The Old Man and the Sea question

People are mystified that Hemingway is regarded as one the greatest American Writers.

I'm kind of mystified how one can read The Sun Also Rises, or most anything he wrote, and not come away with the conclusion he's one of the best.

For starters, Hemingway had a tectonic impact on prose, not just in the U.S., but everywhere. His ability to communicate complex emotions, conflicts and human events in a story with so few words, and such simple words, was, and is second to none. If simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, there's no one like Hemingway. Try reading the works of his contemporaries with paragraph long sentences and $10 vocab words on every line and you might see what I mean.

Is there any great author who wrote prose like Hemingway before or since?

I feel a good way to describe him is as a Realist Writer. He didn't try to impress with big sentences, fancy vocab, 1,000 page works, or heavy moralizing / preaching. He just wanted share life as he saw it, and make life as authentic to readers as can be done with words - minus the editorializing.

Some say he was a sexist. I don't really see it. Many of his protagonists are broken and crippled men hiding deep mental / emotional scars who are tortured by the females in their lives. In one of his short stories his protagonist is shot down by his wife at the end, precisely in the moment the character grew some backbone.

Most of the men in his work are characters to be pitied, not uberman to be lifted up and cheered by crowds of other men. Some kind of John Wayne / Don Juan hybrids, his characters are not.

The simplicity of his writing belies the complexity and inner turmoil of his subjects and characters. In his work one doesn't get the themes laid out in sermon format, and so people at times read The Old Man And The Sea and say, "a story about an old man trying to catch a big fish... why is this book a big deal?".

Since this thread began with The Old Man and The Sea, I'll share my thoughts on why that work matters.

Great fiction is always intensely autobiographical and thereby renders a painfully transparent picture of the author, or at least the core ideas the author struggles with, in one way or another.

At the time of publication, Hemingway was close to the end of his literary career. In the novel the Old Man is at the end of his useful fishing life. The Old Man is unproductive. He's not catching like he used to, and his peers pity him. The Old Man is the embodiment of bad luck.

The Old Man hooks a massive prize fish he holds on with all he's got to prove he's still got "it" - that he can still produce... that he still matters.

Even though at the end the sharks take his prize, his regains the respect of his community because they see he can still produce great work. He then rests easy dreaming of lions in Africa. That's a pretty cool end to a book by the way.

The Old Man & The Sea was Hemingway's proof that he can still contribute to literature.

He proclaimed to the world "The Old Man has still got it!"

The central conflict is man vs death or man vs aging. Like most of Hemingway's work, the idea is impossibly fatalist because no one wins those conflicts. And yet Hemingway expressed that one should still rage against death and defy old age regardless.

The Old Man & The Sea - a moving and human story of courage in the face of impossible odds.

If one is not moved by this... i don't know what else would.

I think one of the biggest mistake readers make is having pre-conceived notions about a writer's work based on his/her media image.

The key to understanding Hemingway is to understand and appreciate simplicity.

Take 'The Old Man And The Sea' for instance, on the face of it and upon first reading, you may think that this is a very simple and straightforward story. But if you were to pause and re-read it, you will realize what's hidden beneath this story, the themes and the deep truth about life.

Hemingway's works prove that merely being a Thesaurus wiz doesn't make one a great writer. It's the realization that 'truth is simple' and that it can be conveyed in a simple manner and in plain, non-complex language that matters.

So try and read him and all works of fiction without first having read book reviews. Form an opinion on the work based on your reading and not someone else's.

I don´t like Hemingway, but that is not my point. My point is that when something really brand new hits the world of litterature or music/film/whatever, it changes the way books are written and the way music sounds afterward, so if You read that author or listen to that artist or watch that film some years later, you just don´t see the point, since you have already read or listened to a lot of things that are influenced by it. I think that might be the case with Hemingway.

He is not one of the best writers ever. He is highly regarded, but not with the merit one would imagine. With every writer, there comes this torrent of readers who follow critics who lay upon him the expectations or wants of a generation. Hemingway met those with very little work and little to show for it (literally). He writes in such a way as to lead the gullible sort to imagine there is much more to the story than there is, because he leaves so much out in a way that forces you to think there's something there. Something he himself hasn't thought of. We as humans are storytellers by nature, and we expect a certain depth and amount of information. When Hemingway deprives us of anything useful or good, we are left filling in the gaps because we know in our gut that it can't really be that bad, that simple, that cut and dry and boring. But it is. We've encountered a bad storyteller. That's the easy way to write. Leave enough out to make the reader do all the work. You as the reader do the work, you do the work he was incapable of doing. A good writer tells you a story with all the right pieces in place, while leaving gaps and openings in the right areas, artistically and brilliantly.

Hemingway gives you dull specks of events and actions, and a story of gaps, then expects you to piece them together, without importance attached, into something important, because he lacked the talent to do so (the contrary has not been proven). There is this common "understanding" that rests on people's lips about the man. It's about as silly as you can imagine. Read a Dick and Jane book. That will give you the same depth, the same prose, the same sophistication that a Hemingway work gives you. And it's over in a fraction of the time. One could say Hemingway's characters were doers, not thinkers. But when you get down to it, they're really not doing much. They're drinking, talking, fucking, and fishing. And they do each of these poorly. Characters in his stories are as empty as they are initially shown to be. Any depth given to them is given by the reader. And a reader who wants to read quality will seek out authors who put at least as much work into writing a piece as the writer expects the reader to put in.

A reader shouldn't be lazy and useless, simply absorbing information. One should be active and think. But with Hemingway this role is an illusion. The reader does everything, the writer sits back and laughs. Hemingway is the kid in school who joins your group project late and writes just enough symbols on the paper to make it look like he contributed. And then he's given a Nobel Prize.

If you're interested in writers of the same era who can be compared to Hemingway, two superior ones come to mind: Dashiell Hammett and John Steinbeck. Spend more time with them, less with Ernest.

In my opinion, Hemingway can be considered one of the best prose writers! His laconic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his adventurous lifestyle and public image were admired by subsequent generations. If you want to try understand him, you need to read not only "The Old Man and the Sea", but also other books, such as "In Our Time" or
"A Farewell to Arms". He was an innovator of writing style for his time and left a huge legacy.

Read "The Sun Also Rises" and "For Whom The Bell Tolls" then you'll be able to answer your own question.

Monica wrote: "So I've read The Old Man and the Sea and Across the River, Into the Trees and though I haven't hated these books, I don't see how this man is considered one of the best writers ever."

Although Ernest Hemingway's early short stories are more florid, his style became almost journalistic, with writing that draws you into the current of the story before you realize it. He was a master of understatement; hyperbole was not Hem.

His best prose is light and airy, almost dreamlike. His unique and powerful influence on how we write was significant enough to be honored by a Nobel Prize in literature. How did it happen? What is the formula?

Reading is getting lost in that sacred magic trinity of reader, writer and words, a place where readers are unconscious of and often resistant to the author's contrail behind what ended up on the page. Hemingway proved that the reader is a co-equal partner in a story--that the story is not words on a page but a happening in the reader's imagination prompted by those words and tapping that resource produces a better, more pleasing result for a greater number of readers--that authorial dictatorship constricts the reader, locking out his or her imagination.

Hemingway was a welcome break from the excesses of Dickens and Henry James. What made the doctor's boy from Oak Park seek escape from the florid norm of the Twenties and write in such a radically nimble style?

For one thing, he had a poor relationship with his mother, who dressed him as a girl until he was about to start school. Perhaps he rebelled against anything reminding him of her. A quote from For Whom The Bell Tolls sheds light on his maternal conflict:

"And is thy father still active in the Republic?" Pilar asked.
"No. He is dead."
"Can one ask how he died?"
"He shot himself."
'To avoid being tortured?' the woman asked.
"Yes,' Robert Jordan said. "To avoid being tortured."

As a cub reporter Hemingway was trained to be brief and pithy in his prose and stick to a grade school vocabulary. Perhaps his vocabulary was limited; he hadn't gone to college.

As an overseas correspondent, he would have had to compile news stories from wire service cables and submit them the same way, under pressure of deadline. Cablegrams were priced by word count. Wordiness was penalized.

His first novel, The Sun Also Rises, was written while Hemingway was a correspondent in Paris. On an average workday he'd be shifting between writing fiction and cable-speak. It's natural that the habitual discipline of reportage would creep into his creative writing.

Indeed, some of the dialogue of Brett Ashley and Bill Scott in The Sun Also Rises is expressed in incomplete sentences, as in a telegram. It works for these characters because they've been drinking heavily, but it jolted me enough to notice and wonder about it.

Hemingway also read a lot of hard-boiled crime novels. That last line in The Sun Also Rises, "Isn't it pretty to think so," sounds like something from Dashiell Hammett.

Was it journalism, other writers, crime novels or parental rebellion that influenced his writing? It's a mixture, but insight into literary minimalism can be found in film and theater.

Francis Ford Coppola said, "Whatever is happening on the screen, the "real" story is taking place in the mind of the audience." Words on the page are prompts for the mind, like props in a stage production. The mind takes in what it needs or can and filters out the rest. When too much is coming at the senses, overload occurs and the mind excludes some of what is being presented. When a writer economizes, the personality of the observer is more in play.

This "theater concept" occurred to me after reflecting on why the 1939 black and white version of Of Mice and Men remains superior to the '82 and '92 color versions. In the realm of storytelling, color can be superfluous and actually interfere with the flow of the story.

Stage directors know and depend on the fact that audiences only need a suggestion of reality in their sets, just enough to make sense of what is happening. This de-emphasis on setting enables an audience to concentrate on what is being said and done, where lives the core thread of meaning.

Such is the case with Hemingway. On the page, every word competes with every other word for comprehension. The more words and the more complicated they are, the harder the reader must work. If the author is wordy and over-precise in rendering a scene the all-important meaning can be lost.

Hemingway called it the Iceberg Principle, which is analogous to Carl Jung's Collective Unconscious. It could just as aptly be called the Theater Principle.

Theater-goers don't expect or need much in the way of props or sets--just enough to create the illusion of a setting to support the meat of the performance, action and dialogue. An elaborate theater set can be a distraction, as can ornamentation in literature.

In a famous quote, Ezra Pound impressed upon Hemingway that precision in word selection was paramount--“Fundamental accuracy of statement is the ONE sole morality of writing.” In Hemingway's search for just the right words he discovered that extraneous words could be dropped and increase clarity. So he left them out and the through-line delivery of meaning to the reader was more direct.

Before Hemingway met Pound in Paris in the Twenties, Sherwood Anderson was in his professional life. As a cub reporter Hemingway was drawn to Anderson's use of everyday language. He met Anderson and received advice and encouragement from the older established writer.

Sparseness can sometimes come at a cost, though. In The Sun Also Rises I sometimes couldn't tell who was speaking. "Hills Like White Elephants" is an extreme example of Hemingwy's trademark brevity, forcing me to strain and backtrack, interrupting story flow. It's curious that "Hills..." is so frequently anthologized; it's not that representative. Perhaps it was an experiment to see how much of the iceberg he could submerge and still have a story. It came out in '27, after The Sun Also Rises was doing tremendously well and he could have gotten away with anything.

Still, whether on stage or page, the principle of economy applies. Only put in just enough, and the reader supplies the rest. The art is in knowing where to draw the line.

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I think the reason Hemingway is considered to be one of the best writers of the 20th century is because he revolutionized brevity in the english language. His style of writing, with short, concise sentences help not only to get the story across easier, but show that more doesn't always mean better. A lot of authors have used his style in their works. But I do understand your question. It's hard to read a book and judge it when you're suppose to think its good because the critics loved it. As a student of Hemingway, I recommend you read "the sun also rises" (it's about a war veterans manhood being tormented by a gorgeous women, similar to Gatsby). That is my favourite book by him.

Overrated according to whom and in reference to what, exactly?

A child asked me to tell them a story, and I started telling them the plot of THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA. I hadn't read the book in years, and I practically started crying telling them about it. What a timeless story. It's a parable. An old man catches a great big fish and can't let go, even though it's going to kill him. I had to watch my father die to understand this book. Maybe that's what it takes.

Hemingway is Hemingway. If we all loved everything, wouldn't the world be a boring place? Art has many, many faces, and genuine artists realize this. Most artists also own the insecurity about themselves as compared to other artists, so save their criticism either for themselves or for a personal few. There are some things by Hemingway that I found puzzling, e.g. The Sun Also Rises. I got tired of all the drinking and circular conversation. But, many, many people loved it. I'm sure Hemingway wouldn't care either way. He was also an intriguing man, an accomplished fisherman and sportsman. Evidently, he only wrote about 500 words/day. Writing was not his only thing, so it's little wonder that he was not the master of vocabulary or phrasing. But his stories taught us a lot about Cuba, the Caribbean Sea, and Europe. There is an museum in Bimini in the Bahamas that is indicative of how he was revered there, but not as a writer. I met many Bahamians who knew him and loved him. Isn't it great that we aren't forced to read what we don't like?

All I know is that I had to read The Old Man and the Sea when I was in 7th grade and thought it was really boring. Maybe a good 10 page story, but not a great novel. Then, in college, I read a book of short stories and thought they were brilliant. Maybe he's one of those authors you just have to read at the right time in your life.

I agree with Yonis. And his comments sum up the reason why many aspiring writers are encouraged to write like Hemingway.

I'd also vote for 'The Sun Also Rises' as his best. I also thought 'For Whom the Bell Tolls' was a good read.

I think Hemingway's life (and it was lived spectacularly) causes people to be confused about his writing talent. An interesting life does not equal talent. He was one of the first celebrity writers. He not only wrote non-fiction pieces about his amazing experiences around the world but he was often featured in many of the popular magazines at the time. I would say Raymond Carver took Hemingway's style to heights never reached by Hemingway himself.

Monica wrote: "So I've read The Old Man and the Sea and Across the River, Into the Trees and though I haven't hated these books, I don't see how this man is considered one of the best writers ever.
I understand ..."

I didn't care very much for The Old Man and the Sea either, but I did like Farewell To Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls. I think that if you don't like those two books then Hemingway simply isn't to your liking, which is fine.

What makes Hemingway special, to me at least, is that he is no ordinary (fiction) writer. He is first and foremost a journalist: an astute observer who understands the craft of describing everyday situations by using very detailed observations.

His books however are not journalism, but create a strange mix of the world of fiction, novels, ... with the everyday realism and detailed observation of his writing style.

Hemingway isn't one for labels. Is The Old Man and the Sea fiction? Is A Moveable Feast non-fiction?

Because of his writing style (and our knowledge of his lifestyle), he blurs the lines between the two, which is what makes him the literary heavyweight he is (at least, in my book).

The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway, is a book that, at first glance, may seem simple, but carries symbolic depth. The story centers around a character who faces both the forces of nature and time, which can be seen as a metaphor for the universal human struggle—whether against external adversities or internal challenges. The protagonist's confrontation with nature reflects our own search for meaning, the need to overcome obstacles, and the connection to something greater that transcends the everyday.

An "out of the box" reading of the book could interpret the protagonist as someone who represents the journey of us all: the relentless pursuit of a goal, the process of self-discovery, and the reflection on what it really means to win or lose. The interaction between the man and the world around him is full of nuances and can be understood in different ways, depending on the perspective one adopts.

Furthermore, there is a subtle critique of how we interpret success and failure, questioning what we truly value throughout life and what we can learn from our deepest challenges. Instead of a linear story of triumph, The Old Man and the Sea leads us to reflect on what effort and perseverance mean, regardless of the final outcome.

My view is that the book is a powerful reflection on personal struggle and the lessons we can draw from our own journeys, even if the path doesn't lead exactly where we expected.

Hemingway is one of my favorites. The a few points of my observations though are that 1)he's an acquired taste not much unlike beer. 2)part of why he's considered so good is that he changed writing style, he does not follow the rules and writes much like a journalist not a novelist. 3)It helps to have at least a general idea of the historical part of the time period the book is set in. So far For Whom the Bell Tolls is my least favorite but I knew nothing of the Spanish civil war.

He is a great story teller though. H

ow does it make you feel? A good book will bring out your personal feelings and your own life experience and makes a book completely different from one person to the next.

This question comes up with distressing regularity for every "classic" book/author. I think schools may be force-feeding their students these books before they're quite ready for them.

And before anyone posts about how their 4 year old loves the Brontes, I'm not talking about your kid, I'm talking about the average Junior High-through-College-undergrad dumbass.

One of the best. Old Man and the Sea is a book that has far deeper meaning than just the story itself. I read it every couple of years and highly recommend it. What you walk away with is breathtaking which makes Ernest Hemingway one of the best.

I am a Hemingway fan if there ever was one. In fact, last month I made a pilgrimage to his birth home and museum in Oak Park, IL outside Chicago.

I have read ALL of the fiction that he wrote and published during his life. And half of the nonfiction.

ACross the River....is his absolute WORST novel....I mean I read it and didn't think it was great. 4 stars at best. Everything else is 5 stars. Here are my suggestions:

Read the stories of "In Our Time" and "Snows of Kilimanjaro" and then one or both:
A Farewell to Arms
For Whom The Bell Tolls.

For non fiction nothing is better than A Movable Feast.

Happy reading.

Monica wrote: "So I've read The Old Man and the Sea and Across the River, Into the Trees and though I haven't hated these books, I don't see how this man is considered one of the best writers ever.
I understand ..."

I think a successful read of any Hemingway work depends largely upon what the reader brings to the table...that was both Hemingway's strength...and his weakness. For if he managed to make a single connection with his reader...God was in the firmament...but if he failed, not even a mouse could come from the mountain's labor. But wasn't that the essential weakness of his writing style? For if you want the widest readership, you simply can't leave it all to the one who reads your stuff. For example, his Old Man and the Sea really connects with me...but his other works leave me flat as a pancake. In my opinion, if he'd invested just a few more words in OMS or his other work, he'd have vastly increased his audience.

I read "The Old Man and the Sea" as well as ""The Sun Also Rises." I didn't care for either. That being said, I don't think Ernest is overrated. His novels have been too successful for me to call him overrated. Also my problem with calling him overrated is his work has been incorporated into the American lexicon and is apart of "pop culture." The pantheon of writers that have accomplished that, be it this century or in the last five-hundred, is very small compared to those who have merely attempted to.

Read him slowly. There's a lot between the lines.

Monica, there are many great writers who bore me to death. We cannot like every wrtier who is considered great. I liked Hemigway's "Arms and the Man" but did not like 'The Old man and the Sea".
I think it's OK. We should let our own insticnt guide us...there have been many writers who were no big hits in their own time earned big name later on...posthumously.One of them being Somerset Maugham.
And also, there might be many writers whom you may consider great but the majority out there doesn't.
I believe in my own judgment. Sometimes popularity comes due to some reasons which were relevant at that time, but not now...
Some writers are evergreen..they are truly great!

If anything, I would say he's underrated.
And I would like to explain why I'm saying this.
Whenever I've read his works, he has just left me dumbstruck.
When I completed "A farewell to arms", I couldn't get it out of my mind for a week. I was literally shook. And that isn't when he became my favorite, there was this page in that book where the protagonist was in hospital with his one leg injured and doctors were talking about what to do with that leg and the protagonist said that he wants his leg to be amputated so that it can be replaced with a hook (like those wicked pirates), and it cracked me up so hard.
I would just say that if you didn't like his work maybe you just didn't understood it.

I do not think he is overrated. I think he was a great writer. When he was on his game, he absolutely nailed certain types of male feelings and understandings. He could accurately describe masculine angst, hopes and desires, and do it within the literary genre style satisfying both the literary and common man worlds. He saw and described the troubles men have trying to square the world into the only ways he saw that would fulfil male feelings of order, control, hierarchy, while at the same time being exhilarated by destruction, blood and war. He vividly describes the resulting marching in place and sometimes self-destruction men do trying to satisfy the competing desires for control and destruction in men's hearts, both of which satisfy male honor for some reason. I think many women may have many of the same internal definitions, perhaps some determined by biology and some by culture expectations, but I know for sure the issues men and women share on their biological list are in a different order of importance.

He didn't quite get women, and I think that was a misery to him.

The Old Man and the Sea was a brilliant book. A fine read from Hemingway. That and The Crucible my introduction to literature where the focus is on a single character and their engagement with the world. I have not read anything else he has done and am not interested in the mechanics of how it was done. A wonderful reading experience.

When I read Old Man I loved it. In fact, I loved it so much I will not read it again. My experience with Hemingway is that he does not hold up over the years. I will leave my feeling of Ild Man intact by not rereading it.

Hemingway makes great use of space.

Upon finishing Old Man and the Sea, my body convulsed for a brief moment. That only happens to me in the presence of great, great works of art, both man made and natural.

Old Man and the Sea is primal and cuts straight to the matter. I cannot recommend that particular work enough.

Overrated

I admit that I was forced to read this book in grade nine. I think I was too young for it. Still the idea of re-reading it make me quake in fear. NO MORE!!! I'll stick tp stineback thank you.

Hemingway was the anti-Henry James. The beauty of EH, was his simplicity

Ernst Hemingway is in my opinion an author writing about normal people and their struggles and dreams. He is down to earth and do not create any super humans. I believe since he had his own experience he is able to catch the vital points in his books which touch readers in various emotionally ways.Not many author's can say they been experiencing the events and situations and turn them into print the way Hemingway does. I recommend all his books.

This book , how i think its about not giving up and be strong about it. Its really good to read if you dont have much confidence in yourself.But in the end is your opinon that matters , but i would prefer to you to read one more time more carefully and slowly you will find something......

Hemmingway is an important writer that had a major impact on most modern writers. That's not to say he's fun to read however. For one thing, Hemmingway had no sense of humor. For another, his subject matter was dry and excessively macho--fishing, drinking, fighting and women. That's all he ever writes about. "It was a good fish. A strong fish. It fought hard. It died well. "
I like Hemmingway but don't think he would be nearly so prominent, if he hadnt't been part a writing community that endorsed his work and promoted him as a genius. He was lucky to meet that Paris crowd.

To be honest I thought at first Hemingway was overrated because I had only read The Old Man and the Sea a book that for years heard so much praise for, how deep it was, etc. by one person in family.

I read it and didn't understand why it was considered a classic! Key words are "at first" after reading one of his works. Recently though I happened to see a documentary on Hemingway's life and also how much people were impacted by reading his book For Whom The Bell Tolls. Now I am interested in reading Hemingway again. I'll give him a second chance and then I'll see at least by my opinion if he isn't so over-praised or what people might say negatively about this well-known writer.

Stephen Crane and others preceded EH by some 30 years in developing a sparse, small word, short sentance prose style that described "complex emotions" and multi-layered personalities, etc. Red Badge of Courage is a masterwork for that reason.

Also, EH made certain that his protagonists always erred on the side of aggression or assertiveness, as opposed to restraint or retreat in things moral.

Try thinking of it like this.
As a communist, Hemingway was involved in the world of fascist-capitalistic conflicts while also trying to do something good for others in the world. That's what people were like. He chose to reveal the underpinnings of societies both wracked by war and celebratory in victory. He did so by revealing its characters within the Geo political economic state the world was in at that time. Where some may see macho ego fulfillment I see a revolutionary cultural critique of early 20th
Century manhood. Take The Big Two Hearted River. The quintessential Hemingway subject- a man goes on a fishing trip. This is no sparse drama and anything but shallow. What do you see in the folly of a man, isolated from companions by class, whose personal history was laid bare and burnt by war, finding only the simplest solace in eating a can of beans and spaghetti and at once afraid and driven by all that he was and will ever be to go after a fish into the depths wherein he may disappear into himself.

Stylistically many not only underestimate the provocative and complex nature of his psychology, but so too, especially in this generation of tweets, come to see his structures superficially and overly simplified.

Yet if we only look at the surface of his prose and see simple reflections of our own insecurities fears and what not that says more about us as readers than about the actual prose, let alone the character of the man.

My guess is that Ernest was an alcoholic who believed near the end that he'd lost his power as a writer and an artist to achieve anything like he'd already accomplished. Of course his father had also committed suicide when Ernest was young and there are no doubt a host of other psychological issues that drove him. I.e. His mother dressing he and his sister the same.

I've read every work of fiction except the posthumous work, some non fiction and many books of his multiple times over the last 30 or so years. I've been to his house and museum in Oak Park.

I always find myself immersed in the narratives and amazed when the prose sparkles.

Having said this, there are times when I at once am blown away by the prose, the perspective, the craft, the art, the psychology, the social criticism, BUT frustrated by subject - bull fighters, boxers, thugs, jockeys, soldiers.

Yet when I appreciate that this was the world of men at the time, I feel myself so ever grateful that for a time, the world had in Hemingway its finest cultural epidemiologist chronicling the age.

I read «The Sun Also Rises» after hearing Hemingway referred to with such praise. Since English is not my native language, it is quite possible that many of its finer elements went over my head. I enjoyed the book, although it was not among the best I have read. This was not the case when I read «The Old Man And The Sea». I liked «The Sun Also Rises»; I loathed «The Old Man And The Sea». How this book can be considered among the classics is beyond me. It is literally a story abut an old fisherman trying to catch a big fish, written in a language a middle school student could imitate. Many seem to ascribe it some kind of deeper meaning, but Hemingway himself has stated that it has no other meaning than what one sees black on white. It is literally about an old man trying to overpower a fish, a battle which is uninteresting, lengthy, unnecessary and boring. I found myself searching for something more, but why should I make it into something it is not, simply for the benefit of the writer?

Hemingway is praised for revolutionizing writing, but I cannot understand that this in itself should be enough to make someone a good writer, nor why making something more straight-forward is considered groundbreaking. People seem to praise anything seemingly new and undiscovered nowadays, no matter the quality. I believe one should do something well before receiving praise, and although Hemingway is no bad writer, I do not find him a great one. Perhaps his popularity is more of an American phenomena, as I have seldom, if ever, heard him mentioned in my home country. The language barrier might very well be ruining him for me, but I cannot find it in myself to see his writing as anything more than average.

I am far from fluent in English and I apologize for any spelling mistakes.

If you're going to evaluate the story of Old Man...then do it. Nobody cares what any of us personally feel about the writer or the level at which we rate them. These stories come to life each time they are read, quoted or remembered and we take on that life source unless we are unable to understand or feel what the story has to tell us. If you don't feel moved by an old man in his waning years who captures a great fish that could become a transformational event of his life only to lose it to sharks while trying desperately to bring his catch back to shore, then there is little left in this world to move you. The reader must also work as hard as the old man did as he tried to overcome the relentless sharks. We must listen intently, read the words within the context of drama presented, and understand the importance of the catch and its loss represented to the old man. If you can't visualize or feel that, perhaps Spencer Tracy can help. Today, storytelling is in danger of becoming a lost art playing 2nd fiddle to the special effect and exaggerations that 21st century life brings us. Try going out to sea in a small boat and test yourself someday, perhaps it will come to you.

It was great finding this thread, because a few years ago I had to read The Old Man and the Sea and I did not enjoy it at all either, and I've always kind of wondered why, since a lot of people think that book is a masterpiece, and Hemingway a genius. Now that I'm older, I think that perhaps it was too soon for me to read it and maybe I didn't understand it properly.Back then I just thought it was immensely boring.

The Sun Also Rises is my favorite work by Hemingway. I really liked that one, and I hated the Old Man and the Sea.

Monica: Good luck with The Sun Also Rises. I read it last year and hated it. A found none of the characters interesting or appealing and there is an undercurrent of antisemitism to the book (and no I'm not Jewish) that I found repulsive. From what I've read about Hemingway he himself was fairly antisemitic which only added to the ugliness of his writing. I also was turned off by his overly macho mentality. Were it not for the fact that the book is so short and that the first half of it takes place in Paris, my favorite place in the world, I'm sure I never would have finished it. For me, Hemingway may just be the most over-rated author of all-time.

Hi Monica, I think the novels all have issues, even something as great as "For Whom the Bell Tolls" gets tiresome with its thee's and thou's which are meant to evoke formal Spanish. But don't give up on Hemingway without at least reading "A Moveable Feast" (which even if it is marketed as a memoir, he did admit was part fiction - also, go for the first edition and not the so-called "restored" edition, which doesn't end on the right note) and at least some of the short stories like the early 1920's collection "In Our Time" and the mid-1930's "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" and "The Snows of Kilimanjaro". You can give up then if you like, but then you've read his best! Happy reading, cheers, Alan

I'm not a Hemingway expert and I haven't re-read any of his books (the short stories yes). That said, Hemingway resonates with me like nobody else. Everything he wrote works fits like a second skin. My suggestion is read some of the short stories, you'll have more chances to find something you like. On the other hand, there are a bazillion books out there, no need to putz around with Hemingway if you don't like his stuff.

Read his short stories. 'Men Without Women', 'In Our Time', and 'Winner take Nothing'. His fame does not only rest on introducing 'brevity' and 'journalist style' into fiction writing. Anyone could have done that. More importantly, the man had a phenomenal power of observation and clarity when it came to studying his fellow men. That's what was of the utmost importance to him. Writing what is 'true'.

Anyone who doesn't recognize this, anyone who chivvies him for this-or-that complaint they personally harbor..anti-semitism, whatever--is gutlessly whining when it comes to summing him up. Try to perceive that at all times he was striving for *forceful* writing. Terse style and laconic technique was only in aid of supporting this, not a goal in itself. The power of his writing is in *what* he observed, not *how* he put it on paper. That's not what he was about. Either you can hack it or you cant: but Hemingway was intent on accurately portraying the way men's lives operate. Nothing turns my stomach more than wussies who want to go back and make a writer like Hemingway 'more nice-nice'. Geezuz.
The book not only won him the Pulitzer but contributed to his Nobel Prize. People really need to leave their political, gender, and racial issues at home.

I agree, of course, that Hemingway is a very good and important writer but that does not mean that we all have to like him. I don't. It's ok not to like every important writer!

Monica, What James said about the short stories. See if you can acquire a copy of "The Complete Short Stories Of Earnest Hemingway". I have the Finca Vigia Edition and enjoy it immensely. "The Sun Also Rises" is probably one of my more favorite books by Hemingway. "For Whom The Bell Tolls" was a hard read for me as was "A Farewell To Arms". Perhaps in time I'll read these books again and enjoy them more. Good luck in your reading quest. The Sun sets....but The Sun Also Rises.

Hemingway is most definitely not overrated. However, there is a huge contingent of people who seem to not get his work and few downright hates him. Perhaps it's an acquired taste but I have loved everything I have read from Hemingway (not many, just three novels so far).
often I have found that it helps to go over his text multiple times for proper understanding. His writing is so plain and simple that I have often rushed ahead through large sections of the text and only realized the weight and beauty and implications of that section on second reading (the chapter where the Italian army is retreating in 'A Farewell to Arms' is a good example of this).
Having said all these, if you do not like a particular writer, no matter how celebrated he might be, move on to someone else. There are enough good books out there to keep one occupied without wasting time on something one doesn't enjoy (I gave up on Joyce because of that).