Clean & Straight

THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA (140 pp.)--Ernest Hemingway--Scribner ($3).

For a long time Ernest Hemingway has wanted to write a story that he did not think he could. Now he has written it. It is a very short (27,000-word) novel called The Old Man and the Sea, and it may be what he thinks it is: the best work he has ever done. Says Hemingway: "I have had to read it now over 200 times and every time it does something to me. It's as though I had gotten finally what I had been working for all my life."

In The Old Man and the Sea, Hemingway has written about: 1) the place that now interests and excites him most, the Gulf Stream near Cuba; 2) a skill he knows and enjoys, big-game fishing; 3) a fundamental contest of life that has always fascinated him: a man of unquestionable courage, character and simple decency pitted against unconquerable natural forces.

Good Luck. The scene is Cuba. The old man, a widower, lives alone in a small shack near the harbor. He makes his living as a fisherman, but for 84 consecutive days he has failed to bring in a single fish. His helper, a young boy named Manolin, who is devoted to him and whom the old man loves, has been forced by his family to leave the unlucky old man and find work on a more successful boat. But the boy still brings him bait and food. Gnarled and bone weary, the old man can only doze and dream and hope that his luck will change. Before dawn on the 85th day, feeling somehow confident, the old man sets out again in his skiff. "Good luck, old man," says Manolin. "Good luck," answers the old man.

Far out in the Gulf Stream, 600 feet down, a big marlin takes the bait. Joining his ancient skill to his failing strength, the old man plays him with care and respect. When his adversary leaps from the water for the first time:

"The line rose slowly and steadily and then the surface of the ocean bulged ahead of the boat and the fish came out. He came out unendingly and water poured from his sides. He was bright in the sun and his head and back were dark purple and in the sun the stripes on his side showed wide and a light lavender. His sword was as long as a baseball bat and tapered like a rapier and he rose his full length from the water and then re-entered it. smoothly, like a diver and the old man saw the great scythe-blade of his tail go under and the line commenced to race out."

Bad Break. The old man fights the great fish for two days and nights, sustained by his courage, his respect for his foe, a few swallows of water, a few mouthfuls of raw fish. Triumphant at last, but nearly finished himself, he lashes the enormous dead fish to the side--it is two feet longer than the skiff--and heads for home. Then come the hijacking sharks. At first the old man kills them as they come in to attack his catch; then, his harpoon lost in one, his knife broken off in another, he gives in to the inevitable. What he brings in before dawn is a stripped skeleton, 18 feet long, which astonishes all who see it when day breaks. Wearily the old man asks himself what beat him out there. He answers himself aloud: "Nothing, I went out too far." But already he and the boy are planning to go out again.

The Old Man and the Sea has almost none of the old Hemingway truculence, the hard-guy sentimentality that sometimes gives even his most devoted admirers twinges of discomfort. As a story, it is clean and straight. Those who admire craftsmanship will be right in calling it a masterpiece. Its meaning? Critics will find as many as there are critical cults. But The Old Man is only better Hemingway, not fundamentally different. It is a poem of action, praising a brave man, a magnificent fish and the sea, with perhaps a new underlying reverence for the Creator of such wonders.

Was The Old Man meant to stand alone or is it part of some grander scheme? For many years the U.S. publishing world has buzzed with rumors of a "big" Hemingway novel which would dwarf anything he had previously written. Across the River and into the Trees (TIME, Sept. 11, 1950) was said to be an interim job. With publication last week in LIFE of The Old Man and the Sea, Hemingway was ready to throw some light on his work and hopes. Said he, in reply to a cable from TIME :

"I have written and re-written some 200,000 words of what eventually will be a long book about the sea. It is divided into four separate books any one of which may be published separately. When writing, I dislike talking about my work or my plans. This is not from boorishness but because I have found that it is bad for a writer to talk about what he is doing. But I can tell you that I hope to write novels and short stories as long as I live, and I would like to live for a long time."

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