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t3db0t 's review for:
The Old Man and the Sea
by Ernest Hemingway
Continuing in my "Books I Never Actually Read" list. For a while I didn't really get the big deal about this book—many people seem to focus on Hemingway's comparatively spare prose, which I don't think is an interesting or useful angle at all. Evidently most people don't like Melvillian prose—I do—and seem to need to whine about it by lauding the opposite.
But when I finished this book I was moved more than I was expecting. I think what The Old Man and the Sea is rightly famous for is the pure distillation of narrative into The Struggle. For the entire book, the reader struggles along with the Old Man as he tries to fish. That's it. But importantly, you want him to succeed. This is the purest essence, the most central principle, of narrative. You want the protagonist to succeed, no matter what they're trying to achieve, and you follow along with them, experiencing the ups and downs and obstacles and setbacks and wins and triumphs.
The Old Man and the Sea zeroes in on this notion and nails it, and concludes the question of "Well, how does it end for the Old Man? In success or failure?" with "Both!" Simplicity itself, but totally ineffectual without the detail to back it up and make it real for the reader. Without the level of detail of this book—where you imagine Hemingway must have been the Old Man himself in order to have written this—it would be nothing. It would be a diagram, not a story. Detail on this level has always impressed the hell out of me, because it makes me wonder what on earth I could possibly detail with that much authenticity and authority.
In any case, Hemingway brings it. And, if you look again, you'll find that his prose is not actually that famously spare.
But when I finished this book I was moved more than I was expecting. I think what The Old Man and the Sea is rightly famous for is the pure distillation of narrative into The Struggle. For the entire book, the reader struggles along with the Old Man as he tries to fish. That's it. But importantly, you want him to succeed. This is the purest essence, the most central principle, of narrative. You want the protagonist to succeed, no matter what they're trying to achieve, and you follow along with them, experiencing the ups and downs and obstacles and setbacks and wins and triumphs.
The Old Man and the Sea zeroes in on this notion and nails it, and concludes the question of "Well, how does it end for the Old Man? In success or failure?" with "Both!" Simplicity itself, but totally ineffectual without the detail to back it up and make it real for the reader. Without the level of detail of this book—where you imagine Hemingway must have been the Old Man himself in order to have written this—it would be nothing. It would be a diagram, not a story. Detail on this level has always impressed the hell out of me, because it makes me wonder what on earth I could possibly detail with that much authenticity and authority.
In any case, Hemingway brings it. And, if you look again, you'll find that his prose is not actually that famously spare.