Found in Holden Caufield’s dorm room after he was expelled and went home to Manhattan.
So, I guess you want to know about all this fisherman stuff.
Ernest Hemingway’s newest book is about an old Cuban fisherman, Santiago, who hasn’t caught any fish for 84 days. Everybody’s saying he’s a loser and even his assistant has been told to ditch him.
He goes out in his crummy boat to fish anyway. He hooks a marlin, at least he thinks it’s a marlin, Hemingway allows some doubt and, if you think about it, if Santiago doesn’t even know what kind of fish it is, he is kind of a loser. When I went to the aquarium with my little sister Pheobe, even she could tell the difference between a lot of the fish and she’s just a kid. Anyway, whatever kind of fish it is, it’s big enough that it pulls the boat around for two days. At first, Santiago feels admiration for the fish, then sorry for it, then he kills it. Then sharks come and he kills them. But not all of them. The sharks he doesn’t kill eat most of the probably-a-marlin and Santiago rows back home with what’s left of it. Some tourists don’t know what kind of fish it is either. Other fishermen understand what Santiago accomplished, even if it was all for nothing, and Santiago falls asleep and dreams of lions on a beach in Africa.
The story is probably an allegory or a metaphor or something. I don’t know. Maybe it symbolizes man’s struggle with nature and how, even when you win, you still lose, but I don’t really think that and it would seem kind of phony, since that’s what everybody says about Moby Dick and why would Hemingway bother writing another symbolic fish story when it’s already been done and everybody’s been forced to read it like a thousand times?
I think maybe it’s Hemingway’s gripe about how when he writes something he’s doing it alone and isn’t even sure it’s worth doing or what it is. Then, when he’s done with it, what’s left isn’t quite what he expected. Other writers may appreciate it, even if they don’t think it’s any good, but most people don’t really get it, even if they say it’s so grand because he’s a great writer and anything he does is supposed be grand, but they don’t really know.
I don’t really get the part about lions on the beach. Maybe Hemingway was tired of writing it and just started thinking about what else he’d rather be doing or wondering if there even are lions on beaches in Africa and how they got there. Maybe he should write a book about that.
Anyway, I liked it and at least it was shorter than Moby Dick. They’ll probably make some phony movie out of it and ruin it with some way-too-handsome Hollywood movie star playing Santiago, all made up to look like an old Cuban fisherman, even though he isn’t.
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