I read The Old Man and the Sea in April and always hear Hemingway's prose in the voice of Wolfram Kandinsky. "On the Blue Water" contains just a paragraph about the old man and the sea.Hemingway wrote more than 30 stories for Esquire. These included detailed analyses of marlin behavior that were dry even for angling aficionados. But one told the true story of a man out fishing alone who caught an immense marlin that was destroyed by sharks. Decades later, it evolved into The Old Man and the Sea. The story—simple, direct, no dreaming of lions—may be better than the book.
A beautiful piece of writing. That said, I found the exuberance about killing elephants and giants marlins deeply saddening. We've moved on a bit in the past 90 years. But then, perhaps it took the extermination (or local extermination) of these species for us to learn to move on.
I agree the fishsplaining is not very persuasive. Shooting an Elephant is similarly disturbing but at least the narrator feels bad about it.If the fish is hooked in the bony part of the mouth I am sure the hook hurts him no more than the harness hurts the angler.