Ernest Hemingway completes his short novel The Old Man and the Sea. He wrote his publisher the same day, saying he had finished the book and that it was the best writing he had ever done. The critics agreed: The book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 and became one of his bestselling works.
The novella, which was first published in Life magazine, was an allegory referring to the writer’s own struggles to preserve his art in the face of fame and attention. Hemingway had become a cult figure whose four marriages and adventurous exploits in big-game hunting and fishing were widely covered in the press. But despite his fame, he had not produced a major literary work in a decade before he wrote The Old Man and the Sea. The book would be his last significant work of fiction before his suicide in 1961.
Hemingway, born in 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois, started working as a reporter for the Kansas City Star in 1917. During World War I, he volunteered as an ambulance driver for the Red Cross and was severely wounded in 1918 on the Austro-Italian front while carrying a companion to safety. He was decorated and sent home to recuperate.
Hemingway married the wealthy Hadley Richardson in 1920, and the couple moved to Paris, where they met other American expatriate writers, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and Ezra Pound. With their help and encouragement, Hemingway published his first book of short stories, in the U.S. in 1925, followed by the well-received The Sun Also Rises in 1926.
During the 1930s and 40s, the hard-drinking Hemingway lived in Key West and then in Cuba while continuing to travel widely. He was wounded in a plane crash in 1953, after which he became increasingly anxious and depressed. Like his father, he died by suicide, shooting himself in 1961 in his home in Idaho.
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At a visitor center on the NC Outer Banks is a display of a giant Blue Marlin. Walking out a young boy looks at me and says ” Do you believe that’s a real fish ? ” .
Yes, I told him , and there’s bigger ones out there ! His eyes went WIDE.
So…the OPPOSITE reaction from what you’d expect from a young “Hardscrabble Farmer”, right?
THAT little bastard would have called you a liar to your face and then cried to Momma when you slapped his pernicious face in an effort to correct him.
An associate of mine skippered a boat that caught a 1,300 pound black marlin off the ribbon reefs of far north Queensland, Australia, a world record at the time. I do not think he has paid for a beer since.
As an aside, I was dating a housemate of his just prior to the catch, and had acquired a puppy from the Cairns pound. Chilling out at the house we discovered the dog had eaten a bunch of dope butter, cookies in the making, took him 3 days to recover, but never stopped loving me until a Taipan snake got her on my hobby farm. She got between me and the snake. True love.
My all time favorite read.
Hemingway had the right idea when he blew his brains out.
I remember as a young boy, the movie with Spencer Tracy.
Was very good, 1958.
Oh, the irony! That this memory of Old Man and The Sea should follow an article titled “Empty Sack” is delicious!
More, please!