What was the relationship like between Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner?
Though the two writers never met, they corresponded through letters and were always conscious of the other’s reputation. Hemingway was a fiercely competitive writer. He used to compare his reign in writing to the reign of a heavyweight boxing champion. In Faulkner, Hemingway found a serious opponent, one who could very well threaten his self-proclaimed title of “The Champ.” Faulkner won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949 (though was awarded it formally in 1950), and two Pulitzer Prizes, one in 1955 for his novel, A Fable and one awarded posthumously for The Reivers (1962). Faulkner also holds the distinction of co-writing one of the best screenplays for Hemingway’s novels. In the 1944 film, To Have and Have Not, Lauren Bacall says to Humphrey Bogart: “You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow.” We have Faulkner to thank, in part, for that memorable line.As with many of his writing contemporaries, Hemingway both praised and criticized Faulkn
