Summer, Hemingway, and the sea

Spoiler warning.

This summer I'm on a mission to read some of the great classics. Why do we read these books hundreds of years post-publication? I want to understand what exactly makes them so timeless.

I decided to start with Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea. Even though I'm not well acquainted with his work I'm fascinated by Hemingway's life. He lived in Paris, one of the most romantic cities in the world. He spent his European days writing fiction and hanging out with his bffs F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein. What a cool, melancholy friend group to be a part of! I can just imagine them relaxed around a cafe table, smoking cigarettes, drinking too many cups of coffee, and debating the meaning of life.

The Old Man and the Sea is a short novella about this well, old man out on the sea. Off the Cuban coast side, the old man is determined to catch a really big fish. The book is one continuous story without chapters, little dialogue, and short, terse sentences. It also won a Pulitzer, but I'm not really sure why.

I don't think I really understood the end of the story. I spent about 50 pages reading about this giant, illusive fish, waited for the old man to catch it, only for the fish to be completely demolished by sharks before the old man can make it back to shore. Maybe this is a metaphor that you can work really hard for something your whole life and never achieve it?

I did feel sympathy for the old man because he seemed like a sweet guy and I just wanted him to be happy. Hemingway does a great job of making the reader feel like they are out on the boat the with old man, growing steadily more weary and smelling salt in the air.

Though it's not the most riveting story, I would still recommend the book because it's so short and because it's considered to be a great American classic.

Interested in learning more about the influential life of Ernest Hemingway? Check out this link: https://www.biography.com/writer/ernest-hemingway

Some of his other noteworthy novels include The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, and For Whom the Bell Tolls.