The Old Man and the Sea in Reading with Style

Mar 15, 2018 Claire rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: precinct-81, 1001-books-to-read-before-you-die

It was a reread for me, and once again I really savoured it. It is a slow book, written in the beautiful condensed of Hemingway. The epic fight between man and the fish tells us an unforgettable story, if we are willing to listen to it.

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Aug 10, 2021 Andrew rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: reviewed, 1001-books, guardian-1000, usa-american-lit, abject-garbage

Eh...it was alright.

It is laborious and overdone (paradoxically, for both its length and writing style). Despite the brutally simplistic way Hemmingway writes (which frankly, at the very beginning beginning hard to get used to, it read like that of a 5 year old) it turns out there are moments of genuine beauty in the writing. Small little flashes of creative brilliance do occasionally pop out, and if anything the simplistic, word after word after without any punctuation marks or grammar way of w Eh...it was alright.

It is laborious and overdone (paradoxically, for both its length and writing style). Despite the brutally simplistic way Hemmingway writes (which frankly, at the very beginning beginning hard to get used to, it read like that of a 5 year old) it turns out there are moments of genuine beauty in the writing. Small little flashes of creative brilliance do occasionally pop out, and if anything the simplistic, word after word after without any punctuation marks or grammar way of writing actually probably enhances the moments of descriptive brilliance.

There's an interesting comparison one could make between this and Moby Dick. One is immensely overwritten, piling detail upon detail, cascading its text with awe inspiring imagery, staggering metaphor work, beautiful lines of near poetry, and producing a canvas so broad it manages to convey the entirety of mid 19th American modernity, with all its social, racial and economics divisions, across the vast plain of the seas. In Melville's work, implicitly and explicitly, the sea is a kind of mirror world for our world, Ahab's madness and monomania being reflective to Moby Dick's relentless monstrosity (and ultimately, looks worse in comparison to the whale). Melville wrote a modern epic, a humongous tale bursting with life, displaying the whole human story, and all its really about is a bloack failing to catch a whale.

Hemmingway is the opposite. As mentioned, the text is stripped back of excess or flourish with the meticulous ruthlessness of a new world Puritan church. It is sparse, the text seemingly grounded out like through a pressing machine, each line and sentence conveying exactly what it needs to do (buy, as also mentioned, managing to still convey a sense of beauty despite its limits). Here too, a man obsseses to catch a fish. Here too, made explicitly, the dialectical nature of the sea, friend and deadly foe, source of immense beauty and immense terror, simultaneously below us and yet easily able to overwhelm us, is conveyed here. I guess maybe Moby Dick is a macro tale conveying macro themes, while Hemmingway's novella is an acutely micro tale conveying macro themes? I dunno, as i can't really see what precisely he was conveying, neither can I be bothered to put much effort in thinking of one.

The book was ultimately very boring, and not a little pretentious, but short enough to put up with reading. ...more

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Aug 31, 2015 Shaina rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: high-school-college-book-tour, classics, audio

Check out the full review at Shaina Reads!

Hemingway tells the story of the old Cuban fisherman Santiago. Having come up empty for the last three months, most believe his luck on the water has run out, but he has a feeling that change is coming. That change arrives in the form of the most massive fish anyone in Havana has ever seen. The bulk of the story revolves around Santiago being towed along by this mega-fish in his skiff, all the while reflecting on a life spent at sea, his failing body, an ...more

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