In Bennett Cerf’s 1944 book Try and Stop Me, he tells about Max Eastman commenting that Ernest Hemingway’s just-published novel Death in the Afternoon was an example of the “false-hair-on-the-chest school of writing.” He bumped into Hemingway a few days after his article appeared. The book says nothing about what happened next and neither does Wikipedia. Do any of the Teeming Millions know?
I know they got into some sort of physical tussle, I think in Cerf’s office, or maybe Max Perkins’–some editor’s, anyway–sometime in the 1930s. I’ll see if I can find some support–it wasn’t much, no extended punching or brawling or anything like that.
Hemingway slapped Eastman’s face with a book containing Eastman’s criticism in Maxwell Perkins’ office at Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Here is Hemingway’s account.
Thanks, D.A. I heard about Eastman throwing Hemingway over a desk and standing him upside down against a wall, but I’d just as soon believe that Paul Williams bested Mike Tyson physicially. (Considering what Hemingway and Eastman looked like in Carl Rose’s illustration in Cerf’s book.)