# Hemingway's 'Old Man' dies in Cuba



## athenaeus (Jul 24, 2001)

I don't realy know what Americans think about Hemingway.
But I can assure you that he has inspired generations of Europeans.

Anyway .
The Cuban fisherman,Gregorio Fuentes, who was Hemingway's inspiration for " Old man and the Sea" died in the age of 104 in Cuba.
In Greece we are tought some passages from the "Old man and the Sea" at school.
So it's a favorite.

"Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same colour as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated," Hemingway wrote of the The Old Man.


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## m brown (May 29, 1999)

Looks like this Old Man was blessed with a very long life!


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## pete (Oct 7, 2001)

I just heard a very funny piece about him on NPR this morning. He was actually the second cuban that Hemingway hired to captain his boats, so it is suggested that Gregario was not the only inspiration for "The Old Man in the Sea". In fact both of these captains were too young, at the time, to be the full inspiration. The are funny stories, though about Gregario and Hemingway during WWII. It seems Hemingway wanted to list his boat during the war. He and Gregario would go out, get drunk as all get out and attempt to drop handgrenades down the conning towers of German subs. No one is sure if they ever saw a sub, let alone get close to one, but there is no evidence that they ever succeeded. There does seem to be plenty of evidence though, of their drunken escapades as it seems Hemingway became quite clumsy when drunk and on numerous occasions needed to be stitched up after nasty falls on the boat. 

After Hemingway's death, with no one to contradict him, Gregario played up the part of the the "old man" attracting tourists to his home village in Cuba and making a good living for himself.


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## athenaeus (Jul 24, 2001)

Nice story Pete.
But those media drive me crazy. I mean I read a story from BBC. According to BBC the "old man" had become a tourist attraction indeed, but all he wanted from tourists in order to take them take a picture of him was a bottle of Rhum. BBC didn't mention anything about a good living...
Media... What to believe...


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## pete (Oct 7, 2001)

I didn't mean to imply that he made a lot of money off of tourists, but he did charge, sometimes a bottle of Rum and sometimes cash. It gave him a decent living at the time (remember, this was Cuba in the 1940's and 1950's). And, of course, most of this came to an end with the end of American tourism to Cuba when Castro took over. I do not know how he lived after that.


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