TIMEQUAKE

kurt Vonnegut

Ernest Hemingway in 1952 published in Life magazine a long short story called The Old Man
and the Sea. It was about a Cuban fisherman who hadn’t caught anything for eighty-four days.
The Cuban hooked an enormous marlin. He killed it and lashed it alongside his little boat. Before
he could get it to shore, though, sharks bit off all the meat on the skeleton.
I was living in Barnstable Village on Cape Cod when the story appeared. I asked a
neighboring commercial fisherman what he thought of it. He said the hero was an idiot. He
should have hacked off the best chunks of meat and put them in the bottom of the boat, and left
the rest of the carcass for the sharks.