Warning: ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ Contains Fishing
4th March 2022
Read it.
Western Society has reached a level of absurdity beyond comprehension. A University in Scotland has put a warning label on Ernest Hemingway’s great short novel, The Old Man and the Sea.
March 4th, 2022 at 11:22
I’ve been fascinated for years about how some literature is deemed mandatory for high school or college, and why it becomes a nearly universal mandate.
When I was very young, teachers raved about O. Henry. Mention his name now and you’ll face nothing but ridicule.
As a teen, Hemingway was the gold standard of writing. “It’s good, but it ain’t Hemingway!” By the time I got to college, any mention of Hemingway was met with absolute contempt.
For reasons I’ve never understood, “The Great Gatsby” and “Lord of the Flies” – two books I absolutely hate – remain super popular with professors. No real stranded group of humans has ever behaved like LOTF, so you would think that at some point this inconsistency (and the bad writing) would condemn this book to the musty shelves of books that should have remained trees. Gatsby’s TL;DR is “Rich people are pretty f***ed up.” Well, yeah, every tabloid cashes in on that fact.
“Old Man and the Sea” is probably my favorite “assigned reading” books. I know of a lot of men who liked it. However, every woman that has ever mentioned reading it tells me that she hates it and doesn’t understand why she had to read about fishing. Somebody should waste some academic money on a study of that gender bias. I’d read that.