An interesting article, thanks for linking to it, Bookworm_Girl.
Personally, I'm not a fisherman, but I did not find the details boring. And certainly didn't question their authenticity!
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Originally Posted by issybird
I have to think we need to give Hemingway (who loved deep sea fishing and spent a lot of time in Cuba and Key West) the credit for knowing the means and methods of deep sea fishing by rich and poor in the Caribbean in the early 50s. He was there; he didn't just make it up. And he was very specific about how Santiago fished that marlin which adds to the verisimilitude.
And, the story is all tension, all struggle. A specious objection to how the protagonist fished doesn't negate that. And, seriously? I'm not saying that a Nobel is a guarantee of good writing, but Hemingway is one of the major prose stylists of the 20th century. Not liking his style is a different matter.
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Yes, this is a story of tension and struggle. And love, of course. It was interesting to me, re-reading it while the story was still fairly fresh in my mind. I found it just as compelling and detailed as the first time, as I discovered new things I'd missed (or forgotten) from the first time.
Part of the genius of this story is its brevity. There's no wasted words, no need to belabour a point. Hemingway tells with only a few words that the boy and the old man have a deep relationship without having to beat us over the head with it. The details around the battle with the marlin, and the sharks, is only enough to build the fabric of the struggle.
This was one of my top 10 reads of 2012, and will be one of my top 10 again this year. I'm really glad we chose it, as I doubt I would have revisited it else.