Author: Ernest Hemingway
Publisher: Recorded Books
Rating: WARTY!
Read competently by Frank Muller.
This was Ernest Hemingway's last completed work of any note which was actually published before he died, and it won him a Nobel prize. God knows why. Hemingway made a career out of being macho and not only depicting the taunting, torture, and slaughter of comparatively defenseless wild animals, but also enjoying these activities himself. This is manhood by his insane definition.
The story is about the old man and the marlin, so I have no idea why it was titled the way it was. The Marlin is supposedly 1500 pounds and the old man, Santiago, whose weight is never specified, but which - and this is purely a guess mind you - was nowhere near 1500 pounds, hasn't caught a fish in 85 days. One morning he decides to catch this fish and without further ado, he adoes.
He goes out further from his fishing bay home in Cuba than is usual, because he's a manly man's man of men (even the young boy he's befriended is named Manolin) and for two days he holds the line because a good catch isn't always on time. He manages to haul the exhausted fish to the side of the boat where he ties it up and it's promptly eaten by sharks, leaving him with nothing but a skeleton and a crew cut for all his hairy moments.
That's it. That's the entire Nobel prize-winning novel. But at least it's manly. I mean seriously, how many other people could stand up and, with a straight face, tell the world that they, too, have written such a manly novel?
Thus Hemingway shot himself into the headlines.
