The Old Man and the Sea, Revisited

On Saturday I posted about the sixtieth anniversary of Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea. Originally published in Life magazine, it sold more than five million copies in two days, went on to become a best-seller in book form, and is now considered a classic. It is a perennial fixture on high school reading lists all over the country.

Confession time: I disliked The Old Man and the Sea. An old man and a big fish? Come on. Neither could possibly be considered interesting subject matter for a fourteen or fifteen year old girl. In the end though, I did the required reading, complained bitterly about being bored, wrote the requisite essay, and promptly forgot all about it.

Over the years, I have come to appreciate Hemingway - a handful of novels, some short stories, and, of course, A Moveable Feast - but never returned to The Old Man and the Sea. Saturday's anniversary seemed to be a sign. I pulled the book from the shelf and read,

" He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. In the first forty days a boy had been with him. But after forty days without a fish the boy's parents had told him that the old man was now definitely and finally salao, which is the worst form of unlucky, and the boy had gone at their orders in another boat which caught three good fish the first week. It made the boy sad to see the old man come in each day with his skiff empty and he always went down to help him carry either the coiled lines or the gaff and harpoon and the sail that was furled around the mast. The sail was patched with flour sacks and, furled, it looked like the flag of permanent defeat."

Wait a minute. Is this really the same book I read in high school? How did I totally ignore the beauty in the simplicity of Hemingway's prose? Was I not touched by the boy's devotion to the old man? Did I miss the old man's respect for the fish, or have I simply forgotten? And what about the old man and his struggles to overcome physical limitations?

Yes, The Old Man and the Sea is more than just a fishing story. And while it will never be considered a personal favorite, I have a newfound appreciation for this classic Hemingway novel.

60 Years Ago Today...

The Old Man and The Sea by Ernest Hemingway was published.

From today's Writer's Almanac:

It was on this day in 1952 that Ernest Hemingway published The Old Man and the Sea (books by this author). For years, he had been living in Cuba and working on an epic novel about the sea, but he couldn't quite get it right. So he decided to publish a small piece of it, just 27,000 words long, which he called The Old Man and the Sea. He released it in the September 1st issue of Life magazine, which cost 20 cents. That month, it was published by Charles Scribner's Sons for $3. 

Hemingway's last major work had been For Whom the Bell Tolls, published 12 years earlier in 1940. His book Across the River and Into the Trees (1950) sold fewer than 100,000 copies, all the critics panned it, and there was a general feeling that maybe Hemingway's best days as a writer were passed. The Old Man and the Sea changed all that. The Life version sold more than 5 million copies in two days, and it was a best-seller in book form, as well. 

In it, Hemingway wrote: "The shark swung over and the old man saw his eye was not alive and then he swung over once again, wrapping himself in two loops of the rope. The old man knew that he was dead but the shark would not accept it. Then, on his back, with his tail lashing and his jaws clicking, the shark plowed over the water as a speed-boat does. The water was white where his tail beat it and three-quarters of his body was clear above the water when the rope came taut, shivered, and then snapped. The shark lay quietly for a little while on the surface and the old man watched him. Then he went down very slowly. 'He took about forty pounds,' the old man said aloud. He took my harpoon too and all the rope, he thought, and now my fish bleeds again and there will be others. [...] It was too good to last, he thought. I wish it had been a dream now and that I had never hooked the fish and was alone in bed on the newspapers. 'But man is not made for defeat,' he said. 'A man can be destroyed but not defeated.'"

It was the last book that Hemingway published during his lifetime; in 1961, with his physical and mental health deteriorating, he committed suicide.

I've long considered myself a Hemingway fan, but hated The Old Man and the Sea when it was assigned in high school. My favorites over the years have been A Moveable Feast and The Garden of Eden. Perhaps today would be a fitting day to revisit this classic. I wonder if I'll have a different reaction.

Have you ever reread a classic you despised high school? Was the experience different? What is your favorite Ernest Hemingway title?

The Paris Wife by Paula McLain (Audio)

The Paris Wife
by Paula McLain
narrated by Carrington McDuffie
Random House Audio, 2011
11 hours and 27 minutes
source: purchased

Quick summary from audible.com:
If what they say is true — that behind every great man there’s a great woman — then Hadley Richardson is the woman behind Ernest Hemingway. In the novel The Paris Wife, Paula McLain traces their relationship from its frowned-upon beginnings in Chicago to its painful end in Paris six years later, and narrator Carrington MacDuffie brings a cast of historical characters out of the required reading list and brightly to life.

My Thoughts:
Whatever your opinion of Ernest Hemingway's writing, the writer himself was certainly larger than life. Last year, I read Catherine Reef's biography geared toward young adults. This year I thoroughly enjoyed A Moveable Feast and the movie Midnight in Paris. Craving more Hemingway, I turned to The Paris Wife by Paula McLain.

It is told from the perspective of Hemingway's first wife, Hadley Richardson, and recounts their relationship from initial meeting through the tumultuous breakup six years later. During this time, Hemingway wrote many stories and a novel that would become The Sun Also Rises.  McLain includes many details of his writing process and, midway through the book, I purchased a copy of The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway  in order to read the stories as they were mentioned.

Other members of the 'Lost Generation', Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and James Joyce, figure prominently in the story and add further color the novel. I doubt I'll ever tire of reading about this time and place.

The Paris Wife is not a book to race through. It's pace is slow, leisurely, and pleasant - easy to put aside and pick up again later. I thoroughly enjoyed Hadley's voice and insights, and admire McLain's creativity for her unique approach.

A note on the audio production:
This was my first experience with Carrington McDuffie. Her tone, inflection, and pace seemed perfectly matched to the novel. Her name in the credits will be a positive influence in choosing future audiobooks.

My rating:

Bottom line: Highly recommended to anyone interested in Ernest Hemingway, Paris, and the 'Lost Generation'.

The Sunday Salon: Au Revoir, July

And so, Paris in July draws to a close. Karen and Tamara have hosted a month filled with French-themed books, movies, food, art, music, travel and more. My month has focused on French-themed reading - nonfiction, a novel, short stories and essays. There are still two books I won't finish before the end of the month, but would like to mention.

Paris Was Ours by Penelope Rowlands
The book opens with Rowland's own reflection on the city, "I'm a Parisian of the recurrent, revolving-door kind." Her essay is followed by the thoughts and observations of thirty-two other writers who made Paris there own. They write about money, fashion, dating, parenting, food, and more. My initial plan was to read the book cover-to-cover, but I've decided instead to space the essays out over the rest of the summer. This is a book to be savored.

The Paris Wife by Paula McLain
My current audiobook is proving to be the perfect follow-up to A Moveable Feast, adding further fuel to my Hemingway fixation. It's a fictionalized account of the Heminway's time in Paris, told from Hadley's perspective. I have to keep reminding myself this is fiction. Reading Hemingway's early stories concurrently is enriching the experience.

Preparations are also underway for next summer. Knowing I've been unable to find any of Colette's novels or short stories locally, my daughter brought this treasure home from New York. I wonder if I'll be able wait that long....

I'll close our trip with Ernest Hemingway's final paragraph of A Moveable Feast:

"There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other. We always return to it no matter who we were or how it was changed or with what difficulties, or ease, it could be reached. Paris was always worth it and you received return for whatever you brought to it. But this is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy."

Thank you, again, Karen and Tamara. I've had a wonderful time in Paris this month.

More Hemingway...

Today's post wasn't going to be about Ernest Hemingway, but The Writer's Almanac reminded me of his birthday. Hemingway has been on my mind this month (Midnight in Paris, A Moveable Feast, a few stories), so the planned review must wait another day.

From today's Writer's Almanac:

Today is the birthday of Ernest Hemingway (books by this author), born in 1899 in Cicero — now Oak Park — Illinois. He started his writing life as a journalist, but when he was in Paris after World War I, working as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star, he was encouraged to take a more literary turn by other American writers like Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, and Gertrude Stein. His first collection of short stories, Our Time, was published in 1925.

Hemingway's memoir A Moveable Feast (published posthumously in 1964) is about those years in Paris, and those writers. The title was chosen by his widow, Mary, from something Hemingway wrote to a friend: "If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast." It is sentimental and cruel by turns, and not entirely honest, since he probably overstated the level of poverty he experienced there, but as he concludes the brief preface: "If the reader prefers, this book may be regarded as fiction. But there is always the chance that such a book of fiction may throw some light on what has been written as fact."

The memoir begins in medias res: "Then there was the bad weather. It would come in one day when the fall was over. We would have to shut the windows in the night against the rain and the cold wind would strip the leaves from the trees in the Place Contrescarpe. The leaves lay sodden in the rain and the wind drove the rain against the big green autobus at the terminal and the Café des Amateurs was crowded and the windows misted over from the heat and the smoke inside." And it ends, "There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other. [...] But this is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy."

*photo by Yousuf Karsh

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

"If you are luck enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, the wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast."
-Ernest Hemingway to a friend in 1950

A trip to another place and time...
A Moveable Feast, published posthumously in 1964, is Ernest Hemingway's memoir of Paris.  It did, indeed, prove to be a feast for the senses as sights, sounds, smells, and tastes of  the city came alive. Through short chapters, which can almost be read as a series of individual essays, the reader truly experiences Hemingway's Paris of the 1920's.

The book started slowly for me. Must the reader already know Paris to appreciate this work? Perhaps a pre-existing love for Hemingway is necessary? These worries were soon put to rest and I fell under the spell of A Moveable Feast.

I loved Hemingway's description of the city, its cafes, and the seasons.

With so many trees in the city, you could see the spring coming each day until a night of warm wind would bring it suddenly in one morning. Sometimes the heavy cold rains would beat it back so that it would seem that it would never come and that you were losing a season out of your life. This was the only truly sad time in Paris because it was unnatural. You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light. (p. 45)

I sometimes laughed at his freely-shared opinions of other writers:

I had always avoided looking at Ford [Madox Ford] when I could and I always held my breath when I was near him in a close room... (p. 83)

...I had been told Katherine Mansfield was a good short-story writer, but trying to read her after Chekhov was like hearing the carefully artificial tales of a young old-maid compared to those of an articulate and knowing physician who was a good and simple writer. (p. 133)

Tolstoi made the writing of Stephen Crane on the Civil War seem like the brilliant imagining of a sick boy who had never seen war but had only read the battles and chronicles and seen the Brady photographs that I had read and seen at my grandparent's house. (p. 133)

"I've been wondering about Dostoyevsky," I said. "How can a man write so badly, so unbelievably badly, and make you feel so deeply?" (p. 137)

My favorite sections involved his friendship with F. Scott  and Zelda Fitzgerald, and inspired plans for a reread of FSF's Tender is the Night.  The Paris Wife by Paula McLain, a novel that focuses on Hemingway's first wife, Hadley, has also been added to my wish list. Perhaps that will be my first book for Paris in July 2012!

A Moveable Feast has earned a spot in my permanent library. Perhaps I will even trade in my old paperback for a hardcover restored edition. This is a book to be enjoyed over and over again.

Paris in July is hosted by Karen and Tamara.

My rating:

A Literary Anniversary, of sorts...

Ernest Hemingway has been the topic of much blogger buzz lately. Several of us have recently read A Moveable Feast (I promise my thoughts will be posted soon) and quite a few more have talked about the movie Midnight in Paris.

According to The Writer's Almanac:

Ernest Hemingway committed suicide 50 years ago today. He had found writing increasingly difficult after World War II, and he was also in pain from injuries he'd suffered during a safari in Africa. He had left his home in Cuba in 1960, after Fidel Castro's regime forced him out, and had settled in Ketchum, Idaho. He was increasingly anxious and depressed. He entered the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, twice in the eight months before to undergo electro-convulsive therapy, but he hated it and found it ineffective. He shot himself in the head with a 12-gauge shotgun; his widow, Mary, insisted at first that his death was accidental, and that he'd just been cleaning the weapon, but later she admitted it had been a suicide.

His granddaughter Lorian wrote in her memoir, Walk on Water (1998):
"I had visited my grandfather's grave in Ketchum the summer I had caught the marlin, arriving at the small hillside cemetery on a scalding July day, a half-finished fifth of vodka in one hand, a filter-tip cigar in the other. I'd made my way to the simple marble slab marked by a white cross, and stood swaying over the marker for a long time, expecting epiphany, resolution, a crashing, blinding flash of insight. ... I wanted to say something of value to the old man, perhaps that I had met a dare he had set forth by example, but nothing came. The neck of the bottle grew hot in my hand. I tipped it to my mouth, taking a long swig, then poured the rest, a stream of booze, clear as Caribbean waters, at the head of the marker. 'Here,' I said, 'have this,' and walked away."

Tuesday Intro: A Moveable Feast

Then there was the bad weather. It would come in one day when the fall was over. We would have to shut the windows in the night against the rain and the cold wind would strip the leaves from the trees in the Place Contrescarpe. The leaves lay sodden in the rain and the wind drove the rain against the big green autobus at the terminal and the Café des Amateurs was crowded and the windows misted over from the heat and the smoke inside. It was a sad, evilly run cafe where the drunkards of the quarter crowded together and I kept away from it because of the smell of dirty bodies and the sour smell of drunkenness.  The men and women who frequented the Amateurs stayed drunk all of the time, or all of the time they could afford it, mostly on wine which they bought by the half-liter or liter. Many strangely named aperitifs were advertised, but few people could afford them except as a foundation to build their wine drunks on. The women drunkards were called poivrottes which meant female rummies.

A Moveable Feast
by Ernest Hemingway

Would you keep reading? I love the images of Paris Hemingway's writing paints in my mind. Paris in July begins on Friday.

Tuesday Intros is hosted by Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea.

Ernest Hemingway: A Writer's Life by Catherine Reef

There are times when I love to lose myself in a big, fat literary biography, but then there are others that call for a more concise, compact volume. I was recently seeking the latter and Ernest Hemingway: A Writer's Life by Catherine Reef filled the need perfectly.

My April reading plans include A Moveable Feast, and Molly's review planted the idea that a better understanding of Hemingway's life might increase my appreciation of the book. A few days later, I came across Diane's review of Ernest Hemingway: A Writer's Life, and then happily discovered the library had an available copy.

Prior to reading this biography, my knowledge of Hemigway's life consisted of these key facts:

• He was an avid hunter/fisherman
• He fought in the Spanish civil war
• He had several wives
• He drank heavily
• He shot himself in the head

While aimed at 9-12 year-olds (I think that range is a little too young), Reef's 150-page book was exactly what I needed to fill in the gaps. I learned more about Hemingway's childhood, time in Paris, hunting and fishing expeditions, war experience, writing career, marital turmoil, and the mental illness that eventually lead to taking his own life.

Some favorite passages:

... Grace [Hemingway's mother] handed Ernest a cold, careful, cruel letter that compared a mother's love to money in a bank, which could be counted and spent. A mother draws from a limited amount of love as she cares for her son through childhood, Grace explained. It was up to the son, as he grew older, to make deposits in the account through good behavior and tokens of affection, to prevent her love from running out. (page 41)

Ernest admitted he would go on loving Hadley [his first wife] "for a little while at least." He had begun to foresee the changes that marriage would bring and to mourn the loss of fishing trips with his pals. A "guy loves a couple or three streams all his life and loves 'em better than anything in the world - falls in love with a girl and the goddam streams can dry up for all he cares," he lamented to Bill Smith. "Only the hell of it is that country has as bad a hold on me as ever." (pages 45 - 46)

He practiced his art in the most basic way he knew, telling himself, "all you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know." ... He crafted paragraphs from these honest statements, making every word count. He believed that if he did his job right, then readers would understand the emotions that lay beneath the actions he described. (pages 48-49)

"There is no flesh whatever to his writing, no softness, no roundness, no color, no flow of muscle under the skin," observed Fanny Butcher, a leading literary critic, in 1929. "There is nothing but uncompromising bone." (page 6)

My husband's grandmother, author of two novels published in the 1930's, was acquainted with Hemingway and, according to family lore, "didn't think much of him". He may not have been a particularly likable person, but this book provided an interesting look at the man behind the classic novels.

Bottom line: Highly recommended, even if you're not planning to read A Moveable Feast anytime soon.