In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Reading Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea: Glossary and Commentary by Bickford Sylvester, Larry Grimes, and Peter L. Hays
  • Mark Ott
Reading Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea: Glossary and Commentary. By Bickford Sylvester, Larry Grimes, and Peter L. Hays. Kent, OH: Kent State UP, 2018. 136 pp. Paperback $34.95.

When Ernest Hemingway wrote to art critic Bernard Berenson about The Old Man and the Sea in 1952, he claimed: "There isn't any symbolyism [misspelled]. The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish. The sharks are all sharks no better and no worse. All the symbolism that people say is shit. What goes beyond is what you see beyond when you know" (SL 780). With this statement Hemingway is, of course, being disingenuous. There is a deep, intentional structure to the narrative.

Yet he is, perhaps more significantly, commenting about how readers engage a text, and his disavowal of the intentional deployment of "symbolic" language speaks more to how he was engaging with New Criticism and the emerging cadre of scholars—led by Philip Young—that were closely reading his texts and interpreting the identifiable themes, images, and patterns. With his instincts on marketing his books, generating sales, and curating his image in the mass media, Hemingway astutely knew that he should identify with the common man and not the scholars. Nothing complex or complicated here, Hemingway seems to assert. Hemingway was never one to ask of a book, poem, or painting, "What does it mean?" Rather his vocabulary for literary criticism is was often limited to whether it was a "good" or "true" book. That [End Page 147] rudimentary vocabulary of criticism would serve him well with interviewers, friends, and hangers-on, but, alas, would not discourage scholars from finding "symbols" and other rich material in The Old Man and the Sea.

To assist readers in that task of symbol hunting, we have Reading Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea: Glossary and Commentary by Bickford Sylvester, Larry Grimes, and Peter L. Hays, the most recent publication from Kent State University Press's excellent "Reading Hemingway" series edited by Mark Cirino. The previous volumes on A Farewell to Arms (by Robert Lewis and Michael Roos), Men Without Women (by Joseph Flora), The Sun Also Rises (by H.R. Stoneback), Across the River and Into the Trees (by Mark Cirino), and To Have and Have Not (by Kirk Curnutt) have proven to be invaluable resources for scholars. Cirino's series provides a thorough overview of previous and current scholarship as well as fresh interpretations of familiar texts. This volume contains all the strengths of the previous books in the series, while providing new material and resources for scholars, teachers, and students. It is a welcome addition to Hemingway scholarship.

For Hemingway scholars, the introduction is a valuable refresher of the groundbreaking work of an earlier generation. The publication of this book is a bittersweet event, as the initial manuscript was the long-time work of Bickford Sylvester, who passed away in 2014 before the project could be completed. Professors Grimes and Hays refined and added to the existing manuscript, making this important book all the stronger due to the collaboration of these established scholars. Grimes's previous interest in Hemingway's religiosity enhances the discussion of Santiago as Christ, and Hays's long career exploring The Sun Also Rises and other texts deepens the critical conversation. They draw from the work of Carlos Baker, Scott Donaldson, Bernard Oldsey, Michael Reynolds, Linda Wagner-Martin, as well as Leo Gurko, Richard Hovey, John Killinger and Robert O. Stephens. Susan Beegel's essential work is also duly noted; her essay "A Guide to Marine Life in Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea" in Resources for American Literary Study (vol. 30, 2006, pp. 236-315) is mandatory reading for understanding the range and depth of Hemingway's knowledge of the natural world. The index is also an invaluable resource for exploring the work of previous scholars and understanding The Old Man and the Sea in even greater...

pdf