Hemingway's grandson Seán Hemingway reports that he discovered it in Hemingway's papers in the Ernest Hemingway Collection at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum. It's a typed manuscript (not sure if I'm using the right terminology here as, at least in its literal sense, I'd think a manuscript would be hand-written?) with notes written in Hemingway's hand.
It will be included as a short companion piece in a new edition of The Old Man and the Sea. The parallels with that famous work are apparent. For me, it also brought to mind To Have and Have Not. But it seems autobiographical in some way; the protagonist's name is "Ernest".
Here is one brief passage, to give a sense of its flavor.
We were very popular along the waterfront because we butchered all our fish and gave them away, and when we came in past the Morro Castle and up the channel toward the San Francisco piers with a marlin flag up we could see the crowd starting to run for the docks. The fish was worth from eight to twelve cents a pound that year to a fisherman and twice that in the market. The day we came in with five flags, the police had to charge the crowd with clubs. It was ugly and bad. But that was an ugly and bad year ashore.
“The goddam police running off our regular clients and getting all the fish,” Mr. Josie said. “To hell with you,” he told a policeman who was reaching down for a ten-pound piece of marlin. “I never saw your ugly face before. What’s your name?”
The policeman gave him his name.
“Is he in the compromiso book, Cap?”
“Nope.”
The compromiso book was where we wrote down the names of the people to whom we had promised fish.
“Write him down in the compromiso book for next week for a small piece, Cap,” Mr. Josie said. “Now, policeman, you go the hell away from here and club somebody who isn’t a friend of ours. I seen enough damn police in my life. Go on. Take the club and the pistol both and get off the dock unless you’re a dock police.”
Memory about the "Old Man and the Sea"; when I was about 11, I saw a copy of it in our town library. I wanted to check it out because I thought the cover picture was cool. The librarian said, "Since it's from the adult section, one of ypur parents will have to sign it out for you." My mom did, saying, "You'll hate it." I did. Maybe I should re-read it as an adult, I might have a different opinion of it.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I didn't love it, either. I thought it was a hardy perennial on high school reading lists, but I polled my children this evening and none of them had read it. They all were assigned "The Great Gatsby" to cover that era of writers. They all liked Gatsby.
ReplyDeleteF. Scott? Papa is revolving in his grave. I used to serve on a committee that gave scholarships to high schoolers who were outstanding in various fields, ours being literature. Their assigned reading tended to be short novels, like the Old Man and the Sea. The Stranger (Camus) was popular, and April Morning by Howard Fast. Gatsby would have been long for the curriculum. I read Oliver Twist and Chesterton's biography in H.S. English, but I guess there isn't time for that sort of thing anymore.
DeleteWe must have reached the point where there is more posthumous Hemingway in print than he published while he was alive.
Never read any Hemingway as an assignment in high school. Was insufficiently impressed by the Old Man and the Sea that I ever read any later, either. We did read the Great Gatsby in school, as did my kids. We read Steinbeck's "The Pearl", which was a depressing doggie downer. Fortunately I read some other Steinbeck novels later which I liked much better. We didn't do Oliver Twist but did read Great Expectation as an assignment. And of course every kid in Nebraska, past or present, read Willa Cather's "My Antonia". I think I have read all her other novels also.
DeleteWe read "The Pearl" in 7th grade, and then "The Grapes of Wrath" in 10th grade. I didn't like either one. I told Sr. Ann Patrice how much I disliked "The Grapes of Wrath" and got a dressing down in front of the whole class for exhibiting lack of leadership. After all that, I don't have any Steinbeck pennants hanging on my bedroom wall.
DeleteGolly, Jim, there are only three American classics, and you didn't care for one of them. At least when my #3 son the lawyer chose an author not to care for, it was a foreigner, not a national treasure.
DeleteTom - I don't remember tripping over any Steinbeck books lying on the floor when my kids were in high school. I think he's fallen off the reading lists, at least around here. Maybe he has joined Faulkner in the pantheon of great authors that nobody reads?
DeleteThey've all read Huck Finn. They've all read To Kill a Mockingbird. Not sure about "The Catcher In The Rye". That was on my 10th grade list, too. I liked it.
They all read "The Outsiders". That one had not been on my radar previously.
Most of them had to read "The Odyssey" but they didn't like it.
If any of them had to read any Shakespeare, I never saw any evidence of it. I'll ask them that tonight.
Going to brand myself as a lowbrow, my favorite Steinbecks were Cannery Row and Travels With Charlie. Read The Red Pony when I was about ten. My grandma had it. I asked to read it, and she said there were some bad words in it and some people took God's name in vain. But I could read it as long as I didn't think it was okay for me to do that.
DeleteAs I remember, the pony died, the end.
The other two classics I had in mind were Moby Dick and Huckleberry Finn. I guess nobody reads Moby Dick anymore. I waited until I was 50 and that wasn't a moment too soon. I would have hated it at 21. Huck stands up, though, and drives certain people crazy.
DeleteMaybe Mockingbird deserves to be in there, too. Not so sure about Salinger; he may have been of a time and a place. The high schoolers who read him and came before our panel were not enthusiastic. I think Chares Butkowski scored higher among their cohort.
And now Jean will give me a well merited grade of D.
I was weird, I actually kind of liked Moby Dick. My sister the English teacher says one from the past that still stands up is Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter". It especially resonates with the girls.
DeleteMy 12 year old granddaughter is into young adult fiction dealing with WWII and people who went against the Nazis.