"His best. Time may show it to be the best single piece of any of us,
I mean his and my contemporaries." - William Faulkner.
The Old Man and the Sea, an apparently simple fable, represents the
mature Hemingway at his best, and it is still one of his most read
books. In 1954 Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature "for
his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The
Old Man and the Sea, and for the influence that he has exerted on
contemporary style."
Hemingway's style was famously simple. In responding to a critic, he
said "Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I
don't know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are
older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use." Using
these simpler and better words he tells the unforgettable story of
Santiago, an old Cuban fisherman down on his luck, who goes out alone
far from the shore in search of one last victory and catches a huge
marlin longer than his boat. He is tested to the very limits of his
skill and strength and returns "destroyed but not defeated." This, of
course, also refers to Hemingway, who, in his last years, was in
constant pain from years of adventures and accidents but still able to
do his best work. A classic novella that can be read in a single
sitting.
Ernest Miller Hemingway (1899-1961) was an American journalist,
novelist, short-story writer, and sportsman. He loved Cuba, where he had
a home, and where he placed his Nobel Prize medal in the custody of the
Catholic Church for the benefit of the local people. His economical and
understated style-which he termed the iceberg theory-has had a strong
influence on twentieth-century fiction. Many of his books are considered
classics of American literature. Writer Richard Ford calls Fitzgerald,
Hemingway and Faulkner "the Three Kings who set the measure for every
writer since."
