Synopsis
In language of great simplicity and power, Hemingway tells the story of an old Cuban fisherman, down on his luck--he hasn't caught a fish in 84 days--who goes out in his small skiff one more time. This time he hooks a huge marlin. During his relentless ordeal, a long and agonizing battle with the marlin far out in the Gulf Stream, the old man faces long days of hunger and exhaustion, his courage and his respect for his adversary never flagging. The man is old and tired and at the end of his life, but he remains the archetypical Hemingway hero who refuses to accept defeat. THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA, considered one of Hemingway's best novels, is also his shortest, a mere 27,000 words. It originally appeared in Life magazine in August, 1952, two weeks before it was published in book form. In a statement, Hemingway commented that, with this book, "It's as though I had gotten finally what I had been working for all my life," and claimed that he wanted to make it accessible to people who might not ordinarily be able to afford to buy a book: the Life version was 20 cents, the hardcover book three dollars.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 1999-06-01 | | Edition Description: | Reissue |
| Size | | Length: | 127 pages | | Height: | 8.0 in | | Width: | 5.5 in | | Thickness: | 0.5 in | | Weight: | 4.0 oz |
Publisher's Note
Hemingway's triumphant yet tragic story of an old Cuban fisherman and his relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream combines the simplicity of a fable, the significance of a parable, and the drama of an epic.
THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA is one of Hemingway's most enduring works. Told in language of great simplicity and power, it is the story of an old Cuban fisherman, down on his luck, and his supreme ordeal--a relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream. Here Hemingway recasts, in strikingly contemporary style, the classic theme of courage in the face of defeat, of personal triumph won from loss. Written in 1952, this hugely successful novella confirmed his power and presence in the literary world and played a large part in his winning the 1954 Nobel Prize for Literature.
Industry Reviews
"I couldn't write even a short report on the book without paying tribute to Hemingway's prose. It is as different from Melville's prose in 'Moby Dick' as anything could be and still remain English. There is no attempt in it to express the inexpressible by inventing new words and turns of phrase; instead Hemingway uses the oldest and shortest words, the simplest constructions, but gives them a new value--as if English were a strange language that he had studied or invented for himself and was trying to write in its original purity."
New York Herald Tribune Book Review - Malcom Cowley (09/07/1952)
"'The Old Man and the Sea' is intended to be a 'universal' book, dealing, however briefly, with the suffering of humanity as a whole. Its compassion is not exclusive. If it succeeded it would be a masterpiece surpassing anything that Mr. Hemingway has written. In my opinion, it has not succeeded. Despite its great virtues, its lucidity, its brilliantly compact evocation of the sea, of physical endurance, of the power of the great fish, its compassion and its impact, it does not plumb these depths of primitive tragic simplicity at which it obviously aims."
New Statesman - J.D. Scott (09/13/1952)
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