February 16, 2012 Author Joseph Fruscione Discusses Faulkner and Hemingway Literary Rivalry, March 16

William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway, both winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature, carried on a nuanced and complex literary rivalry. At times, each voiced a shared professional respect; at other times, each thought himself the superior craftsman and spoke disparagingly of the other.

Their relationship will be discussed by Joseph Fruscione, author of the recently released “Faulkner and Hemingway: Biography of a Literary Rivalry,” at the Library of Congress at noon on Friday, March 16, in Dining Room A on the sixth floor of the James Madison Building, 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington, D.C.

Sponsored by the Library’s Humanities and Social Sciences Division and the Poetry and Literature Center, the lecture is free and open to the public; no tickets or reservations are needed. Book sales and a book signing will follow the program.

In his book, Fruscione reveals the rivalry and contentious relationship between Faulkner and Hemingway and the impact the intersection of their careers had on the evolution of American Modernism. While these writers may have only met once, their writing became a debating platform and they pushed each other to excel and innovate, according to Fruscione. The rivalry was manifest textually through their fiction, nonfiction, letters, Nobel Prize addresses and spoken remarks.

Fruscione is an adjunct professor of English at Georgetown University and an adjunct assistant professor of first-year writing at George Washington University.

The Humanities and Social Sciences Division provides reference service and collection development in the Main, Local History and Genealogy, and Microform reading rooms at the Library of Congress. It regularly sponsors programs in the arts, humanities and social sciences.

The Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress fosters and enhances the public’s appreciation of literature. The center administers the endowed poetry chair, (the U.S. Poet Laureate), and coordinates an annual literary season of poetry, fiction and drama readings, performances, lectures and symposia, sponsored by the Library’s Gertrude Clarke Whittall Poetry and Literature Fund and the Huntington Fund. For more information, visit www.loc.gov/poetry/.

The Library of Congress, the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution and the largest library in the world, holds more than 151 million items in various languages, disciplines and formats. The Library serves the U.S. Congress and the nation both on-site in its reading rooms on Capitol Hill and through its award-winning website at www.loc.gov.