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Copy/paste the text below into your blog. <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2165.The_Old_Man_and_the_Sea?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="The Old Man and the Sea (Scribner Classics)" border="0" src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1160629716m/2165.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2165.The_Old_Man_and_the_Sea?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">The Old Man and the Sea</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1455.Ernest_Hemingway">Ernest Hemingway</a><br/><br/> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/26863750?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a> rating: 5 of 5 stars<br/>Right, so. I feel the need to contextualize this. <br/> <br/>In 10th grade, I had to read <i>The Sun Also Rises</i> which, for a number of reasons, put a bad taste in my mouth. Having no frame of reference for Hemingway, I still found myself reacting negatively to his very male-ness. I didn't give a crap about Jake's impotence, and I could think of quite a few male figures in my life who I thought damn well deserved impotence. Plus, it was just sort of half-assedly taught, and I was fifteen. <br/> <br/>Second, and this is pretty nonsensical but it sticks in my mind for some reason: in the early nineties (jaysis), I was obsessed with supermodels, in particular Christy Turlington. For whatever reason, I wanted to believe all good things about her, and hold her up as a personal style icon. So I was really excited when I heard her talking about being a lit major, and a Hemingway scholar and stuff. I don't know - I think I was trying to find some middle ground, some place to exist between being a pretty girl and having a brain, and I needed a role model. Anyway, in a discussion of the intellectual capacity of supermodels with a female roommate of mine, I remember actually saying in defense of La Christy: "But she reads Hemingway!" and my roommate replying "All that means is that she has bad taste." It really stuck with me. <br/> <br/>Cut to 16 years later, and <i>/The Old Man and the Sea</i>. This time around, I loved the spare style, the whole man against the elements business, and I didn't even mind when the old guy called the sea a whore. It made me want to strip my life down to its barest elements, and as I wrote to a friend who was horrified I hadn't read it, "use my pants for a pillow." <br/> <br/>This is a very reader-resonsy type of review, but that's what summer reading's all about, isn't it? My personal thoughts and reflections and emotional reactions. My reaction to this is that I feel like a fat capitalist, and it makes me wonder where in my life I ever live as deeply or as on the edge, and if I'm capable of creating that kind of deep living in my comfortable, suburban existence. I don't want to become a weekend warrior or anything - I don't think that's the point. I just find myself wondering about my current definition of living. <br/> <br/>Pardon me while I finish my iced coffee with sugar free vanilla syrup. <br/><br/><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/261670?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>