Old Man and the Sea

Summary: "I couldn't write even a short report on the book without paying tribute to Hemingway's prose. It is as different from Melville's prose in 'Moby Dick' as anything could be and still remain English. There is no attempt in it to express the inexpressible by inventing new words and turns of phrase; instead Hemingway uses the oldest and shortest words, the simplest constructions, but gives them a new value--as if English... were a strange language that he had studied or invented for himself and was trying to write in its original purity." [read more]