“I Beat Mr. Turgenev.”

Here’s another quote from Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway was asked, by an interview, about another so-called “war writer”, who thought of himself as Tolstoy:

He never hears a shot fired in anger, and he sets out to beat who? Tolstoy, an artillery officer who fought at Sevastopol, who knew his stuff, who was a hell of a man anywhere you put him — bed, bar, in an empty room where he had to think. I started out very quiet, and I beat Mr. Turgenev. Then I trained hard, and I beat Mr. deMaupassant. I’ve fought two draws with Mr. Stendahl, and I think I had an edge in the last one. But nobody’s going to get me in any ring with Mr. Tolstoy unless I’m crazy or I keep getting better.