boxer, he was, at 56, twenty years Hemingway’s senior. Stevens ended up with a broken hand, black eye, and bruised face, forcing him to beg his younger colleague to keep the incident quiet.
And the winner is: Hemingway! He honored his word to stay mum about the kerfuffle, but managed to get in one final last blow by parodying Stevens’ cowardice in “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.”Read more: A History of Fist-Fueled Author Feuds
