The book which gave Hemingway his Nobel and for
which most people nowadays seem to remember him (sigh!). I am afraid that’s
because it’s really a rather easy book, in particular if compared to pretty
much all his other works.
Yes, one is bound to empathize with Santiago
and with his struggle, but isn’t this metaphor of life just a bit overdone? The
perennial fight between man and nature, with man on the losing end but still
hoping, is just not particularly attractive to me. The images of the bloody battle
between the fisherman and the fish (and later the sharks) are a reflection of
the macho Hemingway that I am not particularly fond of. But at least the book
is set in romantic Cuba, although if that’s the greatest compliment I can find
for a novel that won the Pulitzer Prize (while I can find plenty of praise for
a book trashed by critics like Across the
River and into the Trees) maybe there is something wrong with me…
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