Simple Dignity for ‘The Old Man’

The single finest reading of a literary classic I have come across was done by Charlton Heston. You should hear him read “The Old Man and the Sea.”

“Hemingway was such a joy because there was not one extra word; it was all so beautifully constructed,” Heston said by telephone from his house in Beverly Hills.

Heston recalled that he read “The Old Man and the Sea” for Caedmon about a dozen years ago in a small studio in Hollywood.

“I did not have to do any preparation because I knew the book so well,” he said.

Heston also recorded the Hemingway story “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.” So well does he know that story that in the interview he began reciting the opening paragraph verbatim. A friend of mine thinks that that reading is even better than “Old Man.”

As we were talking, Heston interjected, “Hold the phone a second while I go to my book case.”

Returning, he said, “I just measured the space that Hemingway’s work, and books about him, take up here. About eight feet. I’ve got most of his first editions.”

Any of them signed?

“No, but I came close,” Heston replied. “It’s kind of a sad story. Gary Cooper, as you may know, was close to Hemingway. One night in 1960, Coop was over at my house for dinner and he saw my first editions. He was amazed that they weren’t signed, and I explained that I had never actually had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Hemingway.

“Coop said, ‘Then you must join us in Ketchum in the fall and go grouse shooting. Bring the books and Ernest will sign them.’

“But you know the picture business. I suddenly had a contract to do ‘El Cid’ and off I went to Spain in the fall and never got to Idaho to hunt with Hemingway. And the next spring, of course, he was dead.”

I can’t imagine that Hemingway would not love Heston’s reading of “The Old Man and the Sea.” It is a strong voice, extremely self-assured and attuned to nuance. Most important, it is a voice of dignity for a character, Santiago, who personified simple dignity.

In reading “The Old Man and the Sea,” Heston gives Santiago’s voice just a slight Cuban accent. To my amazement, that accent never varies, a tribute to Heston’s devotion to his craft. And it is not so heavy an accent that it becomes intrusive.

According to Hemingway biographer Carlos Baker, the story of an old Cuban, the great marlin he catches and his battles with the sharks was told to Hemingway in 1935. When he finally began to set it down on paper nearly 16 years later, it came very easily.

He wrote it in eight months, in late 1950 and early 1951. Then he put it away for a year, worried that so short a book (36,000 words) would have trouble being accepted by a publisher and by readers.

But Baker writes that agent Leland Hayward flew down to Hemingway’s farm in Cuba in early 1952 and came up with the idea to get Life magazine to run “The Old Man and the Sea” in a single edition. Scribners, Hemingway’s publisher, also proved to be very receptive to publishing a short book, perhaps believing that it was his finest work, although that is debatable.

Life ran “The Old Man and the Sea” in September, 1952, and 5 million copies of the magazine were sold in 48 hours. When the book came out, it too was an instant best seller. For it, Hemingway won the 1952 Pulitzer Prize, and the book certainly contributed to his winning the Nobel Prize for literature in 1954.

I think Heston’s will stand as the greatest reading of Hemingway--and until now, it has been one of the only readings because the Hemingway estate guarded the rights so closely.

Now, thanks to the negotiating skills of Books on Tape, founder Duvall Y. Hecht, the Costa Mesa firm, has secured the rights to most of the rest of Hemingway and is putting out the books to be read.

Hecht is one of the innovators in the audio-books business, but he and I have a disagreement over the right voice for the Hemingway books. He had Wolfram Kandinsky read “The Sun Also Rises,” which has just been added to the Books on Tape catalogue.

I know Kandinsky has his fans, but I have to say I could not get through his reading of “The Sun Also Rises” because, to me, his voice is too nasal and lacks the masculine quality I think the Hemingway books demand. The voice becomes a distraction, which for me is the greatest danger in the readings of great literature.

Heston’s readings, on the other hand, are worth owning. “The Old Man and the Sea” is on two cassettes and sells for $15.95. “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” is on one cassette for $9.95.

They are available in book stores or you can get them from Caedmon if you place an order for $30 or more. Since the total price of “Old Man” and “Snows” falls a little short of that, I recommend filling out your order with “Ernest Hemingway Reads,” a rare recording of the author’s voice on one cassette for $9.95. I should note that, ironically for a man with such a macho persona, Hemingway sounds a bit squeaky at times on this recording.

WHERE TO ORDER TAPES:

Caedmon, 800-638-3030. By mail: J. B. Lippincott, Route 3, Box 20B, Hagerstown, Md. 21740. Add your state’s sales tax. No charge for shipping.