63. Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea," with Mark Cirino

Hello, thank you for joining us today On the Dogwatch, where we consider the natural world and the things that help us experience it. On this podcast, it is like we are on a ship’s watch together, staring out at the ocean, thinking about the world as it goes by, and going wherever curiosity takes us. I am Michael Canfield, it is currently 1952 at the end of the Second Dog Watch, and this is Episode 63.

Is The Old Man and the Sea a great adventure book? Why is it so revered? Does it belong in the Dogwatch Library?

Today we have the great fortune to talk with Mark Cirino to help us answer these questions. Mark is the host of One True Podcast, along with Michael VonCanon, which is a show that considers Hemingway’s great sentences and his work in general. Mark is a Professor of English, a prolific Hemingway scholar, and his most recent book is One True Sentence: Writers & Readers on Hemingway’s Art.

In our conversation, we discuss The Old Man and the Sea and how that story fits into a canon of adventure, and whether it belongs in the “Dogwatch Library,” our own list of great books for and about adventure that is modeled after Theodore Roosevelt’s “Pigskin Library.” 

As we consider Santiago’s journey, we head all over the map, and touch on the “hero’s journey,” Ishmael and Moby Dick, The Red Badge of Courage, how adventure narratives are both external and internal, the idea that ‘the farther we go out the farther we go in’ in adventure narratives, and how Hemingway’s book can help us think about success and failure. At the end of our conversation we both choose our own “One True Sentences” from Hemingway’s work. Mark recommends further reading ideas from Hemingway including the short story “Big Two-Hearted River,” which he calls ‘Hemingway’s masterpiece,’ and the book Green Hills of Africa.

If you are not a listener already, you make sure you check out One True Podcast and Mark and Michael’s book, One True Sentence: Writers & Readers on Hemingway’s Art. They provide a readily accessible masterclass in Hemingway and how to access his work. They are the English professors you never had.

Transcript

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[Music] Hello, thank you for joining us today on The Dog Watch, where we consider the natural world and the things that help us experience it. On this podcast is like we are on a ship's watch together, staring out at the ocean, thinking about the world as it goes by, and going wherever curiosity takes us. I'm Michael Canfield. It is currently 1952 at the end of the second dog watch, and this is episode 63. Is the old man in the sea a great adventure book? Why is it so revered? Does it belong in the dog watch library? Today we have the great fortune to talk with Mark Jorino to help us answer these questions. Mark is the host of One True Podcast, along with Michael von Canon, which is a show that considers Hemingway's great sentences and his work in general. Mark is a professor of English, a prolific Hemingway scholar, and his most recent book is One True Sentence, writers and readers on Hemingway's art. In our conversation, we discuss the old man in the sea and how that story fits into a canon of adventure, and whether it belongs in the dog watch library, our own list of great books for and about adventure that is modeled after theatre Roosevelt's Pig Skin Library. As we consider Santiago's journey, we head all over the map and touch on the hero's journey, Ishmael and Moby Dick, the red badge of courage, how adventure narratives are both internal and external. The idea that the farther we go out, the farther we go in, in adventure narratives, and how Hemingway's book can help us think about success and failure. At the end of our conversation, we both choose our own One True Sentences from Hemingway's work. Mark also recommends further reading ideas from Hemingway, including the short story, Big Too Harded River, which he calls Hemingway's Masterpiece, and the book Green Hills of Africa. If you are not a listener already, make sure you check out One True Podcast, and Mark and Michael's book One True Sentence. They provide a readily accessible Masterclass in Hemingway and how to access his work. They are the English professors you never had. With no further forward introduction, preamble or prologue, here is Mark Chirino on Hemingway and the Old Man and the Sea. Good morning, Mark. Thanks so much for joining us today on The Dog Watch. Michael, it's a pleasure to be here. Well, I've asked you to come on the podcast to talk about Hemingway and specifically the Old Man and the Sea. And I wonder, you know, if to start out, you could just briefly introduce yourself and your podcast because that's how I learned about you and I'm a fan of One True Podcast, talking about what that is and kind of who you are just in general. Sure. Well, I teach American Literature at the University of Evansville, which is in Southern Indiana, and I've devoted a lot of my scholarship to Ernest Hemingway and my colleague, Michael von Cannon, who teaches at Florida Gulf Coast University. And I've been working with him for about five years. I've started One True Podcast where we interview people about all various aspects of Hemingway's life, work, and world. So I've learned a lot about Hemingway and American Literature and ideas. So that has been occupying a lot of my time and energy and it's been tremendously rewarding. I appreciate you allowing me to introduce myself, but I really have been enjoying your podcast too, except I'm really curious to hear you talk more about the notion of dog watch. So can you tell me, sorry to flip this around on you just momentarily, but how does the title come about? What's the inspiration? What's the idea behind a dog watch? Yeah, so that's a rich question, and I've never been asked that on the podcast before. And it's a good one. I think it came about in a few different ways. And I think it has a couple different elements. One, as you know, I'm a biologist. I'm interested in observation. And my background is in evolutionary biology, insects, et cetera. But I got really interested in observation, note taking, and notebooks of scientists and naturalists, including I did a book on theater. Roosevelt's notebooks. And so really interested in that process of looking at the world, how people do that and record it and make sense of the world. I'm also interested in, like, I got interested in watches and I also love dogs. And I started, and I also love sort of maritime things, et cetera. And it turns out there's this concept of a dog watch, which on a ship, there's a process of watchkeeping that developed in, you know, over the, basically, over the development of, you know, boats, basically, that if you're on a boat, especially on the ocean or a big body of water, you have to have someone watching out for rocks and, you know, land and other things. So there's a system of what we call watchkeeping that developed, I think, in the 17th, 18th centuries, into a more formal thing. And now, especially in the British Navy, but then into the other Navy, there's different watches generally set up in a four-hour interval, starting with the first watch, which is eight to midnight. So a group of people are on watch. And then it changes 12 to 4 am. Is the middle watch or guts watch, then, you know, eight, four to eight a.m. Morning watch, four-noon watch, afternoon watch, 12 to four. And then they're the two dog watches. So dog watch, one is four to six p.m. and six to eight is the second. So I thought it was a really interesting idea to say, hey, what if we thought about, like, sitting out on a dog watch in the afternoon, looking out at the ocean and just talking about stuff? And that's, I kind of, I don't know if it's a metaphor or what, but that's kind of the idea. And interestingly, my most recent guest was from Chelsea Klopp company, Tony Lachapel, and the Chelsea Klopp company had, they made a complication in these clocks, called ship spell clocks, that chime the watches. So the watches are kept by a series of bells. So, for example, at the beginning of the first watch, it's, or the last dog watch, ends with eight bells. And, you know, that's where the phrase eight bells and all is well. And then the watch changes. And then every half hour, there's a bell that's chimed. So in that case, at eight thirty p.m. there's one bell on the first watch at nine two bells. And it goes up, um, bells up to eight bells when the watch changes. So I'm super, you know, sort of interested in those clocks, because they chime instead of like eight bells for eight o'clock, they go through the, the ships watch bells. So anyway, that's kind of the idea. And, you know, I've gone through some different ways of describing it, you know, from dogs to watches, to everything in between. But basically, I think the better one is, you know, where we go, where curiosity takes us. So we're sitting out on a dog watch and finding things that are interesting and create curiosity. So that's the best way I can describe it. Well, that is absolutely fascinating. I'm really glad I asked that question because it kind of encompasses everything that you're trying to do. And your explanation actually makes me think of two things. The first thing is there's an incredible chapter in Herman Melville's "Moby Dick" where Ishmael talks about having to take his position at the top of the mast head. So he goes out there and that's literally what his job is. He climbs up, it looks for whales. And so he's doing essentially the job where in the 21st century we'd have sensors or radar or other advanced mechanism. But here he had to do it. And the entire crew of the Peequad was reliant on Ishmael's power of attention. And as Ishmael, and perhaps is kind of what you're alluding to, is kind of what you're alluding to, Michael. Ishmael is saying, "Well, I'm kind of like a dreamy guy and the ocean and the boat is rocking and I'm all the way up there all by myself at one with nature who can focus on whales?" I'm trying to think of the problems of the universe. And so he's like, "I was the worst. I was a terrible watchman." And so this whole thing is chapter 35 of the mast head. Ishmael is really going out there and just ruminating using nature to kind of have a metaphysical investigation. And that's kind of, that's one thing that the dog watch really reminds me of. The second thing unfortunately is a lot less lofty, but it reminds me of my first job that I had in Bergen County, maybe it's not my first job, an early job that I had in Bergen County, New Jersey, where the head of the Recreation Center, he said, "Hey Mark, do you want a job?" And I was like, "I guess what?" And he said, "You have to watch the tennis courts." And I said, "What do you mean? Like in the event that the tennis courts get up and run away, I have to notify the authorities of some kind, you know, if a meteor hits them, what, why am I watching them?" But he said, "I had to watch the tennis courts and sure enough, every Saturday and Sunday morning I'd get up, sit on a bench and I watched the tennis courts." And if perhaps there was a couple guys playing tennis, they might say, "Hey kid, you know, was the ball in or out?" And I would just, whoever looked the angriest, I would give him the, you know, I wasn't looking to get involved. But I kind of, I hadn't read Moby Dick yet, but that was sort of my teenage version of Moby Dick. In isolation from the rest of the world, sitting on a bench looking at green pavement in the middle of a park. Yeah. And I think one of the things that I find, especially, you know, talking to the naturalists and scientists about how they've done that, or thinking about it myself, I think there's a lot of value in it, and there's a lot of value in it also with doing it with somebody else, right? If you're sitting out and when you're watching, you both observe the world, but also interact and think about the world in a very different way than when you're just, you know, going about your task, you have your task positive network going in your brain, right? So I don't know. I appreciate you saying that. And I gosh, I feel like being compared to doing what, you know, something happens in Melville is pretty, is pretty high. Well, you're somewhere on the spectrum between Melville and me and the tennis courts. I'll take it anywhere on that spectrum. Yeah, that sounds good. But I would also add, and I'm not saying this as like a Hemingway fan who's trying to crowbar, Hemingway into every conversation, but in the book that you were interested in is the old man in the sea. So what is that entire plot of the book about? It's Santiago, all by himself, engaged in one singular task, which would be fine, except that he has, first of all, physical fatigue. He's old and he has, you know, he's not well. And he's exhausted because it's a heroic feat. But on the other hand, there's also his mind, which is thinking about the past, which is thinking about other things. And so in many ways, it's a drama of concentration versus distraction, which is exactly like what you're talking about with the dog watch in the sense of Ishmael on the top of the mast. It's like concentration. Do I focus on what I'm supposed to or distraction, which really means do I concentrate on something else? Yeah, it's funny that you bring that up because I think that's one of the things that really appeals to me about that, about the text. And it also interesting because I've recently listened, gone back and listened to Moby Dick, which also will be one of the volumes in the dog watch library, which we'll talk about, you know, this sort of accumulating library of books for and about adventure. I listened to it, right? And I found myself especially hearing it read as opposed to reading it. I found really like amazing because I felt like Hemingway was, I mean, I'm sorry, Melville was telling me a story. And the taxonomy chapters, right, which are sort of sometimes maligned, right, by people saying, oh my god, he just goes through. But those struck me differently. I mean, I kind of liked them the first time, but I read it 25 years ago or something. But the idea of him really thinking deeply about these animals and organisms. And it's, you know, it all kind of fits in that same idea that there's space to do that for him, right? And there's space to really consider it is part of what I think also an old man in the sea is like there's space. Even though he's tired, he's out there. And what else is there when you put yourself in that position of sort of being on watch, so to speak? And I would also add, and as a biologist, I'm not surprised that you really respond to the cytology chapter of it. But if you think about it, you know, so Melville is publishing Moabidic in 1851. And in 1851, perhaps much like the 21st century or maybe not as much, but we can debate that some other time. In 1851, wasn't America also taxonomizing human beings? Oh, yeah. So people were, there was a hierarchy in society just as there's a hierarchy of animals and just as there's a hierarchy of whales. Just as on the Pee Quad, there are so many different roles and so many different ethnicities. So it's really natural to rank whales and to categorize them just as it is with other organisms, including people. So Melville, it seems like Melville is making a larger, more powerful point with even the chapters that can seem inaccessible and quite odd. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, again, just to that point, from a biological perspective, they were obviously we were ranking people and the whole notion of how things came to be the way they are naturally was getting ready to be upended by Darwin, who obviously, you know, Darwin and Wallace, 1858, when they did the paper with the Linnean Society in the 1859 with the origin of species, you know, that was all percolating too. So people looking at the natural world and saying, what's this all about is fascinating and trying to classify it. And then also as you say, with humans too, obviously with the, you know, US Civil War and all that stuff. And there's just a, as you said, a whole bunch of kind of making sense and watching the world and trying to make sense of it, which is fascinating. Yeah. It's actually Darwin. I wish I knew more about Darwin than I do, but it is always fascinating to see how literature adopts Darwinian thought and dramatizes it. One really minor scene, it doesn't even take up a page, but it's in Stephen Cranes, the Red Badge of Courage, which is 1895, which would have been right in the wake of Darwinian thought. And the protagonist Henry Fleming is trying to figure out whether to, whether he's going to run or whether he's not, is he going to have the courage to fight or will he run away. And this becomes like the talking about exactly what we've been talking about this whole time was an internal drama versus an external drama. So the protagonist Henry Fleming, he picks up a pine cone and he throws it at the squirrel at a squirrel that he sees in the woods. And the squirrel scampers away and he goes, you see that? And he ran away because that's how he was made. He's smart. He's like, he's instinct to get out. If something's coming, you don't run towards it, you run away. Why can't I just do that? And so he's debating, am I going against the survival instinct? Am I going against the process of evolution by charging into battle as to going away from hell? It's a fair argument that a young soldier would be having with himself. It's fascinating to think about where that fits and how it shows up. And, you know, in Hemingway 2 obviously was in that wake as well in some fundamental way. So, well, let's turn to the old man in the sea. And again, just out of fairness for this slightly wacky idea I have of, you know, the theater Roosevelt had what he called the pigskin library where he when he was going on his safari to Africa, his sister wanted to give him a present. And so she had the books that he wanted to take bound in pigskin. And then they were fitted in this sort of beautiful metal case. And I thought, hey, it would be fun to come up with a list of books that are sort of foreign about adventure that if one were setting out on a safari or, you know, even just a road trip, like what books would we come up with? And especially because I was listening to your podcast and think, you know what? I think Hemingway certainly fits in there. And I think the old man in the sea would be a good one. So, I guess the question is, is this a good book for that? And what would be the argument for it? And so, I wonder if, you know, we've kind of jumped right in. And I wonder if I don't know if this is a fair question for someone in your position. But some of our listeners will have pretty good familiarity with Hemingway and who he was. And some will be like, I think I read something about in high school. And then also the old man in the sea kind of be like, oh yeah, I've heard of it. I've thought about, you know, some people may have read it recently. But is there a way for you to encapsulate sort of quickly just, you know, what are the details of Hemingway and Old Man in the sea just to kind of orient people in case they're it's fall. Sure. Sure. No, no, no, that's a totally fair question. And speaking of Darwin, there's no evolutionary advantage to knowing a lot about Ernest Hemingway. Trust me. So, I'm happy to brush people up. Great. Yeah, so Hemingway, so the old man in the sea comes out in 1952 and in 1952, Hemingway would have been 53 when Hemingway was born in 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois. When we think about Hemingway's greatness or as a transcendent modernist talent, we're really thinking about five years in the 1920s. When from 1925 to 1929, he published two fantastic novels, The Sun also Rises and Affairable to Arms. And two wonderful books of short stories in our time and men without women. And so in those five years, his reputation was really made. And in the 30s, he had a little bit of a of a wayward time up and down some good short stories. And then in 1940, he wrote for whom the belt holes, which is of course spectacularly successful. And then again, he had about a decade of inactivity. And then he wrote the Old Man in the sea. And so the Old Man in the Sea is really not just a great novella, but also redemptive. It's like a comeback novel. And with the Old Man in the Sea, he won the Pulitzer Prize. And then a couple of years later, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature, which is the highest award that a writer could achieve. The only other thing I would say about the Old Man in the sea in terms of background is it's an idea that Hemingway had as early as the 1930s where he heard about a Cuban fisherman who was struggling with a fish for a very long time for days. And Hemingway said, "I want to write about that adventure, that solo adventure, what the man does and what he thinks about." And so the Old Man in the Sea has become like a fable or a parable about a man struggling with nature or a man on a impossible task. And so the kind of this question, and I know you brought this up in our other correspondence, this idea of the hero's journey. And I wonder if you could speak a little bit about that in the sense that coming to it as a non-expert, just a civilian consumer of Hemingway. It's a story about an old guy who goes out and has an adventure and then returns. And in many ways, I think that's the basic arc of the hero's journey. And so I wonder if you could kind of frame that for us, because I think that's part of what we're trying to consider overall is like, how do we go out and it doesn't have to be far or it can be in our own minds? And so we can go on these adventures and are changed, etc. So how does the Old Man in the Sea enact that, where does it fit in the sort of nature of people writing about heroes, journeys, etc. And again, here is journeys like a thing, right? Like it's a concept, etc. So maybe you can kind of brush us up on that. Sure. No, the hero's journey is simply saying that there seems to be a traditional arc that protagonists go through in religion and myth and literature and narrative. And then there seems to be a typical trajectory. So one thing to mention about Santiago and the Old Man in the Sea, that your listeners can sort of universalize and apply to something that a story that comes to their mind is the notion that the farther we go out is also the farther that we go in. So that you're taking an external journey as a metaphor for a journey that you're taking within. The farther you go, the farther you travel, the harder road you take, what you're really doing is exploring your own consciousness. And so at the very beginning of the Old Man in the Sea, Santiago says, well, so we're meeting Santiago during a spell of incredible, bad luck, where he has not caught a fish for 84 days. And he says, essentially, forgive me for paraphrasing. He says, well, I could either continue to fish these waters or I can go out where people have never been before. And of course, that's what a hero does. So go out. You don't take the normal path. You go where you've never been before. If you go where you've never been before physically, you also go where you've never been before metaphysically. So where you, if you go out beyond where everybody else goes out, you encounter greater danger, but you also encounter greater rewards. And you also encounter greater insight into yourself and into the human condition. So Santiago's journey, yes, it's will he land the Marlin or will he not land the Marlin, but it's also a drama of introspection and metaphysics where he's trying to learn things about himself and he's trying to explore what's going on in his own cognitive activity. Yeah, so what can you, first of all, that's a great explanation of the hero's journey, right? In the sense of like, I haven't heard it describe exactly that way. And I think it's helpful to think about going further in. You know, it seems like Santiago was just like not necessarily saying, hey, I want to go out there so that I can get deep in. But what was that about for him? Like, where did he go deep in in his own mind, et cetera? Like, what, what, how would you describe that? Because when you're reading it, he's kind of want, you know, he's wandering things happen, et cetera. He's thinking about stuff. But how would you sort of encapsulate the, the inward journey? Well, because we're seeing him and normally I think when you encounter a hero's journey, I'm saying I think because I might listen to myself say this statement and immediately disagree with it. But I think when we counter her heroes, they're not at the end of their life. They're at the big, I mean, they can be. But normally they're at the beginning so that what they learn, they can apply to the rest of their life or they can bring back to their community and share. So Santiago's adventure really amounts to a last gasp effort because he'll literally starve. He's not a commercial fisherman, which means he doesn't have advanced equipment. He's getting shut out by all the other competitors. So he's like, I have to go out where I really shouldn't go because, and he does. He lands the Marlin and now he's faced with the unbelievable chore of having to bring it back. But when we get to Santiago at this part of his life, what we're really dealing with is memory. So his autobiographical memory is kicking in as he is struggling with this. And so he has this recurrent dream of the lion. Yeah, I was going to ask about that. Right. Which is very mysterious. But that could also invite, you know, you were talking about Roosevelt's safari. But it's really like why? And he's like, why? Why is that coming up in my subconscious? Yeah, one of the things just to kind of focus in on that for a second. I was trying to find those spots because I was thinking about it last night before I fell asleep. And I was like, I wanted to go back to those places because I remember the emotion of reading it and listening to it was like, this guy was pretty cool when he was younger. He had a lot of experiences and when those things came up, and I don't know if that was sort of intended or other people's experiences. But I'm like, wow, he really, and often you find like with older people, you see them as one thing. And then you learn about what they've done, where they've been. And that introspection or those the richness is actually much deeper than you would think. And I noticed that about him. And I don't know how Hemingway is casting Santiago. Right? Is that a purposeful thing? Like he's this Cuban fisherman. But he's not just he didn't just grow up there and fish his whole life or whatever. Like he had other experiences. So he, that's a great question because I think our expectations might be this is a really simple Cuban fisherman. All he's trying to do is catch a fish so he can eat and then go to bed. And even that's might even be what Santiago would just how he would describe himself. Yeah. However, Hemingway knows that a human being is complex. And so we have this one another memory, specific memory. And there aren't many specific memories in the novella about an arm wrestling competition that he has with someone from Sian Fuegos, which lasts days and becomes like a legend. It's almost like a mythical feat. And that's something that he connects. Maybe he's connecting the struggle with the Marlin, with the struggle in this arm wrestling competition. But it's very helpful to the reader that he gives us a very specific memory, very specific memory. Yeah. And Michael, I would actually add one other thing, just because we haven't, we haven't talked about it. And that's the young friend of Santiago. Manoline or Mrs. Sian. Yes, Manoline. So it's a beautiful touch because they're really good friends. And if we're going to talk about the hero journey in any other hero journey, Santiago would be like the mentor character, sort of the old samurai who's kind of showing the ways of the world to the young hero, right? Except in this case, Manoline's parents don't want him to fish with Santiago because Santiago is unlucky. He's not making a lot of money. So Manoline, against his own will in fairness to the kid, sells out and hires on with one of the commercial fishing operations. So Santiago is by himself. And so part of this solo journey that we read for 85% of the novel, he is struggling with thoughts of like, I wish the boy was with me. You know, it could be so much easier if two people, a young man trying to help me with this. So that's another thing that he struggles with is like, what is it? The hero's journey alone, necessarily, do you have to be alone or what's the role that other people have when you're trying to reach a grail? Right. That's a fantastic idea and so present in the novel because it's almost as if Manoline is trying to also take care of the hero and take care of him and try to give him some food. And whatever, whereas the hero is pretty down and there is clarity like we talked about it that he had experiences earlier. But in many of our sort of romanticized stories, then, you know, the hero becomes a person of great strength, right? I think of, you know, I'm really interested in the count of Monte Cristo, right? Like such a great story and it's such a different person and protagonist, right? In the sense that like, you know, the count ends up being the champion and having the money and all that stuff, whereas Santiago is actually just kind of a really old guy who may or may not live because he's starving on a boat. And he's not going to like bring back the big fish. So it's a very different tenor there. But well, Hemingway is asking the question, what is victory and what is defeat? One of his famous aphorisms from this novel, and this would be one of the ten most famous things that Hemingway ever wrote. If I can be bombastic on your podcast, yeah, absolutely. He says a man can be destroyed but not defeated. And that really is, you know, that's found its way on coffee mugs and in the mouths of college basketball coaches, you know. And what it's really saying is so let's say Santiago does die at the end. Well, can he gain insight or can his landing of the fish, even if he doesn't survive to enjoy it? Does that count as victory? Or do you see it as tragedy? Is victory just meaning survival? Or do different people have different definitions of these things? And maybe our challenges to see how Hemingway would not delineate winning and losing. In 1933, he published a book of short stories called Winner Take Nothing. Which just sounds a little pessimistic even by his standards. One of the things that really struck me about the book, I think partly because, you know, a conversation I was having around the time that I was reading or listening to it, was this question of like what he brings back. And, you know, one of the things that happens with people who go to the field or go out on adventures like we all do, what do we bring back from them? How much of it is it's the cliché thing about can you take photographs? Do you bring souvenirs? Like what do those actually mean? Are they useful? And can you actually bring those experiences back at all? And I was really struck by the fact that he had this experience with this giant Marlon, et cetera. And he brings just sort of back the bones and, you know, the carcass. And so I don't know if Hemingway was making commentary on that, but I think part of what you're saying is like the victory, what was the victory? And I think that's a question, you know, it's a major philosophical question in life. Is it the journey or whatever. But it does seem like that it really does get at that. And I didn't remember how effective him, you know, kind of bringing back this carcass is like people were looking at it. Yeah, it's the thing, but it's not. It's not. It's not like he had it. Yeah, they don't get they don't get they don't understand his brand of victory. If it is a victory, they don't understand it or they don't understand his brand of tragedy. They just the people at the end are just obtuse. Yeah, they don't understand it. And so whatever he went through, victory, tragedy, both was internal. And yeah, well, I mean, how would theodore Roosevelt have answered that? You know, did he bring back, you know, heads and pellets and those kinds of things? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, just massive amounts, right? That it was trophies, et cetera. And I think I can't speak for TR, right? Like I would never try. But he would write and one of the things I've found very fascinating about him was like he would write like he in the field. A couple of his major books, right? The African game trails, et cetera. And the book from the Amazon was serialized and he would send back these chapters to script. Right? So he was in the process of having the quote unquote adventure. He was writing them down and narrating them himself, which is kind of a whole other fascinating wrinkle. But again, I think he was trying to save these things and prove something with the artifacts that he brought back, whether they're, you know, hanging on the wall at Sagamore, right? There's a ton of it. But I'm not sure that achieves that because, you know, the most like looking into his notebooks, et cetera, you get closer to his experience, right? Of like what was that like? What was going on? Who was he with? And those were the things that actually are the actual experience. And if there are victories or tragedies, those are the things that he experienced. And you don't really get that from the objects that remain. And so yeah, it's a question. That's a great point. So, Hemingway in the early 30s went on an African safari just directly inspired by Theodore Roosevelt. Yeah. I guess if you were a little kid in especially a boy in the early 20th century, Teddy Roosevelt would have been the iconic American hero. And so he spent his, you know, traveling, writing and nature. And that was Hemingway. Those were Hemingway's pillars. And so he goes on this safari. And he wrote a book about it called Green Hills of Africa. And I think if you're trying to build your library, that might be also a very appropriate Hemingway book called Green Hills of Africa came out in 1935 where he kind of details this experience of trying to, you know, trying to get this animal or that animal and then mounted and bring it home and ship it home and all this stuff that in the 21st century may not appeal to every reader. And I think you bring up a great point is that the writing is probably the real trophy, right? Because that investigates the memory and the essence of the experience that you had. Yeah, I think writing it down and those things are an aspect that do get closer in some way to the actual experience. I guess if we're talking about books for adventure, quote, unquote, or books to get us out, et cetera, how do we think about the old man in the sea as far as does it inspire us to have that experience doesn't make us really think about what it means to go out and have a journey. Do you feel like it does or is it is it doing different things in a literary sense that that's really projecting what we what I want onto the book? No, well, firstly, you're allowed to project what you want on the book, but you you know, you paid for it. You get to ask whatever questions, but let's take your question. The spirit of your question, so he goes out, Santiago goes out, I don't want to spoil everything about the novel, but you know, so he goes out past where it's safe to go or reasonable to go he goes way. And by doing that, he lands a Marlin that is too big to handle, right? It's too big to safely handle and then return back and then be able to get the value for it by reselling it, which is why you a fisherman goes fishing in the first place. So he goes out, gets essentially too big of a reward that kind of overwhelms him. It may or may not have killed him. And when I say that I'm not being discreet, it's unclear. Hemingway scholars are arguing to the day about what physically has gone has Santiago has gone through. So anyway, he comes back and he's not able to use the Marlin. He's not able to sell it because sharks have devoured it on the way, on the way home. So he succeeded in that he landed a Marlin that was like superhuman for one old man to have done it by himself. But he failed in that he couldn't make use of it. He couldn't resell it. And so if you read that and the way that applies to your question is that if you read it and go, well, he failed because he didn't resell it. Well, that's valid. But if you also say, well, he succeeded because he proved that he could do this very difficult challenge. That's also fine. So Hemingway is inviting us to think about the ambiguity of journeys and adventures and rewards. You know, the going back to something we talked about a little bit earlier, like the Holy Grail Adventure. So going back to Moby Dick. So Moby Dick is about A-hab trying to land the white whale. It's a very similar bark to the old man in the sea. And so Melville had four choices. A-hab could have killed Moby Dick and then been happy at the end of the novel. He could have killed Moby Dick and been unhappy. Or he could have failed to kill Moby Dick and still somehow managed to be happy. So you see what I'm saying? There's ambiguity. Getting the reward doesn't have to necessarily lead to joy. Just as failing doesn't necessarily equate to a failure or a tragedy. So life and experience is a lot more grey than these black and white terms we might have thought about. And if Hemingway reminds us about some of these ambiguities, I don't think we should feel frustrated. I think we should feel grateful that we're reminded that life has these kind of complexities which we should embrace. Yeah, and I think one of the things that I think, you know, Roosevelt would agree with. And I think I see in this book is, you know, not to quote the man in the arena speech, right? Which I won't quote. But I think there is this through line of going out there, getting out, being in the world, and putting yourself out there, right? That he, Santiago, goes out and decides to go way out. And it's not about risk. It's not about putting his life at risk. It's so much, right? It's not like he's just daring because he has a death wish. But it's, you know, having experience. And I think what you said too about it's not necessarily whether it's a positive result or a negative result that there's a richness even in how we think about those things over time. Well, I want to make sure that we get to the one true sentence. And can you just describe what that is? Because that's so central to your podcast. And then do you have one? And I certainly have one as well. So one true sentence comes from Hemingway's idea in his posthumous memoir, which is called a movable feast. And he says, he remembers being a young writer in Paris. And he says describing what I guess equates to writer's block. And he says, I would always just tell myself, do not worry. You've done it before. You can do it again. All you have to do is write one true sentence, write the true sentence that you know. So finally, I would write one true sentence and then go on from there. And before I go on, I wanted to just ask you and your listeners to think about that. If you're ever stuck, maybe it doesn't even just have to be about writing. You could be about anything in life. We just do that first step. And then the second step. And then suddenly you've demystified the process, right? And it goes a little bit easier. So anyway, that's how Hemingway used to coach himself about writing when he would run into a problem. So what Michael von Kanon and I have done with one true podcast is we've asked our guests their choice for Hemingway's one true sentence, which means you get to choose one sentence from all of Hemingway's writing, his journalism, his letters, his fiction, his name. His fiction, his nonfiction, everything and explain why to you it is a true sentence. And by true, I might mean it's controversial or moving or Hemingway ask or whatever, however you define a true sentence, why so. And then we end up spending the episode going on from there as Hemingway says, and we've had Elizabeth Strout, Tim O'Brien. Ken Burns. Yes, Sherman Alexi. We've had very many writers, especially writers to come on and talk about their one true sentence. And about the process of writing and how one true sentence applies to their own craft. And yes, you mentioned Ken Burns. So this the first chunk of these one true sentence episodes were collected in a book called One True Sentence, writers and readers on Hemingway's art, which was written by me and Michael von Kanon, and Ken Burns and Linnovic wrote the introduction to that. So with all of that, Michael can't feel what is your one true sentence and why? Oh boy. Well, I'm a fear given some of the things we referenced earlier that I'm going to come off as terribly cliched, but no fear. It's on the first page of Old Man in the Sea. Oh, great. And I feel like in some ways it doesn't make sense or the value of it to me is really about two sentences, which I think is so great about Hemingway. You've talked on your podcast a lot about the, you know, what he says and what he doesn't say, what the characters say, what they don't say. But I was struggling to decide which one was the one true sentence. But I will, I think the one is this. It's on the first page of the Old Man in the Sea. And he says he's talking about the Old Man in the boat. And he says the sale was patched with flower sacks and furled. It looked like the flag of permanent defeat. Yes. I just why that one. Well, I think partly because there's a little bit of, you know, that sort of, it's not negativity, but the sort of pessimism, et cetera, around like how you describe this old thing, right? Because age is in their time is so present, the eternity of time. And also because later, you know, just in the next paragraph, the end of the next paragraph, you know, this is the sort of other sentence. Everything that he's talking about the Old Man says everything about him was old except his eyes. And they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated. And so how, you know, you've got this boat, which I just love the idea of a junky old boat with flower sacks and sit, you know, the sale is just so used up. And, you know, obviously, if he just said defeat, it's not great, but permanent defeat is like, wow, that to me, that's the best two words in the book, not because it brings some kind of positive vibes. It's just an incredible juxtaposition of two words that brings something forward like I can get that sale now. But then, you know, the pessimism is buffered by yes, everything's old, everything gets old, but it doesn't have to be bad. Kind of like, you know, like his eyes were still there and were not defeated yet. And I think the color of the sea to just brings such a, you know, such a beautiful vision of what his eyes were. And what was inside of him both now and previously. So this question of time there, it's not so much about whether you're undefeated or not, whether you're a man in the arena. That's not what it speaks to me for, but more about just how time works and how it it shows up on things. So anyway, that's kind of, that's what I've got. That is a wonderful explanation. It also reminds me of the aphorism we were talking about a man can be destroyed, but not defeated. Yeah. So it's those two words really open up that entire novel. There's a quote from Faulkner where he says they might have killed us, but they ain't whooped us yet. And it, right, there's a difference between being defeated and being destroyed. Yeah. You know, there's, it's a one is physical and one is metaphysical. One is objective and one is subjective. And of course, in literature, we care a lot more about the subjective. So yeah, that's, those are great, great points. Yeah, I think too, you know, as one goes through life, et cetera, and sees people age and thinks about that. I mean, obviously one of the great questions of people of humanity is like what happens when we die. What, what's the impact of us, et cetera. And I think that question of permanent defeat versus not is a really good question, because like you said, you can perish, but not be defeated. And I think that to me, like, is a really interesting question to think about sort of as far as how one lives life. So and I'm sure like I haven't read a lot of Hemingway scholarship, but I'm sure people, you know, it's one of the first page of the book. So I'm sure volumes have been written. People thought about it a lot. That those those words. So. Yeah, those are definitely important ideas when we had Sean Hemingway, who's Hemingway grandson on the show, he picked a man can be destroyed and not defeated as his one true sentence. Only because it's so central to Hemingways, you know, Hemingway writes doesn't really write about these naturally triumphant characters. It's more about what does a person do when faced with the inevitability of death with the potential of death with crisis. And so a lot of times Hemingway gets the reputation or a stereotype of being gloomy and fatalistic and you know some of that is true, but you have to look for the transcendence within that. Yeah. And not to continue going back to things that were saying earlier, but when when I mentioned the red badge of courage, you know Henry Fleming is a northern soldier, but Stephen Crane sets it during a defeat. And he is having a personal victory and it's set during a military defeat for the northern army. And so this is all this is this is consistent with a modern way of looking at literature and life, which is the juxtaposition as you put it between the object of in the subject. Yeah, it's amazing. And do you have one today like anything that strikes you as far as a sentence? I mean, I'm sure you know, you have, I don't know if you have a hierarchy of true sentences, but something from the old man in the sea or something that strikes you. The one inst I do have lots of one true sentences and I want to I think the one I wanted to talk about just based on what we've just been saying so it just kind of occurs to me to use this as a one true sentence and it's not from the old man to see, but you mentioned something really important that I think would be interesting for listeners to consider. And that is Hemingway is defining treat as a writer is what he called the iceberg principle, right, right, which is that for everything, you know, you say one eighth and seven eighths is below the surface. And so if you're ever reading Hemingway work and you're like, huh, not much is going on. What's what's going what's happening? Why is, you know, why does this seem so flat? What Hemingway is hoping for is that there's this, So, just like human beings have conscious and subconscious thoughts, there is a work of literature has a text and a subtext, and in Hemingway, or at least according to his strategy, the text, the subtext is way more powerful and prominent than what is actually written on the page. And so, when I think about a one-true sentence, a really good example of this for me comes from the Sun also rises, which is in 1926 novel, takes place in France and Spain, and in this particular moment, Jake Barnes and his friends are in Pamplona at the festival of Sun for Meen where there is the running of the bulls and the bull fights and all of this, and in the course of the Sun also rises, one person dies, and he's not even an important character, he's a side character, somebody who is just a tourist going to the festival who got killed by a bull during the running of the bulls. And Jake's friend is told of this incident, and he's like the guy goes, "Hey, so, you know, what happened today?" and goes, "Well, someone was killed on the plaza today." And what Hemingway writes to end this chapter is,"Was there?" question mark. And the reason I'm mentioning that as a true sentence, and as an example of the iceberg theory is, how would you say, "Was there?" He doesn't say, "Was there?""Gasped, bill, in horror?" The way some writers would say, "Or he doesn't say, "Was there?" He said, "Filing his nails flippantly." Which are, you know, the two extremes, he just says, "Was there?" So what Hemingway is asking you is, "How do you hear it?" How do you, how, if you had to put a verb and an adverb to that sentence, like, if you read the great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald does, over and over and over, to every, every quote has a verb and an adverb. So how would you do it? And what Hemingway is doing, he's trusting the reader. That if you are invested, you would say, "How would I say the sentence?" Or, "How would I say?""How would I react to that? Would I be numb? Would I be appalled?" So Hemingway is asking for that collaboration, that contribution from the reader, and that, to me, is Hemingway-esque. Absolutely, it's a, it's an amazing short. Like, again, being able to do that in such a small amount, and I think also, like, even with the novella, Old Man in the Sea, it's not long. He doesn't, this isn't an epic, it's just, maybe an epic, aren't long. I don't know, I know that's like a thing, but it's not five volumes, or it's not the kind of money crystal that's like a thousand pages long, and he's able to generate that. And I think also, one of the reasons I like what he does is that he does those things. He asks something of you, and even, and that's what an adventure does. That's what a journey does. It's the whole, again, the whole circle here is that that's what going out does of you, like you said, it causes you to go internal too. And that was there, asks that. It's amazing. Yeah, I would also say, you know, in real life, if you think about conversations that you have over lunch or coffee with a friend, how much of human communication is spoken versus how much of it is intuited or suggested? If you were actually reading the transcripts of a conversation that you had with your friends, would I be able to understand everything that was going on? Or is there, are there things beneath the surface shared memories, emotions, secrets, things that you don't want to tell, that you don't want to say out loud? Interesting idea is, how would, how do we tell stories that we don't like to tell? How do we tell stories that aren't easy to tell? How does that change the way you tell a story if you're not the hero at the end of the story? If it involves a painful or embarrassing memory, do we use the iceberg theory more? If someone, if I asked you, Michael, how is your day and you had a great day, you might be more effusive and give me more details. If you had a bad day, you might give me a sort of a one sentence brush off. And I would have to use my imagination. Oh, did he have, you know, did he get yelled at? It's funny how people do that on the opposite as well, like when people don't feel like they want to explain their accomplishments or feel embarrassed about them or something positive that happened too. I don't know anybody like that, Michael. Really?[laughter] Wonder about that. Are you shy to talk about your accomplishments? I don't know, I guess. I don't know if you're from the Midwest, are you from the Midwest? No. Okay. Where are you? I'm from New Jersey. New Jersey. Yeah, that's different. I'm from the Midwest, I'm from Michigan. So yes, I guess, you know, different sensibilities. Yeah. In New Jersey, if we don't have accomplishments, we invent them. That's right, I was wondering. Yeah, it's funny that you asked me that because I'm sitting here in Minnesota, you're also well in corn and soy country or whatever it is. Michigan is really Hemingway country. We should have read a Hemingway Michigan story together. It's funny because I don't know if I mentioned this in some of our correspondence, but when I was small, we would go up to Walloon Lake where his well, you know, Cabin is where there's a University of Michigan has their alumni camp on the other side of Lake. And so my parents were at Lums and so we would go there when I was a young kid. And I'd heard about that, et cetera, and so I'd, but I've kind of put that together that that was some of his real terrain. And that was a lot of our terrain when we were young, we spent lots of time in Northern Michigan. Well, if I have the opportunity to give a recommended reading list to your audience, one that I would add is a short story by Hemingway called Big Too Harded River, which is actually a really good companion piece to the old man in the sea. It's at the beginning of his career when the old man in the sea was at the end of his career, takes place in Michigan instead of Cuba. But the idea is quite similar. It's a boy going through the Michigan woods by himself fishing and exploring what is going on in his own mind or avoiding exploring what is going on in his own mind. And it becomes an internal drama just as the physical terrain and activity is being described. It's wonderful story. It's probably Hemingway's masterpiece. It's a story that even readers who don't love Hemingway tend to like. That's great. I mean, I have the short stories in the book, but I haven't read it yet because it's come up on your podcast, etc. So it's obviously the old man in the sea, but we have Big Too Harded River and Green Hills of Africa, which could be good follow-ups for us in understanding Hemingway in his work. Well, Mark, I could continue for another hour or two with questions, etc. It's absolute pleasure to talk to you and really appreciate you sharing so much with me and our listeners. So I wanted to thank you for joining us today on the dog watch and now having a good metaphorical symbolic articulation of what that is. Thank you for helping us do that and just really appreciate your time. So thanks for joining us today on the dog watch. It was an honor to be on, Michael, and I really do enjoy your podcast. Thanks for having me. Thanks again to Mark for sharing his Hemingway knowledge with us and taking us on an adventure of our own. The old man in the sea has now been launched in our dog watch library, which you can find on our website as a set of books that are for and about adventure, modeled after Theatre Roosevelt's Pigskin Library. Please check out our new website at www.dogwatchcompany.com, where we have plenty of interesting items to stimulate and supply your next adventure. And go to one true podcast to hear more from Mark and Michael von Cannon and pick up a copy of their book One True Sentence and Add it to your own library. Until our next shift, this is Michael Canfield with you on the dog watch.[Music][MUSIC PLAYING]