Bull in the Afternoon
Critic Max Eastman wrote an essay bashing Hemingway and eviscerated his book Death in the Afternoon, which celebrated the ceremony and traditions of Spanish bullfighting. Eastman called his work “Bull in the Afternoon” and posed the following challenge in the take-down piece: “Come out from behind that false hair on your chest, Ernest. We all know you.”
How do you think tough guy Ernest dealt with this? Well, as any red-blooded, hairy-chested man should! A few years later, when the two met face-to-face in Hemingway’s editor’s office, Hemingway showed Eastman his genuinely hairy chest and slapped him in his face with a copy of Death in the Afternoon!
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