Mailer, Hemingway, and Boxing

Authors

  • Kasia Boddy University College London Author

Keywords:

Ernest Hemingway, literary masculinity, literary rivalry, boxing as cultural metaphor, twentieth-century American literature, boxing and literature

Abstract

A comparison of representations of boxing in the works of Ernest Hemingway and Norman Mailer. America, condensed into American masculinity was, to use a favorite Mailer word, “schizoid,” and the boxing match—for Mailer much more persistently than for Hemingway—provided a metaphor or structure within which to explore its violently felt divisions.

Author Biography

  • Kasia Boddy, University College London

    Kasia Boddy teaches in the English Department at University College London. She is the author of Boxing: A Cultural History (2008) and The American Short Story Since 1950 (2010) as well as numerous articles on various aspects of American literature and culture. She met Norman Mailer in 1997 when she introduced him at a reading in a bookstore in Scotland.

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Published

2026-03-25

Issue

Vol. 4 No. 1 (2010): Literary Warriors

Section

Articles