Further Reflections

D. H. Lawrence published The Escaped Cock in 1929, William Faulkner published “The Bear” in 1942, Hemingway The Old Man in 1952. All were writing post-theological religious literature in my view. 

I think Tolstoy’s “The Bear Hunt” (1872) looms in the background of both the Faulkner and the Hemingway story, the Gospel of Mark in the background of Part I of Lawrence’s story.

Of The Old Man, Hemingway said: “all the things that are in it do not show, but only are with you after you have read it” and “It’s as though I had gotten finally what I had been working for all my life.”

Of the three, I think The Old Man is the most perfectly realized. It seems flawless to me.