The publishers called ["The Old Man and the Sea"] a classic … with a hastiness of epithet that suggests the speed of modern times; in more backward ages it took three or four centuries to make a classic. There is one sense, however, in which the publishers' claim is justified. "The Old Man and the Sea" is classical in spirit if we think of "classical" as a term applied to those works in all fields that accept limitations of space, subject and treatment while trying to achieve faultlessness within the limitations: Greek temples as opposed to Gothic Cathedrals. In its own terms the book is as nearly faultless as any short novel of our times.

Its length of less than thirty thousand words would seem to place it with earlier long stories like "The Undefeated" and "Francis Macomber" and at first glance it seems to be simpler than either...