Books to Read Poster No 35

 

Apologies for the horribly blurred image. It is a picture of a marlin, so obviously the book is The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway.

It is thankfully short, although to my mind, not quite short enough.

An old man takes an unconscionably long time to catch a  big fish and by the time he gets back to harbour the sharks have eaten it all. 

As a side note I hadn't previously read any Hemingway and my only knowledge of his style came from the parodies the late great and much missed Alan Coren used to pen in Punch. I was therefore dreading having to wade through 95 pages of very short repetitive sentences. Perhaps because I was forewarned I didn't find the style as tedious as I expected - or indeed half as bad as the Coren parodies would have you believe. The story certainly palled about 75% of the way through but that was because it was stretched out far beyond the idea behind it warranted, and not because of any infelicities of style. 

I suppose it says a lot about endurance, about finding meaning in the attempt to do something rather than in its success or failure, even raises question of the definition of success and failure themselves.

 I'm glad I've read it, and I found it quite compellingly written, until I got bored. Frankly at one point I'd have been glad to see the old man get eaten by the sharks if it would bring the story to a close. A major  downside was the very graphic description of the violence perpetrated by the old man on variou other creatures of the sea, narrated with  a relsh that I found a bit stomach churning; and it's those passages that put me off reading anything else by Hemingway which otherwise I might ave been tempted to try. Sweeping generalisation coming up - I think he's a writer who wrote for male readers and is more likely to b enjoyed by them than female ones.

And yes, I should be far too busy to be blogging this morning given that we were supposed to be heading south at midday, but the midday ferry is canceled. We are rebooked on the five o' clock and are crossing our fingers very tightly that we make it to Wick, and the Scottish Opera Highlights performance, in time. Because if we don't I shall be Very Cross.