DESCENDANTS OF FAULKNER, HEMINGWAY TO HEAL RIFT

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, February 7, 1993                   TAG: 9302050259
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 12   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: RON HARRIST ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: JACKSON, MISS.                                LENGTH: Medium
DESCENDANTS OF FAULKNER, HEMINGWAY TO HEAL RIFT
When William Faulkner invented Yoknapatawpha County, he never came up with this story line: The niece of one Nobel-winning author meets the son of another to bury the hatchet.
Faulkner's niece Dean Faulkner Wells, an author and publisher in his hometown of Oxford, plans to meet next month with Jack Hemingway, son of Ernest Hemingway.
The split goes back to the mid-1950s when Faulkner told a University of Mississippi writing class that Hemingway was afraid to take chances in his fiction. By the time it got into print, Faulkner was quoted as saying the novelist had a yellow streak when it came to danger.
Bringing the two together was an idea of Doug Crichton, editor of American Way, the in-flight magazine of American Airlines. Both will be judges for the 13th International Imitation Hemingway Competition in Los Angeles.
Crichton said Jack Hemingway will return the favor and help judge the Faux Faulkner contest in Oxford, about 100 miles northeast of Jackson, this summer. In both events, contestants make a light-hearted attempt to parody the novelists' style.
Wells, 54, said her uncle, known as Pappy by the children of his hometown, and Hemingway, known as Papa, played major roles in her life.
Her husband, Larry, a novelist and co-publisher of the Yoknapatawpha Press, said the rift should never have happened. Wells blamed poor shorthand and a bit of editing by the University of Mississippi, where Faulkner lectured, for the misquote that Hemingway lacked courage.
"Faulkner did not want to lecture but they talked him into doing it by promising that what he said would not be quoted or leaked to the press," Wells said. "Well, there was a kid working for Ole Miss public relations who took down everything Faulkner said.
"When Faulkner was asked what he thought about Hemingway's works, because he had just won the Nobel Prize, Faulkner said he was a good writer but was afraid to take chances with his fiction."
Hemingway was so upset after reading the report, he had a brigadier general write Faulkner to attest to Hemingway's courage under fire, Wells said. He said later efforts to heal the rift fizzled.
Jack Hemingway has said his father "really did want to meet Faulkner but never got the chance."

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB