O.K., I gotta lol at myself on the Hemingway stuff.
Re-reading the Old Man and the Sea I feel like it is one of the finest pieces of brief fiction I've read, from several angles, mainly 'style'.
Otherwise, the joke/foolish Chief angle: So, I'm reading either the Sun also Rises or Whom the Bell Tolls, and brain is wandering a bit. I'm thinking, Damn, this is boring, everybody writes the same, I've read a hundred pieces of fiction just like this one--then I realized that this is the stuff that all the other writers were copying...lol at self.
This reminds me: My youngest is an amateur pencil artist, he's almost 20 now. We've always tried to expose him to as much a variety of art as we can via picture books, visits to museums, whatever.
When he was about 10, we visited the Norton/Simon museum in Pasadena (cal) which has some early Picasso pencil and ink stuff. The boy had only seen Picasso's abstract produce prior to this day. So, he spends a lot of time looking at several items then announces:
"He could draw when he wanted to..."
10 year olds!