first reading Archives - The River 95.3

Lonnie's Fun Fact for Thursday March 4, 2021. It was on this day in 1952 that Ernest Hemingway completed his short novel The Old Man and the Sea. According to History dot com, he wrote his publisher the same day, saying he had finished the book and that it was the best writing he had ever done. The critics agreed: The book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 and became one of his bestselling works. The novella was first published in Life magazine. The story is an allegory referring to Hemingway's own struggles to preserve his art in the face of fame and attention. Hemingway had become a cult figure whose four marriages and adventures in big-game hunting and fishing were widely reported in the press. But despite his fame, he had not written a major work in nearly a decade before he wrote The Old Man and the Sea. The book turned out to be his last significant work of fiction before he took his own life in 1961. I read this again a few years when one of my boys was reading it as a school literature project. It's a good read. Listen to the podcast here; theriver953.com/podcast/fun-fact-march-4-2021/ ... See MoreSee Less