The Old Man and the Sea (1951) by Ernest Hemingway

Lots of people say this whole story is symbolic. The used copy I read was marked up with constant indicators of Christ allegory by some Brianna Unger character who apparently had possession of the copy prior to me and marked her name inside the cover.

I didn’t have that reading of the story at all, despite suggestions of the contrary literally staring me in the face on nearly every other page. To my reading, it’s exactly what it appears to be: An old, spent man trying to catch a giant marlin.

I don’t think the story needs anything more to have value. Santiago is not a Christ-like figure. He’s not suffering for the sins of others. He’s not sacrificing himself for anything other than the catch. I was inspired by that by itself and I was preoccupied during my reading with why the story—so simple and tersely written in Hemingway’s trademark style—was so affecting.

It’s a story about human perseverance, determination, and endurance in pursuit of a goal, often in competition with nature itself, a common theme in Hemingway’s work. I can’t help but to scoff at the top review on Goodreads, which reads “just throw the effing fish back,” or some nonsense. The context of the titular Old Man being the one pursuing the catch is important. He’s not trying to feed his family; his family is dead and gone. He’s not trying to make money or garner fame. Throughout his extensive internal monologue—which is sufficiently constructed and interesting enough to carry a narrative that would otherwise have been dreadfully boring—his thoughts are dominated by the task at hand, the wonderful setting in which he finds himself (the Sea), his love for fish, the moon, and everything around him. The Old Man is in constant pain, his will is being tested, and he’s facing death upon failure. Yet he chooses to persevere, not because he has to, or for a reward, but because he’s a fisherman. This is what he does, what he feels he was born to be, and what he enjoys. His wife dead and his only friend a village boy. This is all he has left. And he’s okay with that. In fact, he enjoys it. There's no existential crisis here, just a man who knows his purpose and revels in it. He’s content.

It’s easy to feel the Old Man’s struggle against the fish empathetically and apply our own fears of death and failure to the Old Man like we would do while shouting at somebody in a horror movie who’s fallen down when attempting to evade a murderer. But to do so would be failing to note that the Old Man probably expects to die on the open sea one day very soon. His days are all but spent. He has lived his life and feels he’s lived it well. He’s satisfied. His focus when battling wills with the marlin is so complete that the only thing he wishes for outside of the minutiae of the catch itself is that the boy was there to see the epic struggle, to assist him, and presumably to learn more about their trade in doing so.

I think it’s just a simple novel about a man at the end of his days trying to catch a fish, trying to do what he feels he’s meant to do to the best of his ability, and recognizing and embracing the fact that he will one day die doing it. But it doesn’t lack depth because of it. I think it's inspiring as-is.

It seems to have come into vogue to rail against Hemingway’s work as simplistic, masculine to a fault, or even misogynistic. I suppose I can understand the first two criticisms. But I can’t help but enjoy almost everything he’s written as it agrees so well with my personal tastes in terms of prose, theme, and subject matter.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) by Kurt Vonnegut

I'm not sure this book is so much about war as it is going with the flow and finding the beauty in your fate, inexorable as it is. Billy Pilgrim embodies this philosophy; he rolls with the punches, liking (or at least not disliking) and wanting to please everyone he comes across, even those who don't deserve such treatment. Billy stoically absorbs the disturbing things he's witnessed until they fester within him and lead to the decay of his mental health. Or perhaps he really was abducted by aliens and traveling through time. Vonnegut leaves it open to our interpretation and humorless, skeptical bore that I am, I choose the more concrete explanation.

Since I'm the personification of a cardboard box, Slaughterhouse-Five is not really my style. Vonnegut's whimsical and zany work is popular with the irony-obsessed hipster crowd of the 21st century, and it's no wonder considering Slaughterhouse-Five is the Wes Anderson version of the anti-war novel. There's a lot of oddballery in these pages despite it being set during the most devastating war in the history of human civilization. The incongruence of its simultaneous focus on zany sci-fi humor and the horrors of total war along with Slaughterhouse-Five's constant shifting of time period and setting could have been a pretty jarring, difficult read if penned by a more uptight writer (cough Pynchon cough), yet this is one of the easier reads I've had this year. I was surprised to realize I hadn't noticed how disjointed the narrative was until after I finished and thought back on the book to write this review. It's pretty impressive.

Classics don't get much more likable or approachable than this. Not really to my taste but appreciable nonetheless.

⭐⭐⭐

Revelation Space (2000) by Alastair Reynolds

Woeful storytelling, glacial pacing, and absent characterization plague a novel otherwise full of intriguing, fresh science fiction ideas.

There were a number of out-of-the-blue character developments that left me scratching my head to the point of wondering if I'd actually skipped a chapter. Sylveste somehow falls in love with and marries his captor, yet we never hear a single smitten thought in his head or see a sole romantic action expressed. It just sort of... Happens. Similarly, Khouri is coerced into a course of action with the potential reward of being reunited with her long lost husband, and throughout the entire rest of the book she thinks about their history, her feelings for him, and how rewarding it will be to be reunited precisely zero times.

These characters almost wholly lack depth, and thus they lack any agency with which to impact the story. They are shuttled along from event to event by Reynolds as if they're cardboard cutouts being placed on stage by his hands. Because of this I found the book dreadfully bland despite some legitimately interesting worldbuilding such as the melding plague, strong transhumanist themes (of which I've been a fan for as long as I can remember), and the simple, satisfying, enticing solution Reynolds provides for the Fermi Paradox.

Suitable for hard science fiction fans, but passable for those interested in even a basic standard of storytelling or mildly interesting characters.

⭐⭐