Teaching The Oldman and the Sea, the Hemingway classic, I am again left at a loss for thoughts. Re-reading a classic is an exciting venture as it affords discoveries of a completely unintended kind. A remet Hamlet or reseen portrait of 'My Last Duchess' has manifold minds to launch. Truer will be a remagined Blakian Tiger or a Coleridgean Xanadu. The trip beside the Oldman through the Hemingwayesque imagination waylays the process of common reading. Rereading the Oldman, my reading was at sea. Is not reading a kind of fishing ? But what makes us really old? Are we not old too? Is not a seasoned reader an old man? Old enough to go after a bait big enough to worry once hooked? Hasn't Faulkner spoken 'magnificent failures' which are his masterpieces? How about the magnificent failure of the Oldman called his Marlin ? The sense of effort which is gargantuan and the final take home after the three day long task which is a David like remnant of what once was a
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