But the Nobel came to Hemingway when he was acting most Hemingway-ish—most like the man who whittled a style for his time from a walnut stick. Hemingway’s particular stain was a kind of brutish, careless masculinity; this was the image that accompanied him. In The Old Man and the Sea, he seems to be doing an impersonation of himself, bringing that toughness and vigor to the page. The Old Man and the Sea is nothing if not terse, oracular, male. The spectacle was, upon revisiting the work, deeply embarrassing.
