MASSCULT AND MIDCULT
597
"The great DiMaggio is himself again. I think of Dick Sisler
and those great drives in the old park. . . . The Yankees cannot
lose."
"But I fear the Indians of Cleveland."
"Have faith in the Yankees, my son. Think of the great
DiMaggio."
And this by the man who practically invented realistic dialogue.
It is depressing to compare this story with
The Undefeated,
a bullfighting story Hemingway wrote in the 'twenties when,
as he would say, he was knocking them out of the park. Both
have the same theme: an old-timer, scorned as a has-been,
gets one last chance; he loses (the fish
is
eaten by sharks, the
bullfighter
is
gored) but his defeat is a moral victory, for he
has shown that his will and courage are still intact. The con–
trast begins with the opening paragraphs:
Manuel Garcia climbed the stairs to Don Miguel Retana's
office. He set down his suitcase and knocked on the door. There
was no answer. Manuel, standing in the hallway, felt there was
some one in the room. He felt it through the door.
He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf
Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a
fish. In the first forty days a boy had been with him. But after
forty days without a fish the boy's parents had told him that the
old man was now definitely and finally
salao,
which is the worst
form of unlucky, and the boy had gone at their orders in another
boat which caught three good fish the first week. It made the boy
sad to see the old man come in each day with his skiff empty and
he always went down to help
him
carry either the coiled lines or
the gaff and the harpoon and the sail that was furled around the
mast. The
sail
was patched with flour sacks and, furled, it looked
like the
flag
of permanent defeat.
The contrast continues-disciplined, businesslike understatement
v. the drone of the pastiche parable, wordy and sentimental
