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Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter has reported that the Academy had been considering the war correspondent and classic American novelist up to seven years before he was awarded the Nobel laureate for literature in 1954. In 1947 Swedish writer and Academy member Per Hallstrom criticised the author of such literary classics as For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Sun Also Rises for hurling readers straight into the story, a practice which had "little to do with the art of the novel." The Academy also noted that the prize money was certain to be inconsequential to a best-selling author like Hemingway. Hemingway was discussed again in 1950, but his Across the River and into the Trees, published that year, was found by the head of the 18-member academy to contain "a regretful relaxation both in terms of technique and human interest." Hemingway’s 1952 novel The Old Man and the Sea convinced members of the Academy he had earned his place alongside other laureates for "his mastery of the art of narrative." The novel traces the fortunes of the aging and unlucky Santiago, who triumphs in a one-man battle to land an enormous marlin only to lose the catch to sharks on the voyage home. — Reuters |
It
was the narrative of an old Cuban fisherman’s struggle against nature
that finally persuaded the Swedish Academy that Ernest Hemingway wasn’t
too rich or famous to be honored with a Nobel Prize.