Dear Mr. Hemingway

Dear Mr. Hemingway,

I hope this letters finds you well!

I am a big big fan. Maybe one of your biggest fans in the whole wide world.

I really love your writing style, your characterizations and short descriptive sentences. I am happy to say I was also a journalist but I did not get to participate in a devastating war like yourself and cover its brutal atrocities that are conducted under blatant meaningless nationalist heroics – thank God for that. War is stupid and so are the men who advocate it.

I really love how you write the world in which Nick Adams dwells. One day I hope to write my own book with my own character!

Anyway … I have a simple request … can you please change the ending of The Old Man And The Sea?

I felt it was rather bleak. In fact I am not the only one who feels this way. Everyone I know thinks likewise.

Why would you do such a thing to a hardworking fisherman like Santiago?

If you are not willing to change the ending I will start a petition calling for the publishers of your work to alter the ending.

I know a lot of people, like myself, who are also big big fans, and will go to extreme lengths to give good ol’ Santiago the ending he deserves.

Your one and only fan …

P.S. Apologies for the harsh final two lines but as an entitled and deserving fan I really want the best from you.

Helmut Winey Mach Fann
1955

The Photograph is from The Earl Theisen Collection
Credit: Getty Images
Copyright: 1952 Earl Theisen