said. I was surprised by how much I liked it. Frustrating, yes, but because you feel the frustration of the main character. Agonizing, because, like you said, I started comparing my efforts against "the powers of the earth" with his efforts to pull life from nature itself, with nature's fury against him. Although you're right, that he has no spoils to show for his efforts, he does have the respect of every knowledgeable fisher-- only the ignorant would fail to see what he'd accomplished; and, because of that, for me, the ending was more positive than I'd expected. It's almost like, even if you "fail," your efforts to conquer prove your worthiness. Whether or not Hemingway intended this message, what I got out of it was that those who risk themselves are far more heroic than those who sit safely by.

But I think your other point about the book is well-taken: where does courage and genius end, and recklessness and foolishness begin? To measure this only by the material success of the efforts, seems to be a choice commensurately fickle as the adoration of the masses. Or, to quote La La Land: "I could be brave or just insane; we'll have to see!" But I've witnessed the train wreck of people my age throwing away everything they've worked for on a crazy idea, and bringing themselves and those around them into really stressful circumstances. (One guy quit his job to go prove something to certain institutional powers in this state, another guy closed his practice and used all his family's savings to create a museum to a guy I'd never heard of, etc.)

I imagine what Dave Ramsey might say to someone out on a material venture: start small, grow it carefully. That's wisdom. But, against that wisdom, what do we make of the person who throws every material possession on the wire, and wears out his body and soul, to achieve a dream? If you do it, and get rich, you're a hero; otherwise, you're a fool?

I like what you said, biographically, about his situation: he'd maybe caught his marlin, but it was being devoured on the way back. I'm reminded of what Meyer said once about her Twilight series (whether or not you like them, you can't deny that she had success that most writers can only dream of): that her publishers put huge stress on her to have Edward and Belle have premarital sex, and she refused, because that wasn't in Edward's character. My guess is that, if she'd caved, she'd have felt that an essential part of her story had been chewed out by sharks. (I read a book by a psychologist who said that one of the great appeals of that series for girls was that very choice she'd made, and stuck to.) I could see that, if a great writer like Hemingway was forced to sacrifice what he'd created to the publisher's choices, he could very much feel that he had nothing of value to prove what he'd accomplished; and that he'd feel that only other great writers who'd been what he'd been through could understand what he'd achieved.