Hemingway as a young man
I became interested in how Hemingway portrayed Cuba, where he had lived for many years, and decided to read his three books set there. The first I found repulsive, the second tiresome, and the third a masterpiece.
TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT (1937)
This early novel is set during the Great Depression and contrasts the lives of the poor and the rich. The protagonist is Harry Morgan, a fishing boat captain based out of Key West. A publisher's note warns readers that it "reflects the language and attitudes of that era." It contains many racial slurs.
Part 1 - The book begins in Havana when Morgan is approached by some Cubans who want to hire him to transport illegal immigrants to the mainland. "They were good-looking young fellows, wore good clothes...and looked like they had plenty of money." They are unhappy when he turns them down. As they leave, the police arrive and a shoot-out occurs.
Harry escapes by a back entrance and meets a client who is waiting to go fishing. He bungles a catch after ignoring Harry's advice and also loses Harry's expensive rod and reel. He promises to pay the money he owes Harry for 2 weeks of unsuccessful fishing but skips out the next day without paying.
Later Harry is approached by man named Sing who organizes the smuggling of Chinese immigrants to Florida. It's the same kind of deal that Harry turned down at the start of the book, but now he's broke. Sing makes it clear he's going to double-cross the immigrants by telling Harry he can drop them off wherever he wants. Harry accepts payment, kills Sing, and sets the immigrants ashore somewhere on the Cuban coast.
Part 2 - During a failed effort to smuggle booze into Florida, Harry has been shot in the arm. He's managed to get away and is dumping the booze when he's spotted by some interfering big-shots in another fishing boat. They want to take Harry and his boat into custody but the captain of their boat refuses to get involved.
Part 3 - The previous two sections were first published as short stories. The final section was added in an attempt to cobble together a novel. It takes up over half of the book and begins in Key West where Harry lives with his wife, Marie, and their three girls. Due to the gunshot wound mentioned in the previous section, Harry has lost an arm, and his boat has been seized by US Customs. He has no cash, no education, and a family with three kids to feed. When approached by some revolutionary Cubans who want to be taken to Cuba, he accepts the job. To do this he borrows a boat from a friend, puts up his house as collateral, and goes home to get a Tommy-gun.A number of rich, unpleasant tourists are thrust into the story to round out the theme.
After robbing a bank, the Cubans who chartered Harry come to the dock to make their getaway, and one of them shoots the man acting as Harry's mate, Albert. After they outrun some speedboats chasing them, Harry helps toss Albert's body overboard and uses the opportunity to kick the robbers' Tommy-gun overboard. After gaining the confidence of one of them, also the youngest and only decent one among them, he kills them all but is himself shot and killed.
ISLANDS IN THE STREAM (1951)
That this book was published posthumously indicates Hemingway was not completely satisfied with it, and wanted to tinker with it some more before releasing it for publication. It recycles many of the author's familiar tropes with much talk about food, drink, love, fishing, and of course death. The first and longest section is set on Bimini in the Bahamas. It is also where Hemingway lived in 1935-37, and where he worked on To Have and To Have Not.
The protagonist is Thomas Hudson, a "good painter" who's been "successful in almost every way except in his married life." Like Hemingway he has three sons: "Young Tom" by his first wife, and David and Andrew by his second. He thinks highly of his first wife and wonders why he ever left her, but has little respect for his second wife. The three boys arrive together to spend five weeks with him.
A key event happens when the boys go "goggle-fishing" and are endangered by a hammerhead shark. Hudson shoots at it several times but misses, then a hired hand named Eddy opens up with a submachine gun and kills it. The hammerhead was, of course, the biggest Hudson had ever seen.
Another key event occurs when they are fishing in Hudson's boat, and David, the middle boy, hooks a swordfish weighing over 1000 lbs. The fight to land it goes on for 4 hours and 30 pages, leaving Davy's feet and hands bloody. Hudson remarks that if Davy lands the fish, "he'll have something inside him for all of his life and it will make everything else easier." But the line breaks just as the fish is brought up to the boat. Eddy jumps in with a gaff but fails to secure it. Later Davy says, "In the worst parts, when I was the tiredest, I couldn't tell which was him and which was me...then I began to love him more than anything on earth."
Not long after the boys leave, Hudson learns that the two youngest boys and their mother have been killed in a car crash.
Cuba, the second section, finds Hudson in Havana. World War II has begun, and he has been at sea using his cabin cruiser to hunt for u-boats. Now he's ashore and distracting himself with his cats and getting drunk with a whore named Honest Lil at the Floridita (which now has a life-sized bronze statue of Hemingway there). Unexpectedly his ex-wife shows up. She's an actress on her way to entertain troops. They declare their love for each other, and he kisses her "hard and well." She asks where his bitch of a wife is, then tells him that she herself is in love with another man. They drive back to his home for a bit of sex and eventually she asks about the subject they have been carefully avoiding: their son Tom.
"You don't want to talk about him."
"No."
"Why? I think it's better."
"He looks too much like you."
"That isn't it," she said. "Tell me. Is he dead?"
"Sure."
They are interrupted by a call from the Navy. Hudson has been called in to work.
The third section, At Sea, differs greatly from the first two parts. The story, which has been rather dull so far, becomes becomes brisk and exciting as Hudson chases the crew of a u-boat along the coast of Cuba.
Similarities Between the Two Novels
Both are tripartite books with Morgan and Hudson being familiar Hemingway types, macho,
hard-drinking, and obsessed with death. Both have three
children, and both die from a gunshot wound. Both have a hired hand named Eddy, who is a rummy. Both inflict upon the reader long meandering passages about unlikeable characters.
THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA (1952)
The novella appeared after the disastrous Across the River and Into the Trees (1951). Hemingway immediately set to work on The Old Man and the Sea hoping to regain his reputation, and the work was an immediate success. It won him a Pulitzer Prize in 1953 and helped him earn the Nobel in 1954. It is a slim but magnificent work endowed with a mythic quality. The fisherman makes me think of Odysseus.
This photo was included in the edition of The Old Man and the Sea that I read.
