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The Sun Also Rises
The quintessential novel of the Lost Generation, The Sun Also Rises (Fiesta) is one of Ernest Hemingway's masterpieces and a classic example of his spare but powerful writing style. A poignant look at the disillusionment and angst of the post-World War I generation, the novel introduces two of Hemingway's most unforgettable characters: Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley. The story follows the flamboyant Brett and the hapless Jake as they journey from the wild nightlife of 1920s Paris to the brutal bullfighting rings of Spain with a motley group of expatriates. It is an age of moral bankruptcy, spiritual dissolution, unrealized love, and vanishing illusions. First published in 1926, The Sun Also Rises helped to establish Hemingway as one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.
251 pages, Paperback
First published October 22, 1926
About the author
Ernest Hemingway
1,464 books30.3k followersErnest Miller Hemingway was an American novelist, short-story writer and journalist. Best known for an economical, understated style that significantly influenced later 20th-century writers, he is often romanticized for his adventurous lifestyle, and outspoken and blunt public image. Most of Hemingway's works were published between the mid-1920s and mid-1950s, including seven novels, six short-story collections and two non-fiction works. His writings have become classics of American literature; he was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature, while three of his novels, four short-story collections and three nonfiction works were published posthumously.
Hemingway was raised in Oak Park, Illinois. After high school, he spent six months as a cub reporter for The Kansas City Star before enlisting in the Red Cross. He served as an ambulance driver on the Italian Front in World War I and was seriously wounded in 1918. His wartime experiences formed the basis for his 1929 novel A Farewell to Arms. He married Hadley Richardson in 1921, the first of four wives. They moved to Paris where he worked as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star and fell under the influence of the modernist writers and artists of the 1920s' "Lost Generation" expatriate community. His debut novel The Sun Also Rises was published in 1926.
He divorced Richardson in 1927 and married Pauline Pfeiffer. They divorced after he returned from the Spanish Civil War, where he had worked as a journalist and which formed the basis for his 1940 novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. Martha Gellhorn became his third wife in 1940. He and Gellhorn separated after he met Mary Welsh Hemingway in London during World War II. Hemingway was present with Allied troops as a journalist at the Normandy landings and the liberation of Paris. He maintained permanent residences in Key West, Florida, in the 1930s and in Cuba in the 1940s and 1950s. On a 1954 trip to Africa, he was seriously injured in two plane accidents on successive days, leaving him in pain and ill health for much of the rest of his life. In 1959, he bought a house in Ketchum, Idaho, where, in mid-1961, he died of suicide.
Hemingway was raised in Oak Park, Illinois. After high school, he spent six months as a cub reporter for The Kansas City Star before enlisting in the Red Cross. He served as an ambulance driver on the Italian Front in World War I and was seriously wounded in 1918. His wartime experiences formed the basis for his 1929 novel A Farewell to Arms. He married Hadley Richardson in 1921, the first of four wives. They moved to Paris where he worked as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star and fell under the influence of the modernist writers and artists of the 1920s' "Lost Generation" expatriate community. His debut novel The Sun Also Rises was published in 1926.
He divorced Richardson in 1927 and married Pauline Pfeiffer. They divorced after he returned from the Spanish Civil War, where he had worked as a journalist and which formed the basis for his 1940 novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. Martha Gellhorn became his third wife in 1940. He and Gellhorn separated after he met Mary Welsh Hemingway in London during World War II. Hemingway was present with Allied troops as a journalist at the Normandy landings and the liberation of Paris. He maintained permanent residences in Key West, Florida, in the 1930s and in Cuba in the 1940s and 1950s. On a 1954 trip to Africa, he was seriously injured in two plane accidents on successive days, leaving him in pain and ill health for much of the rest of his life. In 1959, he bought a house in Ketchum, Idaho, where, in mid-1961, he died of suicide.
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April 26, 2016
Oh, to have been Ernest Hemingway. Except for the whole shotgun thing.
He was a man, back when that meant something. Whatever that means. He had it all: a haunted past; functional alcoholism; a way with words; a way with women; and one hell of a beard. I mean, this was the guy who could measure F. Scott Fitzgerald's penis without anyone batting an eye. He was just that cool.
I love Hemingway. You might have guessed that, but let's make it clear off the bat. For Whom the Bell Tolls is in my top five all-time fave books (there's nothing better than a literary novel about blowing up a bridge). The Old Man and the Sea is a fever dream. A Farewell Arms is one of the most exquisitively depressing things I've ever read.
Despite my high expectations, The Sun Also Rises does not "rise" (get it?) to the level of those books. Or maybe I'm an idiot. It's possible. This book is supposedly one of his masterpieces - if not his magnum opus. I thought it was - gulp - kinda boring.
Generally, I attempt to avoid using the word "boring" in a review. It's a broad, vague, and diluted descriptor; a subjective one-off that doesn't tell you anything. Its use is better suited for a bitter 10th grader's five-paragraph theme, turned in on the last day of school after that tenth grader skimmed twenty pages, read the Cliffs Notes version, and stayed up all night typing with two fingers. I try to hold my Goodreads reviews to a slightly higher standard (the standard of an 11th grader who is taking summer school classes to get a jump on senior year).
Really, though, that was my impression: boring. Of course, I didn't read this while lapping sangria in Madrid, which I've heard will heighten this novel's overall effect.
The Sun Also Rises tells the story of Jake Barnes, an ex-patriate living in Paris. He was wounded in World War I and is now impotent. He is in love with Ashley, who is a... What did they call sluts in the early 20th Century? Because that's sort of what she is, though she has a tender place in her heart for Jake, to whom she keeps returning. Jake is a journalist, apparently haunted by the war, and he spends his time drinking in Paris. There's also a guy named Robert Cohn, a former boxer, who's also in love with Ashley. Bill and Mike also hang around; Mike was originally in a relationship with Ashley, before he lost her to Cohn, who in turn loses her to a Spanish bullfighter.
The plot, as it is, involves a bunch of drinking in Paris. Jake drinks a lot, stumbles home, then drinks some more before falling asleep. (The drinking and stumbling home reminds me of my own life, which is worth at least one star). Jake eventually takes the train to Spain to do some fishing. Hemingway describes the scene in excruciating detail and you really get a feel for the place:
The book goes on in this manner, for some time. It's as though Hemingway has turned into an eloquent Garmin device. Step by step. The walk to the creek. The heat of the sun. The taste of the wine. It is all very vivid, and beautifully written, but really, it didn't go anywhere. It seemed like filler. Something to break up the constant drinking (while the drinking breaks up the Spanish travelogue).
The lack of a plot normally wouldn't bother me much, but the book as a whole just wasn't working for me. I didn't care for the characters, who are mostly drunken, indolent, well-off whiners. Also, I was intensely jealous of the characters, who are mostly drunken, indolent, well-off whiners. In other words, aspirational figures.
Really, though, I just wanted more out of this book. Hemingway's other works have burrowed deep into my consciousness, so that I find myself referring back to them time and again.
The Sun Also Rises did not achieve this feat.
Eventually, Jake's merry band of drunkards go to Pamplona to watch the bullfights. There is drinking. Fighting. Drinking. Bullfighting. Drinking. Drinking. Passing out. Drinking. I actually got a contact drunk from reading this book.
I imagine that sex also occurred, somewhere in the midst of the drinking and the bulls and the overflowing testosterone, but Hemingway is discrete.
There are some good things, here. As I mentioned earlier, Hemingway is a master of description. His prose is deceptively simple; his declarations actually do a great deal to put you there, into the scene, with immediacy. The book also features one of Hemingway's most famous quotes: "Nobody lives life all the way up, except bullfighters." For some reason, that line has taken on a kind of profundity, though I have to admit, I almost missed it in context.
The best part of the book is the last lines, uttered by Jake Barnes: "Isn't it pretty to think so." I'll leave it to you to determine its meaning. As for me, I am anxiously awaiting the moment when, after a night of hard drinking, I can use this line on someone who has just uttered an inane comment.
Alas, I'm still waiting for that moment. And that gives me all the excuse I need to keep sidling up to the bar, ordering a whiskey straight with a whiskey back, and chatting up the people around me in the hopes that one of the drunks I meet will also be a Hemingway fan.
He was a man, back when that meant something. Whatever that means. He had it all: a haunted past; functional alcoholism; a way with words; a way with women; and one hell of a beard. I mean, this was the guy who could measure F. Scott Fitzgerald's penis without anyone batting an eye. He was just that cool.
I love Hemingway. You might have guessed that, but let's make it clear off the bat. For Whom the Bell Tolls is in my top five all-time fave books (there's nothing better than a literary novel about blowing up a bridge). The Old Man and the Sea is a fever dream. A Farewell Arms is one of the most exquisitively depressing things I've ever read.
Despite my high expectations, The Sun Also Rises does not "rise" (get it?) to the level of those books. Or maybe I'm an idiot. It's possible. This book is supposedly one of his masterpieces - if not his magnum opus. I thought it was - gulp - kinda boring.
Generally, I attempt to avoid using the word "boring" in a review. It's a broad, vague, and diluted descriptor; a subjective one-off that doesn't tell you anything. Its use is better suited for a bitter 10th grader's five-paragraph theme, turned in on the last day of school after that tenth grader skimmed twenty pages, read the Cliffs Notes version, and stayed up all night typing with two fingers. I try to hold my Goodreads reviews to a slightly higher standard (the standard of an 11th grader who is taking summer school classes to get a jump on senior year).
Really, though, that was my impression: boring. Of course, I didn't read this while lapping sangria in Madrid, which I've heard will heighten this novel's overall effect.
The Sun Also Rises tells the story of Jake Barnes, an ex-patriate living in Paris. He was wounded in World War I and is now impotent. He is in love with Ashley, who is a... What did they call sluts in the early 20th Century? Because that's sort of what she is, though she has a tender place in her heart for Jake, to whom she keeps returning. Jake is a journalist, apparently haunted by the war, and he spends his time drinking in Paris. There's also a guy named Robert Cohn, a former boxer, who's also in love with Ashley. Bill and Mike also hang around; Mike was originally in a relationship with Ashley, before he lost her to Cohn, who in turn loses her to a Spanish bullfighter.
The plot, as it is, involves a bunch of drinking in Paris. Jake drinks a lot, stumbles home, then drinks some more before falling asleep. (The drinking and stumbling home reminds me of my own life, which is worth at least one star). Jake eventually takes the train to Spain to do some fishing. Hemingway describes the scene in excruciating detail and you really get a feel for the place:
Then the road came over the crest, flattened out, and went into a forest. It was a forest of cork oaks, and the sun came through the trees in patches, and there were cattle grazing back in the trees. We went through the forest and the road came out and turned along a rise of land, and out ahead of us was a rolling green plain, with dark mountains beyond it. These were not like the brown, heat-baked mountains we had left behind. These were wooded and there were clouds coming down from them. The green plain stretched off. It was cut by fences and the white of the road showed through the trunks of a double line of trees that crossed the plain towards the north.
The book goes on in this manner, for some time. It's as though Hemingway has turned into an eloquent Garmin device. Step by step. The walk to the creek. The heat of the sun. The taste of the wine. It is all very vivid, and beautifully written, but really, it didn't go anywhere. It seemed like filler. Something to break up the constant drinking (while the drinking breaks up the Spanish travelogue).
The lack of a plot normally wouldn't bother me much, but the book as a whole just wasn't working for me. I didn't care for the characters, who are mostly drunken, indolent, well-off whiners. Also, I was intensely jealous of the characters, who are mostly drunken, indolent, well-off whiners. In other words, aspirational figures.
Really, though, I just wanted more out of this book. Hemingway's other works have burrowed deep into my consciousness, so that I find myself referring back to them time and again.
The Sun Also Rises did not achieve this feat.
Eventually, Jake's merry band of drunkards go to Pamplona to watch the bullfights. There is drinking. Fighting. Drinking. Bullfighting. Drinking. Drinking. Passing out. Drinking. I actually got a contact drunk from reading this book.
I imagine that sex also occurred, somewhere in the midst of the drinking and the bulls and the overflowing testosterone, but Hemingway is discrete.
There are some good things, here. As I mentioned earlier, Hemingway is a master of description. His prose is deceptively simple; his declarations actually do a great deal to put you there, into the scene, with immediacy. The book also features one of Hemingway's most famous quotes: "Nobody lives life all the way up, except bullfighters." For some reason, that line has taken on a kind of profundity, though I have to admit, I almost missed it in context.
The best part of the book is the last lines, uttered by Jake Barnes: "Isn't it pretty to think so." I'll leave it to you to determine its meaning. As for me, I am anxiously awaiting the moment when, after a night of hard drinking, I can use this line on someone who has just uttered an inane comment.
Alas, I'm still waiting for that moment. And that gives me all the excuse I need to keep sidling up to the bar, ordering a whiskey straight with a whiskey back, and chatting up the people around me in the hopes that one of the drunks I meet will also be a Hemingway fan.
February 18, 2021
I was sitting on the patio of a bar in Key West Florida. It was August, it was hot. The bar was on the beach where there was lots of sand and water. In the water I saw dolphins and waves. The dolphins jumped and the waves waved.
My glass was empty. The waiter walked up to my table. “More absinthe miss?” He asked. “No, I better not. *burp*” I put my hand over my glass “I read somewhere that it can cause hallucinations and nightmares. Just some ice water please.” I said. He put an empty glass in front of me, tipped his picture of water over my glass until it was full, at that time he stopped pouring.
A man I did not know walked up to my table and said to the waiter “No one in Key West is to stop drinking alcohol while they are conscious, you know the rules Manuel! Don’t make me repeat myself; did you hear me? Don’t make me repeat myself, it’s annoying.” Manuel rolled his eyes.
“I’ll drink to that.” I said and held up my glass of ice water to the stranger, then put it to my lips and drank. It was cold. I set it back down on the table. “I just finished a book where everyone repeated themselves……drove me to drink!”
“Sorry Mr. Hemingway” said Manuel “she said she wanted ice water, so that’s what I gave her”. A cat ran by, it was fast. “Meow” it said. It was orange. “But you know the rules Manuel, you know the rules.” Repeated Mr. Hemingway “I know the rules Mr. Hemingway, how could I not? You tend to repeat yourself constantly, it must be all the absinthe…..” muttered Manuel.
“What did you say Manuel?” Asked Mr. Hemingway “Nothing” said Manuel. “Bring the lady some Champagne right away!” said Mr. Hemingway. Manuel walked away towards the kitchen.
“Who are you?” I asked the man I did not know. “Hemingway, you wouldn't happen to be related to the writer would you? His book The Sun Also Rises was the book I was just referring to; I don’t remember ever being quite so bored. On the bright side, I think it did wonders for my blood pressure.” I said.
Dressed in worn khaki shorts and a Hawaiian shirt with one too many colors, he stood there at my table and squinted at me, sweat rolling down the sides of his red face and into his gray beard. It was hot. He set his drink down on the table, hard, and pulled out a chair and sat down. “May I sit?” he asked as he put his dirty bare feet up on the table and tipped the chair back. “Sure, you’re already in the chair. Besides I don’t think it will be long before you fall on your ass.” I said, I drank some water, it was cold. “Language! I’m Ernest Hemingway the guy who wrote that boring book” he put his feet on the ground and the chair dropped down with a bang. He put his right hand out to shake mine. I stared at it for a while then took it.
“Stephanie. Hey, I don’t want to come across as insensitive but aren't you dead?” I asked “Really? I don’t feel dead….at least I don’t think I am.” Said the not dead Ernest “Damn! Absinthe lives up to it's reputation." I said and smacked the left side of my head with my left hand. My head was hard.
“Manuel!! Where’s that champagne?" I shouted in a panic. “So” Ernest picked up his drink and drank the whole thing in one gulp. “I am one of the greatest American writers, if not the greatest, everybody says so. And you…..” he paused and pointed his finger at me using the same hand that still held the glass, the melting ice clinked “you didn't like the Sun Also Rises?” he asked and set his glass down.
“I know, I heard the same thing, that you were one of the greatest American writers, so imagine my surprise when I didn't love it like the rest of the human race. In fact, I really didn't like it AT ALL! Please don’t hurt me.”
Manuel walked back to the table caring the bottle of Champagne and two glasses. He sat the glasses in front of us and went about the task of opening the bottle. “Thank god your back Manuel, I think I’m hallucinating. I hope champagne helps things normalize.” I said, the bottle said “pop.” “It won’t help because you are not hallucinating.” He said and poured the Champagne, he turned and walked off. I picked up the glass and drank. It was bubbly and cold.
“What else didn't you like about my book?” Asked Ernest “I’m really not comfortable telling you to your face, but, alright” I said “I found all the characters to be aimless, unlikable, drunkards that didn't have any idea what to with their lives but travel about the world constantly drunk….which doesn't sound all that bad on the surface, but it was not interesting.” I said “They were excruciatingly boring that I couldn't care enough about them to remember who was who.” I said “It felt like it would never end, but when it did end the only thing that I liked about it was the fact that it was finally over. No big payoff to make the boring book worth my time.” I sighed and finished off my Champagne, I poured myself and Ernest another glass.
“Wow. Sorry you hated it. I suppose you can’t please everyone.” He said. “I’ll buy you dinner to repay you for putting you through that.”
“That’s not necessary, but I could eat. I must bathe first.” I said. “Well sure, it is hot after all.” He said “Yes, I must bathe you understand? One cannot dine without bathing first, as you know, so you will have to wait until I bathe.”
“I must bathe. I must bathe. I. must. Bathe.” I said.
“Now you’re just making fun of me.” he said.
“Yup……I will make you suffer the way you made me suffer.” I smiled.
“Great. I’m looking forward to it.” Said not dead Ernest. We swayed to our feet, Ernest took my arm, we steadied ourselves and stumbled off into the sunset.
Also reviewed on shelfinflicted
My glass was empty. The waiter walked up to my table. “More absinthe miss?” He asked. “No, I better not. *burp*” I put my hand over my glass “I read somewhere that it can cause hallucinations and nightmares. Just some ice water please.” I said. He put an empty glass in front of me, tipped his picture of water over my glass until it was full, at that time he stopped pouring.
A man I did not know walked up to my table and said to the waiter “No one in Key West is to stop drinking alcohol while they are conscious, you know the rules Manuel! Don’t make me repeat myself; did you hear me? Don’t make me repeat myself, it’s annoying.” Manuel rolled his eyes.
“I’ll drink to that.” I said and held up my glass of ice water to the stranger, then put it to my lips and drank. It was cold. I set it back down on the table. “I just finished a book where everyone repeated themselves……drove me to drink!”
“Sorry Mr. Hemingway” said Manuel “she said she wanted ice water, so that’s what I gave her”. A cat ran by, it was fast. “Meow” it said. It was orange. “But you know the rules Manuel, you know the rules.” Repeated Mr. Hemingway “I know the rules Mr. Hemingway, how could I not? You tend to repeat yourself constantly, it must be all the absinthe…..” muttered Manuel.
“What did you say Manuel?” Asked Mr. Hemingway “Nothing” said Manuel. “Bring the lady some Champagne right away!” said Mr. Hemingway. Manuel walked away towards the kitchen.
“Who are you?” I asked the man I did not know. “Hemingway, you wouldn't happen to be related to the writer would you? His book The Sun Also Rises was the book I was just referring to; I don’t remember ever being quite so bored. On the bright side, I think it did wonders for my blood pressure.” I said.
Dressed in worn khaki shorts and a Hawaiian shirt with one too many colors, he stood there at my table and squinted at me, sweat rolling down the sides of his red face and into his gray beard. It was hot. He set his drink down on the table, hard, and pulled out a chair and sat down. “May I sit?” he asked as he put his dirty bare feet up on the table and tipped the chair back. “Sure, you’re already in the chair. Besides I don’t think it will be long before you fall on your ass.” I said, I drank some water, it was cold. “Language! I’m Ernest Hemingway the guy who wrote that boring book” he put his feet on the ground and the chair dropped down with a bang. He put his right hand out to shake mine. I stared at it for a while then took it.
“Stephanie. Hey, I don’t want to come across as insensitive but aren't you dead?” I asked “Really? I don’t feel dead….at least I don’t think I am.” Said the not dead Ernest “Damn! Absinthe lives up to it's reputation." I said and smacked the left side of my head with my left hand. My head was hard.
“Manuel!! Where’s that champagne?" I shouted in a panic. “So” Ernest picked up his drink and drank the whole thing in one gulp. “I am one of the greatest American writers, if not the greatest, everybody says so. And you…..” he paused and pointed his finger at me using the same hand that still held the glass, the melting ice clinked “you didn't like the Sun Also Rises?” he asked and set his glass down.
“I know, I heard the same thing, that you were one of the greatest American writers, so imagine my surprise when I didn't love it like the rest of the human race. In fact, I really didn't like it AT ALL! Please don’t hurt me.”
Manuel walked back to the table caring the bottle of Champagne and two glasses. He sat the glasses in front of us and went about the task of opening the bottle. “Thank god your back Manuel, I think I’m hallucinating. I hope champagne helps things normalize.” I said, the bottle said “pop.” “It won’t help because you are not hallucinating.” He said and poured the Champagne, he turned and walked off. I picked up the glass and drank. It was bubbly and cold.
“What else didn't you like about my book?” Asked Ernest “I’m really not comfortable telling you to your face, but, alright” I said “I found all the characters to be aimless, unlikable, drunkards that didn't have any idea what to with their lives but travel about the world constantly drunk….which doesn't sound all that bad on the surface, but it was not interesting.” I said “They were excruciatingly boring that I couldn't care enough about them to remember who was who.” I said “It felt like it would never end, but when it did end the only thing that I liked about it was the fact that it was finally over. No big payoff to make the boring book worth my time.” I sighed and finished off my Champagne, I poured myself and Ernest another glass.
“Wow. Sorry you hated it. I suppose you can’t please everyone.” He said. “I’ll buy you dinner to repay you for putting you through that.”
“That’s not necessary, but I could eat. I must bathe first.” I said. “Well sure, it is hot after all.” He said “Yes, I must bathe you understand? One cannot dine without bathing first, as you know, so you will have to wait until I bathe.”
“I must bathe. I must bathe. I. must. Bathe.” I said.
“Now you’re just making fun of me.” he said.
“Yup……I will make you suffer the way you made me suffer.” I smiled.
“Great. I’m looking forward to it.” Said not dead Ernest. We swayed to our feet, Ernest took my arm, we steadied ourselves and stumbled off into the sunset.
Also reviewed on shelfinflicted
June 28, 2011
What I learned from this book (in no particular order):
1. Jews are stubborn.
2. Being a Jew in Princeton sucks.
3. Being impotent sucks, especially if you are in love with a beautiful woman.
4. A beautiful woman is built with curves like the hull of a racing boat. Women make swell friends.
5. If you suffer from domestic abuse, the best way to work it out is by going through as many men as possible in the shortest time, and then discard them like wet tissues once you’re done --- if you happen to be pretty enough to attract scores of them, that is.
6. The best way to work out existential angst is to drink your way through France and Spain.
7. The Left Bank sucks. Being an expat sucks.
8. Spain sucks, except for the bullfighting. Bullfights are swell.
9. Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bullfighters. Bulls have no balls.
10. People who run with the bulls are suckers.
Other Random Observations
No. of times the word “swell” is used: 13
No. of alcohol units consumed by the protagonist: Dunno. Too tight to count. Hic.
Hemingway might have perfectly captured the Lost Generation’s times, but he also succeeded in inducing a profound ennui in me, especially during the long stretches in which the characters (none who is terribly interesting to begin with) do nothing except drink (“I’m a little tight you know. Amazing, isn’t it? Did you see my nose?”) and flirt with each other. These passages are tediously repetitive, and the effect is like being trapped in a Left Bank café with a bunch of casual acquaintances who insist on regaling you with boring anecdotes from their boozy Spain road trip. After a while, your eyes start to glaze and your attention wanders: you begin to take in the Belle Epogue interior, the cute waiter, the way the afternoon sun casts interesting patterns on the white tablecloth --- anything that is more interesting than the dull main narrative. I just didn’t care for any of them, and that Brett woman is a biatch. Why is everyone so desperately in love with her? They told me that her former husband slept with a gun under his pillow, but who is she really? And I wish that everyone would stop whining and being glib for a while so that they can tell me more about that wonderful Basque country. But no, they always return to these tedious, unaffecting love triangles.
You guys are the Lost Generation indeed.
1. Jews are stubborn.
2. Being a Jew in Princeton sucks.
3. Being impotent sucks, especially if you are in love with a beautiful woman.
4. A beautiful woman is built with curves like the hull of a racing boat. Women make swell friends.
5. If you suffer from domestic abuse, the best way to work it out is by going through as many men as possible in the shortest time, and then discard them like wet tissues once you’re done --- if you happen to be pretty enough to attract scores of them, that is.
6. The best way to work out existential angst is to drink your way through France and Spain.
7. The Left Bank sucks. Being an expat sucks.
8. Spain sucks, except for the bullfighting. Bullfights are swell.
9. Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bullfighters. Bulls have no balls.
10. People who run with the bulls are suckers.
Other Random Observations
No. of times the word “swell” is used: 13
No. of alcohol units consumed by the protagonist: Dunno. Too tight to count. Hic.
Hemingway might have perfectly captured the Lost Generation’s times, but he also succeeded in inducing a profound ennui in me, especially during the long stretches in which the characters (none who is terribly interesting to begin with) do nothing except drink (“I’m a little tight you know. Amazing, isn’t it? Did you see my nose?”) and flirt with each other. These passages are tediously repetitive, and the effect is like being trapped in a Left Bank café with a bunch of casual acquaintances who insist on regaling you with boring anecdotes from their boozy Spain road trip. After a while, your eyes start to glaze and your attention wanders: you begin to take in the Belle Epogue interior, the cute waiter, the way the afternoon sun casts interesting patterns on the white tablecloth --- anything that is more interesting than the dull main narrative. I just didn’t care for any of them, and that Brett woman is a biatch. Why is everyone so desperately in love with her? They told me that her former husband slept with a gun under his pillow, but who is she really? And I wish that everyone would stop whining and being glib for a while so that they can tell me more about that wonderful Basque country. But no, they always return to these tedious, unaffecting love triangles.
You guys are the Lost Generation indeed.
January 12, 2016
THIS BOOK IS ABOUT A MAN IN SPAIN HE GETS FRIENDZONED.
November 25, 2010
If I were Hemingway's English teacher (or anyone's any kind of teacher) I'd say, "This reads more like a screenplay than a novel. Where are your descriptions, where is the emotion??"
And he would say something like, "The lack of complex descriptions helps focus on the complexities and emptiness of the characters' lives, and the emotion is there, it's only just beneath the surface, struggling to be free!"
And I'd say, "OK, I'll move ya from a C to C+."
Basically The Sun Also Rises shows that Hemingway liked bullfights a lot more than most of the people reading his books, and that he was vain but also hated himself. While the characters are wittily funny from time to time, the whole thing doesn't hold a candle to, I don't know, Seinfeld. Without being told, "Ah yes, this is about the true character of America!" you'd think it was just a drab romance novel with more subtleties than most.
Speaking of, how was this about America? It was more about America's elite. Most Americans in 1926 weren't hanging out in France and Spain, moaning about their lives. They were hanging out in America, trying to make it. You know, without dying.
Pretentious, with poor descriptions and transparent characters (I can give a character a subtle injury too and have it pain him, does that make me amazing?), The Sun Also Rises is one of the most overrated books I've ever read. I'd rather read a 1926 newspaper.
And he would say something like, "The lack of complex descriptions helps focus on the complexities and emptiness of the characters' lives, and the emotion is there, it's only just beneath the surface, struggling to be free!"
And I'd say, "OK, I'll move ya from a C to C+."
Basically The Sun Also Rises shows that Hemingway liked bullfights a lot more than most of the people reading his books, and that he was vain but also hated himself. While the characters are wittily funny from time to time, the whole thing doesn't hold a candle to, I don't know, Seinfeld. Without being told, "Ah yes, this is about the true character of America!" you'd think it was just a drab romance novel with more subtleties than most.
Speaking of, how was this about America? It was more about America's elite. Most Americans in 1926 weren't hanging out in France and Spain, moaning about their lives. They were hanging out in America, trying to make it. You know, without dying.
Pretentious, with poor descriptions and transparent characters (I can give a character a subtle injury too and have it pain him, does that make me amazing?), The Sun Also Rises is one of the most overrated books I've ever read. I'd rather read a 1926 newspaper.
November 3, 2024
This may be my favorite book of all time. At any rate, it's definitely on the top ten list and by far my favorite Hemingway (and I do love some Hemingway). The first time I read this, I loved Lady Brett Ashley. Is she a bitch? Sure, but I don't think she ever intentionally sets out to hurt anyone. And it might be argued that she has reason to be one: her first true love dies in the war from dysentery (not exactly the most noble of deaths) and she's physically threatened by Lord Ashley, forced to sleep on the floor beside him and his loaded gun (and let's clarify that,no, that's not a euphemism, just in case you're a perv). Then we have the one man who might make her happy, Jake Barnes. Poor, poor Jake, who doesn't have a gun, let alone a loaded one (yup, that's a euphemism--snicker away). I think Brett is one of the most tragic figures in American literature. Disillusioned by the war and how it irrevocably changed her life, she tries to fill the void with alcohol and sex--and destroys herself in the process.
However, upon rereading the novel, I realized how eclipsed Jake had been by Brett during my first reading. I also realized how I had misinterpreted him during my first reading. I thought Jake was as lost as the rest of the "Lost Generation," but I now believe that he is the only one who is not lost (with the exception of Bill Gorton, whose line "The road to hell paved with unbought stuffed dogs" may be my favorite in the book). If there's anyone with reason to give up on life, it's Jake. Does he pine for Brett? Yes. Does he come to hate Cohn for his affair with Brett? Affirmative. Does he get over Brett and realize that, even if properly equipped for a sexual relationship, a relationship with her would end as tragically as all of her other conquests? Abso-damn-lutely. After all, Brett is Circe, according to Cohn, and anyone lured into her bed will lose their manhood. The success of the relationship between Brett and Jake hinges on the fact that Jake literally has nothing to lose in this respect.
Cross posted at This Insignificant Cinder
However, upon rereading the novel, I realized how eclipsed Jake had been by Brett during my first reading. I also realized how I had misinterpreted him during my first reading. I thought Jake was as lost as the rest of the "Lost Generation," but I now believe that he is the only one who is not lost (with the exception of Bill Gorton, whose line "The road to hell paved with unbought stuffed dogs" may be my favorite in the book). If there's anyone with reason to give up on life, it's Jake. Does he pine for Brett? Yes. Does he come to hate Cohn for his affair with Brett? Affirmative. Does he get over Brett and realize that, even if properly equipped for a sexual relationship, a relationship with her would end as tragically as all of her other conquests? Abso-damn-lutely. After all, Brett is Circe, according to Cohn, and anyone lured into her bed will lose their manhood. The success of the relationship between Brett and Jake hinges on the fact that Jake literally has nothing to lose in this respect.
Cross posted at This Insignificant Cinder
August 18, 2022
Oceniam z wielkim bólem w sercu
April 26, 2024
“Funny,” Brett said. “How one doesn’t mind the blood.” (p. 211)
Fifth or sixth reading. This is one of the essential books of life. It never fails. It possesses—for the right reader—an enormity of narrative pleasure and it grips from the very first line. Its storytelling is so exhilarating that one gets goosebumps.
Jake Barnes, our narrator, fought in The Great War for Italy (1914-18) when he was injured. Recuperating in the hospital he meets and falls in love with Lady Brett, a nurse. Later on, in Paris, where he works as a journalist, he runs into Brett again. Their relationship is now pure torture. Their chemistry is thermonuclear — she says Jake’s touch turns her to jelly and his love for her is beyond question — but sexual intimacy is impossible. Jake’s particular agony now, which he suffers in silence, is to standby while Brett sleeps with other men.
The passage at the Paris nightclub with the gay boys doesn’t bother me as it used to. Jake knows he’s being unreasonable. The queers, with whom Brett arrives at the club, have working penises and choose not to use them on her. To a man made impotent by war, a young man in love with her, their preference must seem like a kind of madness. Moreover, there may be a fear on his part that he’s becoming like them. That is, indifferent to female sexuality. He’s not, of course, not emotionally.
Now we’ve left Paris, taking the train to Bayonne. Then in an open car up the dusty roads to the plateau and Pamplona. From here Jake and Bill go to Burguete to do some fly fishing while Robert Cohn returns to San Sebastián to await Brett and fiancé, Mike. The trip on the bus to Burguete—through the stark countryside while Jake and Bill drink wine with the Basques—dazzles, lifts one’s spirits. The fishing sequences on the Irati River are beautifully spartan. Then after five days the fishermen are back in Pamplona. Mike and Brett and Cohn are about to complete the five-some.
So now we’ve got three men together in Pamplona who love Brett, two of whom have slept with her: Jake, Mike and Robert Cohn. Jake sadly can have nothing more to do with her, though they remain close. Cohn is like a child, always staring at her, and the bankrupt fiance, Mike, doesn’t like it. They all go to watch the bulls arrive at the ring. Steers are brought in to “calm” the bulls. This usually ends with a steer or two being gored. That’s when Mike refers to Cohn as a steer for the mute worshiping manner in which he follows Brett around.
“I would’ve thought you’d love being a steer, Robert."
“What do you mean, Mike?”
“They lead such a quiet life. They never say anything and they’re always hanging about so.”
We were embarrassed. Bill laughed. Robert Cohn was angry. Mike went on talking.
“I should think you’d love it. You’d never have to say a word. Come on, Robert. Do say something. Don’t just sit there.”
“I said something, Mike. Don’t you remember? About the steers.”
“Oh, say something more. Say something funny. Can’t you see we’re all having a good time here?”
“Come off it, Michael. You’re drunk,” Brett said.
“I’m not drunk. I’m quite serious. Is Robert Cohn going to follow Brett around like a steer all the time?”
“Shut up, Michael. Try and show a little breeding.”
“Breeding be damned. Who has any breeding, anyway, except the bulls? Aren’t the bulls lovely? . . . Why don’t you say something, Robert? Don’t just sit there like a bloody funeral. What if Brett did sleep with you? She’s slept with lots of better people than you.“
“Shut up,” Cohn said. He stood up. “Shut up, Mike.”
“Oh, don’t stand up and act as though you were going to hit me. That won’t make any difference to me. Tell me, Robert. Why do you follow Brett around like a poor bloody steer? Don’t you know you’re not wanted?” (p. 141-142)
It occurs to the reader just how painful this exchange must be for Jake, even though he doesn’t mention it. Hemingway was a master of omission, of not talking about the elephant in the room. I’ve read and reread this passage and every time it surprises me anew. In some ways Jake is like a steer, too, but he doesn’t moon and fawn. Instead he’s very stoic, tortured, yes, but good at not seeming so, good at joining in the party.
Then the fiesta “explodes” with two rockets over the main square and the peasants, who until then have been drinking quietly in the outer town, come rushing into the main square. They’re singing riau riau music and dancing. “The square solid with people, those in the centre all dancing.” (p. 159) The peasants dance about Brett as if she were some kind of Madonna. Everyone is ushered into a wine shop; some peasant women are wearing necklaces of garlic and one is hung about Brett’s neck. These are among the most moving moments in the book for the author captures the wonderful local manners with their astonishing air of friendliness and formality. The description is spare yet rich in detail.
The end is a knockout. Jake is held in odium because he has allowed the bullfight to be compromised. Whereas before, Jake and the hotel owner, Montoya, saw each other as fellow aficionados, now Jake is seen not just as a disappointment, but as a corrupter of the bullfight. There is much I’m not touching on here. Please read it.
Fifth or sixth reading. This is one of the essential books of life. It never fails. It possesses—for the right reader—an enormity of narrative pleasure and it grips from the very first line. Its storytelling is so exhilarating that one gets goosebumps.
Jake Barnes, our narrator, fought in The Great War for Italy (1914-18) when he was injured. Recuperating in the hospital he meets and falls in love with Lady Brett, a nurse. Later on, in Paris, where he works as a journalist, he runs into Brett again. Their relationship is now pure torture. Their chemistry is thermonuclear — she says Jake’s touch turns her to jelly and his love for her is beyond question — but sexual intimacy is impossible. Jake’s particular agony now, which he suffers in silence, is to standby while Brett sleeps with other men.
The passage at the Paris nightclub with the gay boys doesn’t bother me as it used to. Jake knows he’s being unreasonable. The queers, with whom Brett arrives at the club, have working penises and choose not to use them on her. To a man made impotent by war, a young man in love with her, their preference must seem like a kind of madness. Moreover, there may be a fear on his part that he’s becoming like them. That is, indifferent to female sexuality. He’s not, of course, not emotionally.
Now we’ve left Paris, taking the train to Bayonne. Then in an open car up the dusty roads to the plateau and Pamplona. From here Jake and Bill go to Burguete to do some fly fishing while Robert Cohn returns to San Sebastián to await Brett and fiancé, Mike. The trip on the bus to Burguete—through the stark countryside while Jake and Bill drink wine with the Basques—dazzles, lifts one’s spirits. The fishing sequences on the Irati River are beautifully spartan. Then after five days the fishermen are back in Pamplona. Mike and Brett and Cohn are about to complete the five-some.
So now we’ve got three men together in Pamplona who love Brett, two of whom have slept with her: Jake, Mike and Robert Cohn. Jake sadly can have nothing more to do with her, though they remain close. Cohn is like a child, always staring at her, and the bankrupt fiance, Mike, doesn’t like it. They all go to watch the bulls arrive at the ring. Steers are brought in to “calm” the bulls. This usually ends with a steer or two being gored. That’s when Mike refers to Cohn as a steer for the mute worshiping manner in which he follows Brett around.
“I would’ve thought you’d love being a steer, Robert."
“What do you mean, Mike?”
“They lead such a quiet life. They never say anything and they’re always hanging about so.”
We were embarrassed. Bill laughed. Robert Cohn was angry. Mike went on talking.
“I should think you’d love it. You’d never have to say a word. Come on, Robert. Do say something. Don’t just sit there.”
“I said something, Mike. Don’t you remember? About the steers.”
“Oh, say something more. Say something funny. Can’t you see we’re all having a good time here?”
“Come off it, Michael. You’re drunk,” Brett said.
“I’m not drunk. I’m quite serious. Is Robert Cohn going to follow Brett around like a steer all the time?”
“Shut up, Michael. Try and show a little breeding.”
“Breeding be damned. Who has any breeding, anyway, except the bulls? Aren’t the bulls lovely? . . . Why don’t you say something, Robert? Don’t just sit there like a bloody funeral. What if Brett did sleep with you? She’s slept with lots of better people than you.“
“Shut up,” Cohn said. He stood up. “Shut up, Mike.”
“Oh, don’t stand up and act as though you were going to hit me. That won’t make any difference to me. Tell me, Robert. Why do you follow Brett around like a poor bloody steer? Don’t you know you’re not wanted?” (p. 141-142)
It occurs to the reader just how painful this exchange must be for Jake, even though he doesn’t mention it. Hemingway was a master of omission, of not talking about the elephant in the room. I’ve read and reread this passage and every time it surprises me anew. In some ways Jake is like a steer, too, but he doesn’t moon and fawn. Instead he’s very stoic, tortured, yes, but good at not seeming so, good at joining in the party.
Then the fiesta “explodes” with two rockets over the main square and the peasants, who until then have been drinking quietly in the outer town, come rushing into the main square. They’re singing riau riau music and dancing. “The square solid with people, those in the centre all dancing.” (p. 159) The peasants dance about Brett as if she were some kind of Madonna. Everyone is ushered into a wine shop; some peasant women are wearing necklaces of garlic and one is hung about Brett’s neck. These are among the most moving moments in the book for the author captures the wonderful local manners with their astonishing air of friendliness and formality. The description is spare yet rich in detail.
The end is a knockout. Jake is held in odium because he has allowed the bullfight to be compromised. Whereas before, Jake and the hotel owner, Montoya, saw each other as fellow aficionados, now Jake is seen not just as a disappointment, but as a corrupter of the bullfight. There is much I’m not touching on here. Please read it.
June 25, 2019
I've read this book every year since 1991, and it is never the same book. Like so many things in this world, The Sun Also Rises improves with age and attention.
Some readings I find myself in love with Lady Brett Ashley. Then I am firmly in Jake Barnes' camp, feeling his pain and wondering how he stays sane with all that happens around him. Another time I can't help but feel that Robert Cohn is getting a shitty deal and find his behavior not only understandable but restrained. Or I am with Mike and Bill and Romero on the periphery where the hurricane made by Brett and Jake and Robert destroys spirits or fun or nothing (which is decidedly something).
And then I am against them all as though they were my sworn enemies or my family. No matter what I feel while reading The Sun Also Rises, it is Hemingway's richest novel for me.
I feel it was written for me. And sometimes feel it was written by me (I surely wish it was).
Hemingway's language, his characterizations, his love for all the people he writes about (no matter how unsavory they may be), his love of women and men, his empathy with the pain people feel in life and love, his touch with locale, his integration of sport as metaphor and setting, his getting everything just right with nothing out of place and nothing superfluous, all of this makes The Sun Also Rises his most important novel.
It is the Hemingway short story writ large. It is the book he should be remembered for but isn't. I often wonder why that is, and the conclusion I come to is this: The Sun Also Rises is too real, too true, too painful for the average reader to stomach. And many who can are predisposed to hate Hemingway.
A terrible shame that so many miss something so achingly beautiful.
Some readings I find myself in love with Lady Brett Ashley. Then I am firmly in Jake Barnes' camp, feeling his pain and wondering how he stays sane with all that happens around him. Another time I can't help but feel that Robert Cohn is getting a shitty deal and find his behavior not only understandable but restrained. Or I am with Mike and Bill and Romero on the periphery where the hurricane made by Brett and Jake and Robert destroys spirits or fun or nothing (which is decidedly something).
And then I am against them all as though they were my sworn enemies or my family. No matter what I feel while reading The Sun Also Rises, it is Hemingway's richest novel for me.
I feel it was written for me. And sometimes feel it was written by me (I surely wish it was).
Hemingway's language, his characterizations, his love for all the people he writes about (no matter how unsavory they may be), his love of women and men, his empathy with the pain people feel in life and love, his touch with locale, his integration of sport as metaphor and setting, his getting everything just right with nothing out of place and nothing superfluous, all of this makes The Sun Also Rises his most important novel.
It is the Hemingway short story writ large. It is the book he should be remembered for but isn't. I often wonder why that is, and the conclusion I come to is this: The Sun Also Rises is too real, too true, too painful for the average reader to stomach. And many who can are predisposed to hate Hemingway.
A terrible shame that so many miss something so achingly beautiful.
June 5, 2018
My feelings haven't changed since my last re-read of The Sun Also Rises (my earlier review is below). I'm still amazed at how fully the characters come alive on the page! I don't think The Sun Also Rises is for everyone; however, nearly from beginning to end, I'm engaged in the story.
Just finished a re-read of The Sun Also Rises (my favorite Hemingway book-last read in 2014). I didn’t provide a review at the time so I thought I would (try to) explain why this book speaks to me. First, it is deceptively easy to fall into with its short sentences and simple language. Nothing is forced. However, it is the mood Hemingway creates in this novel which really engages me. Perhaps that says as much about me as it does about the novel. The appeal is not so much about the story; it is how the characters move through the scenes with a sense that nothing can touch them (while conversely, they can’t really touch or be important to anyone else).
This exemplifies that lack of hope in the so-called ‘lost generation,’ that feeling that nothing you do will make a difference. The Sun Also Rises is not a feel-good book, but it allows you to re-evaluate people as social animals who constantly struggle and fail (and maybe once in a while succeed) in forging meaningful relationships. In some ways, the carefree expat life of the characters seems idyllic; however, Hemingway also makes you feel that slipping into this existence (even with its charms) might make you want to spit at the world. The Sun Also Rises captures a historical moment, perhaps not just of the lost generation, but also of future generations uncertain of their place in the world.
Just finished a re-read of The Sun Also Rises (my favorite Hemingway book-last read in 2014). I didn’t provide a review at the time so I thought I would (try to) explain why this book speaks to me. First, it is deceptively easy to fall into with its short sentences and simple language. Nothing is forced. However, it is the mood Hemingway creates in this novel which really engages me. Perhaps that says as much about me as it does about the novel. The appeal is not so much about the story; it is how the characters move through the scenes with a sense that nothing can touch them (while conversely, they can’t really touch or be important to anyone else).
This exemplifies that lack of hope in the so-called ‘lost generation,’ that feeling that nothing you do will make a difference. The Sun Also Rises is not a feel-good book, but it allows you to re-evaluate people as social animals who constantly struggle and fail (and maybe once in a while succeed) in forging meaningful relationships. In some ways, the carefree expat life of the characters seems idyllic; however, Hemingway also makes you feel that slipping into this existence (even with its charms) might make you want to spit at the world. The Sun Also Rises captures a historical moment, perhaps not just of the lost generation, but also of future generations uncertain of their place in the world.
August 2, 2021
To put it bluntly, The Sun Also Rises (aka Fiesta) is probably the most overrated little novel in the history of 20th-century American literature. It reads like an alcoholic’s travelogue set in France and Spain, jazzed up with some shallow ménage à trois plotline. But — it is not as bad as it sounds. Let me explain.
About the first half of the book is set in mid-1920s Paris. Jake Barnes, the narrator, goes from one bar to the next restaurant to the next café, eats and drinks heavily with a group of Anglo-American bohemians, provides all sorts of insignificant details about what they’ve gulped down and how much was on the bill, and then catches yet another taxi and goes on boozing away into the night. All the while doing some silly Parisian place-name dropping, to the extent that it sometimes feels as though you are reading a Paris tour pamphlet. And you could almost — as I’m sure some readers have — trace back all the places Jake & Co have been to in this book.
The second half of the novel, thankfully, goes somewhat uphill. The merry bunch of drunkards travel south to the Basque region, first to a short fishing trip in the Pyrenees — it all ends up with a few bottles of wine and a nap on the turf... and, later, at the Fiesta de San Fermín in Pamplona. Just as he does for Paris, Hemingway describes the places and local habits in the manner of a tour guide. I suspect he significantly contributed to the international renown of the Pamplona festival too. To this day, people from all over the world come running (literally) to feel the adrenaline burst, when some half-a-ton black bull charges down a narrow street into the hysterical crowd.
The high point of the novel is, doubtless, the description of the bullfight toward the end. Of course, it is not very different from what a sports commentator would do regarding a football match. But in this occasion, Hemingway’s terse, crisp, lean, hard-boiled, journalistic style does wonders to convey the atmosphere on the plaza de toros, the brutality and sometimes the beauty of the matador’s performance. So much so that, when he describes Pedro Romero’s movements when fighting the bull, it is as though Hemingways is talking about an art form — perhaps implicitly, his own craft as a writer: “Romero’s bullfighting gave real emotion, because he kept the absolute purity of line in his movements and always quietly and calmly let the horns pass him close each time.” In this case, I have to take my hat off and declare that both J.K. Rowling and David Foster Wallace can eat their heart out with their games of Quidditch and Eschaton!
The little plot regarding the group of men orbiting one beautiful woman (Brett Ashley), who ultimately is eager to sleep with all of them, is possibly autobiographical, but quite frankly vapid — Fitzgerald does a much better job at describing similar interactions. The only aspect that is quite remarkable is that these characters are all WWI veterans and, in a way, still suffer from the wounds and traumas of war. Hence, we suppose, their decadent, numbing and self-destructive behaviour with booze, sex, fistfighting and intoxicating forms of entertainment. In a way, underneath all their tough machismo, Hemingway’s characters are quite vulnerable, wretched, and even a bit pathetic.
Since Hemingway’s time, the afición for Spanish traditions and bullfighting in particular — which he shared with Bizet, Ravel, Picasso, Eisenstein, John Huston and many others — has dwindled considerably. To the point where most people now take a dim view of the corridas de toros, and on the whole, have turned to football or other sports instead. Still, the influence of Hemingway’s style has become so prevalent in our time that it has become something of a cliché. For instance, in the SF genre alone, the laddish attitude in Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land; the detailed and stripped-down descriptions in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road; the constant wine drinking in G.R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones... all these are tropes stolen from Hemingway.
About the first half of the book is set in mid-1920s Paris. Jake Barnes, the narrator, goes from one bar to the next restaurant to the next café, eats and drinks heavily with a group of Anglo-American bohemians, provides all sorts of insignificant details about what they’ve gulped down and how much was on the bill, and then catches yet another taxi and goes on boozing away into the night. All the while doing some silly Parisian place-name dropping, to the extent that it sometimes feels as though you are reading a Paris tour pamphlet. And you could almost — as I’m sure some readers have — trace back all the places Jake & Co have been to in this book.
The second half of the novel, thankfully, goes somewhat uphill. The merry bunch of drunkards travel south to the Basque region, first to a short fishing trip in the Pyrenees — it all ends up with a few bottles of wine and a nap on the turf... and, later, at the Fiesta de San Fermín in Pamplona. Just as he does for Paris, Hemingway describes the places and local habits in the manner of a tour guide. I suspect he significantly contributed to the international renown of the Pamplona festival too. To this day, people from all over the world come running (literally) to feel the adrenaline burst, when some half-a-ton black bull charges down a narrow street into the hysterical crowd.
The high point of the novel is, doubtless, the description of the bullfight toward the end. Of course, it is not very different from what a sports commentator would do regarding a football match. But in this occasion, Hemingway’s terse, crisp, lean, hard-boiled, journalistic style does wonders to convey the atmosphere on the plaza de toros, the brutality and sometimes the beauty of the matador’s performance. So much so that, when he describes Pedro Romero’s movements when fighting the bull, it is as though Hemingways is talking about an art form — perhaps implicitly, his own craft as a writer: “Romero’s bullfighting gave real emotion, because he kept the absolute purity of line in his movements and always quietly and calmly let the horns pass him close each time.” In this case, I have to take my hat off and declare that both J.K. Rowling and David Foster Wallace can eat their heart out with their games of Quidditch and Eschaton!
The little plot regarding the group of men orbiting one beautiful woman (Brett Ashley), who ultimately is eager to sleep with all of them, is possibly autobiographical, but quite frankly vapid — Fitzgerald does a much better job at describing similar interactions. The only aspect that is quite remarkable is that these characters are all WWI veterans and, in a way, still suffer from the wounds and traumas of war. Hence, we suppose, their decadent, numbing and self-destructive behaviour with booze, sex, fistfighting and intoxicating forms of entertainment. In a way, underneath all their tough machismo, Hemingway’s characters are quite vulnerable, wretched, and even a bit pathetic.
Since Hemingway’s time, the afición for Spanish traditions and bullfighting in particular — which he shared with Bizet, Ravel, Picasso, Eisenstein, John Huston and many others — has dwindled considerably. To the point where most people now take a dim view of the corridas de toros, and on the whole, have turned to football or other sports instead. Still, the influence of Hemingway’s style has become so prevalent in our time that it has become something of a cliché. For instance, in the SF genre alone, the laddish attitude in Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land; the detailed and stripped-down descriptions in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road; the constant wine drinking in G.R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones... all these are tropes stolen from Hemingway.
August 18, 2024
During the warm, friendly, tender hours of the evening twilight, as the day’s burdens slowly drifted away, my attention was redirected towards F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Life in Letters. As an alleged friend and supporter of Ernest Hemingway, Fitzgerald suggested a number of revisions to The Sun Also Rises.
“Anyhow I think parts of Sun Also are careless + ineffectual.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
My curiosity was piqued. Would the impressionable Hemingway accept these review points or reject them?
I had to find out! Investigation hats on!
The Sun Also Rises is set shortly after World War I where a group of riotous expats (Robert Cohn, Jake Barnes, Lady Brett Ashley, Bill Gorton, Mike Campbell) find themselves living in Paris with imbibing being the order of the day. After some time, the group decides to gallivant to Spain to experience the bull-fighting season and other largely forgettable activities. However, as so often happens when excess alcohol is involved, many of the characters behave badly.
While Hemingway struggles to balance dialogue with descriptive prose, The Sun Also Rises hits many of the right notes.
There are some gorgeous lines:
“I like him. But he’s just so awful.”
“Cohn had a wonderful quality of bringing out the worst in anybody.”
“It was like certain dinners I remember from the war. There was much wine, an ignored tension, and a feeling of things coming that you could not prevent from happening.”
Interestingly, some of the characters in The Sun Also Rises are based off real-life people. Lady Brett Ashley was inspired by Duff Twysden, and Hemingway struck up a friendship with hotelier, Juanito Quintana who shared his knowledge of bull fighting and ran the now-defunct Hotel Quintana. He is the inspiration behind Montoya and the Montoya Hotel.
The Prince of Wales was mentioned in relation to a medal-awarding ceremony. Now, earlier this month, I was reading out of The Great Gatsby manuscript, and there is a certain section that did not make it into the published book—a passage about a rumor that the Prince of Wales was using dope. Who was the Prince of Wales at this point in history you ask? Edward VIII, the gentleman who ended up abdicating to marry an American divorcee.
Despite the uneven pacing, the symbolism in the last half of the book was worth the endurance. Tip: You may want to look up the difference between a bull and a steer.
Some sections were slow—the fishing scene was particularly boring and seemed only to exist to make the point that someone had the bigger fish. Tee hee.
What did the great F. Scott Fitzgerald really think of The Sun Also Rises?
This two-faced friend of Hemingway wrote to Maxwell Perkins, the editor for both Fitzgerald and Hemingway at Scribner:
“I liked it but with certain qualifications. The fiesta, the fishing trip, the minor characters were fine. The lady I didn’t like, perhaps because I don’t like the original. In the mutilated man I thought Ernest bit off more than can yet be chewn between the covers of a book, then lost his nerve a little and edited the more vitalizing details out. He has since told me that something like this happened.”
Hemingway had had enough of Fitzgerald’s “help.” When Fitzgerald tried to send another set of review notes for Hemingway’s next novel, A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway wrote on the letter, “Kiss my ***” and largely ignored his advice.
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Oct Vanity Fair
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“Anyhow I think parts of Sun Also are careless + ineffectual.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
My curiosity was piqued. Would the impressionable Hemingway accept these review points or reject them?
I had to find out! Investigation hats on!
The Sun Also Rises is set shortly after World War I where a group of riotous expats (Robert Cohn, Jake Barnes, Lady Brett Ashley, Bill Gorton, Mike Campbell) find themselves living in Paris with imbibing being the order of the day. After some time, the group decides to gallivant to Spain to experience the bull-fighting season and other largely forgettable activities. However, as so often happens when excess alcohol is involved, many of the characters behave badly.
While Hemingway struggles to balance dialogue with descriptive prose, The Sun Also Rises hits many of the right notes.
There are some gorgeous lines:
“I like him. But he’s just so awful.”
“Cohn had a wonderful quality of bringing out the worst in anybody.”
“It was like certain dinners I remember from the war. There was much wine, an ignored tension, and a feeling of things coming that you could not prevent from happening.”
Interestingly, some of the characters in The Sun Also Rises are based off real-life people. Lady Brett Ashley was inspired by Duff Twysden, and Hemingway struck up a friendship with hotelier, Juanito Quintana who shared his knowledge of bull fighting and ran the now-defunct Hotel Quintana. He is the inspiration behind Montoya and the Montoya Hotel.
The Prince of Wales was mentioned in relation to a medal-awarding ceremony. Now, earlier this month, I was reading out of The Great Gatsby manuscript, and there is a certain section that did not make it into the published book—a passage about a rumor that the Prince of Wales was using dope. Who was the Prince of Wales at this point in history you ask? Edward VIII, the gentleman who ended up abdicating to marry an American divorcee.
Despite the uneven pacing, the symbolism in the last half of the book was worth the endurance. Tip: You may want to look up the difference between a bull and a steer.
Some sections were slow—the fishing scene was particularly boring and seemed only to exist to make the point that someone had the bigger fish. Tee hee.
What did the great F. Scott Fitzgerald really think of The Sun Also Rises?
This two-faced friend of Hemingway wrote to Maxwell Perkins, the editor for both Fitzgerald and Hemingway at Scribner:
“I liked it but with certain qualifications. The fiesta, the fishing trip, the minor characters were fine. The lady I didn’t like, perhaps because I don’t like the original. In the mutilated man I thought Ernest bit off more than can yet be chewn between the covers of a book, then lost his nerve a little and edited the more vitalizing details out. He has since told me that something like this happened.”
Hemingway had had enough of Fitzgerald’s “help.” When Fitzgerald tried to send another set of review notes for Hemingway’s next novel, A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway wrote on the letter, “Kiss my ***” and largely ignored his advice.
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Feb Birdsong
Mar Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Berniere
Apr War and Peace
May The Woman in White
Jun Atonement
Jul The Shadow of the Wind
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Oct Vanity Fair
Nov A Fine Balance
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October 15, 2021
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
The Sun Also Rises is a 1926 novel written by American author Ernest Hemingway about a group of American and British expatriates who travel from Paris to the Festival of San Fermín in Pamplona to watch the running of the bulls and the bullfights. An early and enduring modernist novel.
The Sun Also Rises, the brilliant novel, which established Ernest as a great, and stylish writer, and one of the most prominent novelists of his time.
The pleasant and sad story of a few Americans, and a young Englishman, displaced from their homeland, living in Paris, and going on a tour of "Pamplona" in Spain, this novel is also have been a fateful one in the formation of Hemingway's unique style.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز بیستم ماه اکتبر سال 2012میلادی
عنوان: خورشید همچنان میدمد؛ نویسنده: ارنست همینگوی؛ مترجم همایون مقدم؛ 1333، در242ص؛ چاپ دیگر تهران، سازمان کتابهای جیبی، 1340؛ در263ص؛ موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده 20م
مترجم: عرفان قانعی فرد؛ تهران، نگاه سبز، 1379؛ در 243ص؛
مترجم: احسان لامع؛ تهران، نگاه، 1389؛ در 308ص؛ شابک: 9789643515683؛
خورشید همچنان میدمد، نخستین رمان درخشان، از نگاره های «ارنست همینگوی» بوده که ایشان را، در جایگاه نویسنده ای بزرگوار، دارای سبک، و از برجسته ترین رماننویسان روزگار خود، استوار کرده است؛ سرگذشت خوشایند، و اندوهبار چند «آمریکایی»، و «انگیسی» جوان، آواره از میهن خویش است، که در «پاریس» زندگی میکنند، و برای گشت و گذار به «پامپلونا»ی «اسپانیا»، میروند، این رمان بلندای سرنوشت سازی در شکلگیری سبک یگانه ی «همینگوی» نیز بوده است
رمان، بازگو کننده ی رابطه ی تلخ و ژرف و پیچیده ی «لیدی برت اشلی» ثروتمند و پر زرق و برق، و «جیک بارنز» زخم خورده از جنگ است؛ در کشاکش ورشکستگی اخلاقی، فروپاشی معنوی، عشقهای ناکام، و انگارهای ویرانگر، که روشنگر آن سالهای پر تب و تاب بوده، با توانایی و زیبایی خیره کننده ای، سرگذشت «نسل گمشده» را، روایت میکند؛ در بیشتر نظرسنجیهایی که در سالهای بگذشته در جهان «انگلیسی» زبان، انجام شده، کتاب «خورشید همچنان میدمد»، به عنوان یکی از پنجاه، یا صد رمان برجسته ی سده ی بیستم میلادی برگزیده شده است؛
نقل از متن: («رابرت کوهن» زمانی قهرمان میان وزن مشتزنی بود؛ خیال نکنید این عنوان روی من، تاثیر زیادی گذاشته است؛ ولی از نظر «کوهن» خیلی اهمیت داشت؛ او به هیچچیز مشتزنی نمیبالید، و راستش از آن بدش هم میآمد؛ اما آن را با دقت و مشقت فراوان یاد گرفته بود، تا در برابر حس حقارت، و شرمندگی، نسبت به رفتاری که، با او در مقام «یهودی» میشد، مقابله کند؛ او وقتی میدانست، میتواند هر کسی را که در برابرش قد علم میکند، با ضربه ای کارش را تمام کند، به آرامش درونی میرسید؛ و چون پسری بسیار نازنین، و خجالتی بود، به جز باشگاه در هیچ جا با کسی مبارزه نمیکرد؛ او شاگرد ارشد «اسپایدر کلی» بود؛ «اسپایدر کلی» به همگی شاگردان جوان خود یاد داده بود تا مثل سبک وزنها مبارزه کنند؛ مهم نبود که صدوپنج پوند باشند، یا دویست و پنج پوند؛ اما به نظر میرسید که او «کوهن» را برای هر موقعیتی آماده میکرد؛ او خیلی فرز بود؛ کارش چنان خوب بود که «اسپایدر»، فوراً او را به مسابقه های زیادی فرستاد؛ همیشه خدا هم دماغش را روی صورتش صاف میکردند؛ اینکار باعث شد تا بیرغبتی «کوهن» به مشتزنی بیشتر شود؛ ولی به نوعی غریب، در درونش ارضاء میشد، و این امر به یقین زخم دماغش را بهبود میبخشید؛ آخرین سالی که «در پرینستون» بود، به مطالعه زیاد روی آورد و عینکی شد؛ تا آنجا که من یادم میآید هرگز کسی از هم دوره های او را ندیده ام که او را یادشان باشد؛ آنها حتا یادشان نمیآمد که او قهرمان میان وزن مشتزنی است
من به آدمهای ساده و رک، به خصوص وقتی که داستانهایشان عین هم باشد، اعتمادی ندارم و همواره بدگمان بودم که «رابرت کوهن» حتا قهرمان میان وزن مشت زنی بوده باشد؛ شاید اسبی دماغ او را له کرده، یا مادرش از چیزی ترسیده بود؛ ممکن است وقتی تازه پا میگرفته، به جایی خورده؛ ولی آخر سر کسی را پیدا کردم، که از زبان «اسپایدر کلی» صحت موضوع را تایید کرد؛ «اسپایدر کلی» نه تنها «کوهن» را فراموش نکرده بود، اغلب جویا بود که چه اتفاقی برایش افتاده است)؛ پایان نقل
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 16/10/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 22/07/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
The Sun Also Rises is a 1926 novel written by American author Ernest Hemingway about a group of American and British expatriates who travel from Paris to the Festival of San Fermín in Pamplona to watch the running of the bulls and the bullfights. An early and enduring modernist novel.
The Sun Also Rises, the brilliant novel, which established Ernest as a great, and stylish writer, and one of the most prominent novelists of his time.
The pleasant and sad story of a few Americans, and a young Englishman, displaced from their homeland, living in Paris, and going on a tour of "Pamplona" in Spain, this novel is also have been a fateful one in the formation of Hemingway's unique style.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز بیستم ماه اکتبر سال 2012میلادی
عنوان: خورشید همچنان میدمد؛ نویسنده: ارنست همینگوی؛ مترجم همایون مقدم؛ 1333، در242ص؛ چاپ دیگر تهران، سازمان کتابهای جیبی، 1340؛ در263ص؛ موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده 20م
مترجم: عرفان قانعی فرد؛ تهران، نگاه سبز، 1379؛ در 243ص؛
مترجم: احسان لامع؛ تهران، نگاه، 1389؛ در 308ص؛ شابک: 9789643515683؛
خورشید همچنان میدمد، نخستین رمان درخشان، از نگاره های «ارنست همینگوی» بوده که ایشان را، در جایگاه نویسنده ای بزرگوار، دارای سبک، و از برجسته ترین رماننویسان روزگار خود، استوار کرده است؛ سرگذشت خوشایند، و اندوهبار چند «آمریکایی»، و «انگیسی» جوان، آواره از میهن خویش است، که در «پاریس» زندگی میکنند، و برای گشت و گذار به «پامپلونا»ی «اسپانیا»، میروند، این رمان بلندای سرنوشت سازی در شکلگیری سبک یگانه ی «همینگوی» نیز بوده است
رمان، بازگو کننده ی رابطه ی تلخ و ژرف و پیچیده ی «لیدی برت اشلی» ثروتمند و پر زرق و برق، و «جیک بارنز» زخم خورده از جنگ است؛ در کشاکش ورشکستگی اخلاقی، فروپاشی معنوی، عشقهای ناکام، و انگارهای ویرانگر، که روشنگر آن سالهای پر تب و تاب بوده، با توانایی و زیبایی خیره کننده ای، سرگذشت «نسل گمشده» را، روایت میکند؛ در بیشتر نظرسنجیهایی که در سالهای بگذشته در جهان «انگلیسی» زبان، انجام شده، کتاب «خورشید همچنان میدمد»، به عنوان یکی از پنجاه، یا صد رمان برجسته ی سده ی بیستم میلادی برگزیده شده است؛
نقل از متن: («رابرت کوهن» زمانی قهرمان میان وزن مشتزنی بود؛ خیال نکنید این عنوان روی من، تاثیر زیادی گذاشته است؛ ولی از نظر «کوهن» خیلی اهمیت داشت؛ او به هیچچیز مشتزنی نمیبالید، و راستش از آن بدش هم میآمد؛ اما آن را با دقت و مشقت فراوان یاد گرفته بود، تا در برابر حس حقارت، و شرمندگی، نسبت به رفتاری که، با او در مقام «یهودی» میشد، مقابله کند؛ او وقتی میدانست، میتواند هر کسی را که در برابرش قد علم میکند، با ضربه ای کارش را تمام کند، به آرامش درونی میرسید؛ و چون پسری بسیار نازنین، و خجالتی بود، به جز باشگاه در هیچ جا با کسی مبارزه نمیکرد؛ او شاگرد ارشد «اسپایدر کلی» بود؛ «اسپایدر کلی» به همگی شاگردان جوان خود یاد داده بود تا مثل سبک وزنها مبارزه کنند؛ مهم نبود که صدوپنج پوند باشند، یا دویست و پنج پوند؛ اما به نظر میرسید که او «کوهن» را برای هر موقعیتی آماده میکرد؛ او خیلی فرز بود؛ کارش چنان خوب بود که «اسپایدر»، فوراً او را به مسابقه های زیادی فرستاد؛ همیشه خدا هم دماغش را روی صورتش صاف میکردند؛ اینکار باعث شد تا بیرغبتی «کوهن» به مشتزنی بیشتر شود؛ ولی به نوعی غریب، در درونش ارضاء میشد، و این امر به یقین زخم دماغش را بهبود میبخشید؛ آخرین سالی که «در پرینستون» بود، به مطالعه زیاد روی آورد و عینکی شد؛ تا آنجا که من یادم میآید هرگز کسی از هم دوره های او را ندیده ام که او را یادشان باشد؛ آنها حتا یادشان نمیآمد که او قهرمان میان وزن مشتزنی است
من به آدمهای ساده و رک، به خصوص وقتی که داستانهایشان عین هم باشد، اعتمادی ندارم و همواره بدگمان بودم که «رابرت کوهن» حتا قهرمان میان وزن مشت زنی بوده باشد؛ شاید اسبی دماغ او را له کرده، یا مادرش از چیزی ترسیده بود؛ ممکن است وقتی تازه پا میگرفته، به جایی خورده؛ ولی آخر سر کسی را پیدا کردم، که از زبان «اسپایدر کلی» صحت موضوع را تایید کرد؛ «اسپایدر کلی» نه تنها «کوهن» را فراموش نکرده بود، اغلب جویا بود که چه اتفاقی برایش افتاده است)؛ پایان نقل
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 16/10/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 22/07/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
October 31, 2024
That summer of 1969, the experience of reading this book on my friend Doug’s recommendation was a peaceful hiatus from collegiate life.
Doug worked at a nearby swimming pool as a lifeguard, and I was immersed in reading up extensively for my Eng Lit degree.
Larry, across the street from Doug, would share his Yamaha motorbike seat with me in the evenings for long rides, while Doug zipped around closer to home on his Honda 50 scooter.
It was a sun-filled summer, perfect for a Hemingway novel in the same vein.
I loved it and could relate.
Its hero, Jake, was a lot like me. Uncompromisingly straight in orientation, we both fell victim to a private Daemon.
And Jake drinks.
Drinks to forget the war injury that has driven a wedge between him and his ladylove Brett. So they usually end up the evenings getting a little happy.
Oh, so you say the sun also rises? Dang, missed it again.
The real problem with Jake - and his great creator Hemingway - is that it’s impossible for him to forget.
But you gotta deal with it!
And balancing homophobia with the blurred lines of vision afforded by drink always backfires.
If you blur those lines they’re gonna bite you back. Happened to me, too, the year after I read this. Always keep one eye open.
Hemingway didn’t even believe in precautions.
When he died in the JFK Era there was new hope in the air.
But Hemingway didn’t feel it.
All he felt were his demons.
Folks, never make a habit of drowning your demons. For your self pity will then give them strength.
DEAL with them now -
BEFORE they roar back, seeking revenge.
Doug worked at a nearby swimming pool as a lifeguard, and I was immersed in reading up extensively for my Eng Lit degree.
Larry, across the street from Doug, would share his Yamaha motorbike seat with me in the evenings for long rides, while Doug zipped around closer to home on his Honda 50 scooter.
It was a sun-filled summer, perfect for a Hemingway novel in the same vein.
I loved it and could relate.
Its hero, Jake, was a lot like me. Uncompromisingly straight in orientation, we both fell victim to a private Daemon.
And Jake drinks.
Drinks to forget the war injury that has driven a wedge between him and his ladylove Brett. So they usually end up the evenings getting a little happy.
Oh, so you say the sun also rises? Dang, missed it again.
The real problem with Jake - and his great creator Hemingway - is that it’s impossible for him to forget.
But you gotta deal with it!
And balancing homophobia with the blurred lines of vision afforded by drink always backfires.
If you blur those lines they’re gonna bite you back. Happened to me, too, the year after I read this. Always keep one eye open.
Hemingway didn’t even believe in precautions.
When he died in the JFK Era there was new hope in the air.
But Hemingway didn’t feel it.
All he felt were his demons.
Folks, never make a habit of drowning your demons. For your self pity will then give them strength.
DEAL with them now -
BEFORE they roar back, seeking revenge.
September 24, 2021
The Sun Also Rises has about it an aura of the time long gone – lost days of the lost generation. It seems to be more a chronicle or a diary than a novel – mostly about what the personages ate and drank... And a wee bit about life…
If one turns one’s life into a movable feast there’s no time to stop and think.
I can’t stand it to think my life is going so fast and I’m not really living it.
If one turns one’s life into a movable feast there’s no time to stop and think.
July 7, 2023
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway’s brilliant 1926 novel about the Lost Generation is a must read for Twentieth Century literature.
I was assigned this as a junior in college, our English professor told us to read it and to be prepared to talk next week. The next class was spent on students describing their thoughts about the novel and what we thought it meant. With a smug smile and somewhat of a condescending air, the instructor stepped form his podium and said something to the effect that readers had been missing the point for decades.
This was my first experience with an unreliable narrator. Literature would never be the same again.
Complex and told on many levels, this also contains some of the most archetypal characters in all of modern literature, highlighted by the inimitable Lady Brett. Dangerous and contrary to Hemingway’s ideals of masculine superiority, Lady Brett Ashley would be recreated somewhat in his later story “The Short Happy Life of Frances Macomber."
2023 reread -
Imagine being invited to a rich person’s home. The residence is immaculate, the serving staff are gracious and hospitable, the hosts are kind and formally accepting. Everyone is very nice and the setting is genteel and pleasant. And then you realize that there are no chairs, none at all; unless you choose to sit on the floor, there is no where to sit. There are also no refreshments. When asked, the host replies that unfortunately there are no public restrooms. Everyone is standing and you then realize everyone is waiting for you to leave. With smiles and courteous platitudes you are escorted out and you hear the lock click behind you as you depart.
Hemingway serves us up a subtle invitation to a fiesta, but it is for a club of which we do not belong. We are invited guests, but we are not truly welcome, and though our host is polite and observes all of the requisite etiquette, we never feel comfortable here and that is by design. Our guide describes for us a tension, an unsettling and inhospitable crisis between friends and lovers and we are voyeurs, being a spectator to a bloody bullfight that we are ill equipped to witness.
A masterpiece certainly, a book in the high atmosphere of literary greatness and yet one that can easily deceive the reader and leave its audience with an uncertainty, like receiving a firm handshake and a winning smile, only in passing realizing that the one smiling and warmly shaking your hand had been crying and was only just holding it all together.
This was my first experience with an unreliable narrator. In most books, the narrator is on our side, they are a guide for us to the action of the story. Frequently they are also the protagonist and the tale is of and / or about them. Hemingway was too good to leave it at that and our narrator mostly tells the truth, sometimes with fastidious accuracy. But an observant reader will see the signs and will question which statements are correct and which have been tainted with bias and jealousy. More than that, we are allowed to see not just the fine tapestries and expensive settings, but also a glimpse into the back rooms where hypocrisy, cruelty and inhumanity dwell and lurk.
This is filled with colorful, memorable characters. The most obvious standouts are Jake and Lady Brett, but Robert Cohn, Bill Gorton, Mike Campbell, Frances Clyne and Romero and Belmonte are also mesmerizing and from these oblique vantages we see Hemingway’s genius demonstrated.
First published in 1926, when Ernest was 27, this is the story of the Lost Generation and its convoluted presentation has been fascinating and confusing readers for almost a hundred years and will likely continue for time unknown ahead. This is a fairly timeless story about love and loss and war and heartbreak and class distinctions and being involved in something that you can nonetheless never truly be a part.
This is after all Hemingway and there are also excellent outdoor scenes and fine descriptions of fishing and bullfights. While this aspect of the book will likely get little attention, this demonstrates Hemingway’s unique ability to convey the spirit of action and here we see some of his best sports writing.
Sex. Hemingway describes Brett as a modern woman, unfettered by conventional moralities, but the author goes further and shows how sex, not just romantic love, can also be a cruelly divisive element in this society.
We can understand the human costs of this drama, but we will never be a part of this generation and so can never truly, fully understand. We are invited to see and experience but not to stay.
I was assigned this as a junior in college, our English professor told us to read it and to be prepared to talk next week. The next class was spent on students describing their thoughts about the novel and what we thought it meant. With a smug smile and somewhat of a condescending air, the instructor stepped form his podium and said something to the effect that readers had been missing the point for decades.
This was my first experience with an unreliable narrator. Literature would never be the same again.
Complex and told on many levels, this also contains some of the most archetypal characters in all of modern literature, highlighted by the inimitable Lady Brett. Dangerous and contrary to Hemingway’s ideals of masculine superiority, Lady Brett Ashley would be recreated somewhat in his later story “The Short Happy Life of Frances Macomber."
2023 reread -
Imagine being invited to a rich person’s home. The residence is immaculate, the serving staff are gracious and hospitable, the hosts are kind and formally accepting. Everyone is very nice and the setting is genteel and pleasant. And then you realize that there are no chairs, none at all; unless you choose to sit on the floor, there is no where to sit. There are also no refreshments. When asked, the host replies that unfortunately there are no public restrooms. Everyone is standing and you then realize everyone is waiting for you to leave. With smiles and courteous platitudes you are escorted out and you hear the lock click behind you as you depart.
Hemingway serves us up a subtle invitation to a fiesta, but it is for a club of which we do not belong. We are invited guests, but we are not truly welcome, and though our host is polite and observes all of the requisite etiquette, we never feel comfortable here and that is by design. Our guide describes for us a tension, an unsettling and inhospitable crisis between friends and lovers and we are voyeurs, being a spectator to a bloody bullfight that we are ill equipped to witness.
A masterpiece certainly, a book in the high atmosphere of literary greatness and yet one that can easily deceive the reader and leave its audience with an uncertainty, like receiving a firm handshake and a winning smile, only in passing realizing that the one smiling and warmly shaking your hand had been crying and was only just holding it all together.
This was my first experience with an unreliable narrator. In most books, the narrator is on our side, they are a guide for us to the action of the story. Frequently they are also the protagonist and the tale is of and / or about them. Hemingway was too good to leave it at that and our narrator mostly tells the truth, sometimes with fastidious accuracy. But an observant reader will see the signs and will question which statements are correct and which have been tainted with bias and jealousy. More than that, we are allowed to see not just the fine tapestries and expensive settings, but also a glimpse into the back rooms where hypocrisy, cruelty and inhumanity dwell and lurk.
This is filled with colorful, memorable characters. The most obvious standouts are Jake and Lady Brett, but Robert Cohn, Bill Gorton, Mike Campbell, Frances Clyne and Romero and Belmonte are also mesmerizing and from these oblique vantages we see Hemingway’s genius demonstrated.
First published in 1926, when Ernest was 27, this is the story of the Lost Generation and its convoluted presentation has been fascinating and confusing readers for almost a hundred years and will likely continue for time unknown ahead. This is a fairly timeless story about love and loss and war and heartbreak and class distinctions and being involved in something that you can nonetheless never truly be a part.
This is after all Hemingway and there are also excellent outdoor scenes and fine descriptions of fishing and bullfights. While this aspect of the book will likely get little attention, this demonstrates Hemingway’s unique ability to convey the spirit of action and here we see some of his best sports writing.
Sex. Hemingway describes Brett as a modern woman, unfettered by conventional moralities, but the author goes further and shows how sex, not just romantic love, can also be a cruelly divisive element in this society.
We can understand the human costs of this drama, but we will never be a part of this generation and so can never truly, fully understand. We are invited to see and experience but not to stay.
December 8, 2023
✍🏻 The Style ✍🏻
You have to like his somewhat flat unemotional journalistic style applied to the novel to enjoy him. This is a good story but as I say you have to be able to ease into his dispassionate almost ironic approach, the approach of an observer who cares about what they are seeing but remains somewhat distant.
I recall a friend saying they had read Hemingway for the first time but assumed it had been an earlier work because his style seemed undeveloped. When I told them that was his style they’d heard everyone talking about they were surprised and disappointed.
I would say his style works well in several cases. When a soldier is watching blood drip from a ragged wound and expresses no emotional connection to casualties and the horrors of war it carries a strong impact. When the old man is fighting off the sharks and it’s described in that same flat tone it has a certain power more descriptive and emotive language would not have.
Everyone has their tastes. You see that diversity every day on Goodreads. Ernest is embraced or not.
[Admittedly, this is less a review of the novel than a review of Hem’s writing style. I will rectify this oversight with a fresh rereading of the novel and a new review focused on the storyline.]
📚 Some short Hemingways I would recommend are: Big Two Hearted River 1 & 2; The Snows of Kilimanjaro; The Old Man and the Sea; any of the Nick Adams stories set in a rural America (Idaho) of the 1930s; any of his pieces on writing.
You have to like his somewhat flat unemotional journalistic style applied to the novel to enjoy him. This is a good story but as I say you have to be able to ease into his dispassionate almost ironic approach, the approach of an observer who cares about what they are seeing but remains somewhat distant.
I recall a friend saying they had read Hemingway for the first time but assumed it had been an earlier work because his style seemed undeveloped. When I told them that was his style they’d heard everyone talking about they were surprised and disappointed.
I would say his style works well in several cases. When a soldier is watching blood drip from a ragged wound and expresses no emotional connection to casualties and the horrors of war it carries a strong impact. When the old man is fighting off the sharks and it’s described in that same flat tone it has a certain power more descriptive and emotive language would not have.
Everyone has their tastes. You see that diversity every day on Goodreads. Ernest is embraced or not.
[Admittedly, this is less a review of the novel than a review of Hem’s writing style. I will rectify this oversight with a fresh rereading of the novel and a new review focused on the storyline.]
📚 Some short Hemingways I would recommend are: Big Two Hearted River 1 & 2; The Snows of Kilimanjaro; The Old Man and the Sea; any of the Nick Adams stories set in a rural America (Idaho) of the 1930s; any of his pieces on writing.
April 21, 2011
There’s a very nice restaurant that my wife and I frequent that has become our go-to spot for special occasions like birthdays or anniversaries. When we first started going here, I saw that they were serving absinthe. I’d been curious about the drink since first reading Hemingway’s descriptions of it in The Sun Also Rises back in high school.
Banned for most of the twentieth century in the U.S. for wildly exaggerated claims of it’s hallucinogenic qualities, it was made available to be imported here again in 2007. When I saw it on the menu, my mind immediately conjured images of Hemingway and his fellow expatriates sipping it in Paris with ironic detachment. (The restaurant even features a Hemingway inspired version mixed with champagne that’s called Death in the Afternoon.) I wanted to try some, but it’s $12 a glass, which seemed a bit pricey for the sake of literary cocktail experimentation. And I gotta admit that I was slightly nervous about having some kind of absinthe-based freak-out.
However, I’ve been on a Jazz Age book kick lately, and a few weeks back when we were having dinner at this place, I finally said to hell with it and ordered a glass. The waiter asked if I’d tried it before and must have had some bad experiences with newbies drinking it. I promised him I was indulging for purely experimental purposes and would not hold him responsible.
So he brought the absinthe out and did the whole bit with the special spoon and the sugar cube. I would have been lost there except I’d seen Johnny Depp do this routine in From Hell.
Finally, I tried my first sip.
It tasted like a combination of black licorice and what I can only assume is the flavor of rotting corpses. And I hate black licorice so much that I almost would have preferred just the rotting corpse taste.
However, when you pay $12 for a drink, you choke that mother down. So I drank it, cursing Hemingway the entire time and wishing I could dig his body up and reanimate him so I could give him another shotgun blast to the face for ever putting the idea of drinking that vile stuff into my head in the first place.
Oh, and that night, I had some of the most fucked up nightmares I’ve had in years so maybe the hallucinogenic qualities weren’t exaggerated all that much.
So when I was re-reading The Sun Also Rises and Jake gets completely hammered on absinthe, I almost tossed my cookies as the memory of that black licorice flavored corpse came back to me. Repeated exposure to that drink would also explain why Jake would put up with Brett’s routine. Your junk doesn’t work but you keep hanging out with the woman who claims to love you but demands your help in hooking up with other men? I would have been on a boat to Antarctica to get away from her man-eating ass, but he was deranged from drinking that shit.
This book is still pretty damn good, but I’m deducting a star just because it tricked me into trying absinthe. Take that, Hemingway!
Banned for most of the twentieth century in the U.S. for wildly exaggerated claims of it’s hallucinogenic qualities, it was made available to be imported here again in 2007. When I saw it on the menu, my mind immediately conjured images of Hemingway and his fellow expatriates sipping it in Paris with ironic detachment. (The restaurant even features a Hemingway inspired version mixed with champagne that’s called Death in the Afternoon.) I wanted to try some, but it’s $12 a glass, which seemed a bit pricey for the sake of literary cocktail experimentation. And I gotta admit that I was slightly nervous about having some kind of absinthe-based freak-out.
However, I’ve been on a Jazz Age book kick lately, and a few weeks back when we were having dinner at this place, I finally said to hell with it and ordered a glass. The waiter asked if I’d tried it before and must have had some bad experiences with newbies drinking it. I promised him I was indulging for purely experimental purposes and would not hold him responsible.
So he brought the absinthe out and did the whole bit with the special spoon and the sugar cube. I would have been lost there except I’d seen Johnny Depp do this routine in From Hell.
Finally, I tried my first sip.
It tasted like a combination of black licorice and what I can only assume is the flavor of rotting corpses. And I hate black licorice so much that I almost would have preferred just the rotting corpse taste.
However, when you pay $12 for a drink, you choke that mother down. So I drank it, cursing Hemingway the entire time and wishing I could dig his body up and reanimate him so I could give him another shotgun blast to the face for ever putting the idea of drinking that vile stuff into my head in the first place.
Oh, and that night, I had some of the most fucked up nightmares I’ve had in years so maybe the hallucinogenic qualities weren’t exaggerated all that much.
So when I was re-reading The Sun Also Rises and Jake gets completely hammered on absinthe, I almost tossed my cookies as the memory of that black licorice flavored corpse came back to me. Repeated exposure to that drink would also explain why Jake would put up with Brett’s routine. Your junk doesn’t work but you keep hanging out with the woman who claims to love you but demands your help in hooking up with other men? I would have been on a boat to Antarctica to get away from her man-eating ass, but he was deranged from drinking that shit.
This book is still pretty damn good, but I’m deducting a star just because it tricked me into trying absinthe. Take that, Hemingway!
January 7, 2019
fulfilling book riot's 2018 read harder challenge task #24: An assigned book you hated (or never finished)
the three-star rating is from my first go-round - from my memory of reading it in high school, and seems higher than the truth. let's see how karen enjoys this tale of a busted-peen, weary expatriates and bullfighting as an adult.
**********************************************
obviously this was going to be the read harder task i saved for last. i can hold a book-grudge as well as anyone, and i don’t need to be wasting any of my precious reading-time on a book that has already displeased me once. but i approached the task in good faith - of all the books i have ever been assigned in my life, there were only two i could remember disliking* - this (AP english junior year) and The Red Pony (honors english 8th grade). since i have loved every other steinbeck i have read but as far as hemingway goes, i've only read this (and maybe a short story here or there), it seemed more magnanimous to give papa a shot with an older, wiser karen.
older, wiser karen didn’t love it, either. older wiser karen has read The Alexandria Quartet and so has very little patience for any tale of the romantic or platonic entanglements of a buncha boozy and worldweary expats that is not as beautifully written as Justine.
however, you can play a fun drinking game with this one using the endless repetition of words like ‘swell’ and ‘chap’ and ‘tight’ or a game of millennial outrage bingo for all the occurrences of ‘nigger’ and ‘faggot’ and the baked-in misogyny and anti-semitic flavor. although it’s possible that it’s not anti-semitic so much as it is characters disliking one particular jewish character who, it must be said, is pretty irritating - smug, clingy, thirsty.
on that last point, everyone in this whole damn book is thirsty in the non-slang sense. there is some truly heroic drinking going on in this book - one imagines a row of rotting livers wincing at the excess…
“This is a good place," he said.
"There's a lot of liquor," I agreed.”
why this was/is assigned at a high school level is bewildering (unless as a cautionary tale to teen drinking). assigning books like this is what makes teens think they hate reading. there’s nothing in this that speaks to a teen audience. sure, teens can read it, understand the words, identify the themes, but that’s the work part of it without the pleasure. there just isn’t anything here to relate to, for that age. kids full to the brim with sexual sap aren’t going to appreciate the incel woes of a man with a war-wounded peen resignedly drowning his feels for a vigorous lusty woman. obsessive love, yes, but the quiet sputtering disappointment of said obsessive love? bitch, please. you give those kids what they want - you feed their need for drama and trauma - you give them Wuthering Heights, you give them The Great Gatsby, you give them everybody’s dead and ruined and glamorously broken by the end, not just some dusty guy drifting from place to place watching a woman burn (figuratively).
this book is exhausting. it is about exhaustion - emotional, moral, physical, romantic, spiritual, intellectual exhaustion. the one thing i wasn’t when i was 16 was exhausted. and while i am exhausted now, as weary and brokendown as many of the grinning-through-it characters in this book, it didn’t leave any particular impression on me this time, either. is this a book report yet? probably not, but it’s what you’re getting.
three stars because why not?
*and also Moby-Dick or, The Whale, but i already gave that asshole his second chance.
come to my blog!
the three-star rating is from my first go-round - from my memory of reading it in high school, and seems higher than the truth. let's see how karen enjoys this tale of a busted-peen, weary expatriates and bullfighting as an adult.
**********************************************
obviously this was going to be the read harder task i saved for last. i can hold a book-grudge as well as anyone, and i don’t need to be wasting any of my precious reading-time on a book that has already displeased me once. but i approached the task in good faith - of all the books i have ever been assigned in my life, there were only two i could remember disliking* - this (AP english junior year) and The Red Pony (honors english 8th grade). since i have loved every other steinbeck i have read but as far as hemingway goes, i've only read this (and maybe a short story here or there), it seemed more magnanimous to give papa a shot with an older, wiser karen.
older, wiser karen didn’t love it, either. older wiser karen has read The Alexandria Quartet and so has very little patience for any tale of the romantic or platonic entanglements of a buncha boozy and worldweary expats that is not as beautifully written as Justine.
however, you can play a fun drinking game with this one using the endless repetition of words like ‘swell’ and ‘chap’ and ‘tight’ or a game of millennial outrage bingo for all the occurrences of ‘nigger’ and ‘faggot’ and the baked-in misogyny and anti-semitic flavor. although it’s possible that it’s not anti-semitic so much as it is characters disliking one particular jewish character who, it must be said, is pretty irritating - smug, clingy, thirsty.
on that last point, everyone in this whole damn book is thirsty in the non-slang sense. there is some truly heroic drinking going on in this book - one imagines a row of rotting livers wincing at the excess…
“This is a good place," he said.
"There's a lot of liquor," I agreed.”
why this was/is assigned at a high school level is bewildering (unless as a cautionary tale to teen drinking). assigning books like this is what makes teens think they hate reading. there’s nothing in this that speaks to a teen audience. sure, teens can read it, understand the words, identify the themes, but that’s the work part of it without the pleasure. there just isn’t anything here to relate to, for that age. kids full to the brim with sexual sap aren’t going to appreciate the incel woes of a man with a war-wounded peen resignedly drowning his feels for a vigorous lusty woman. obsessive love, yes, but the quiet sputtering disappointment of said obsessive love? bitch, please. you give those kids what they want - you feed their need for drama and trauma - you give them Wuthering Heights, you give them The Great Gatsby, you give them everybody’s dead and ruined and glamorously broken by the end, not just some dusty guy drifting from place to place watching a woman burn (figuratively).
this book is exhausting. it is about exhaustion - emotional, moral, physical, romantic, spiritual, intellectual exhaustion. the one thing i wasn’t when i was 16 was exhausted. and while i am exhausted now, as weary and brokendown as many of the grinning-through-it characters in this book, it didn’t leave any particular impression on me this time, either. is this a book report yet? probably not, but it’s what you’re getting.
three stars because why not?
*and also Moby-Dick or, The Whale, but i already gave that asshole his second chance.
come to my blog!
January 10, 2022
When I think "work of classic literature from 1926 written by the kinda old white guy whose books single-handedly populate the syllabi of the cool English teachers the freshman girls have crushes on," I don't assume I will pick that novel up, be unable to put it down, finish it extremely quickly, and give it almost five stars.
(Also, as a former member of the aforementioned freshman girls, I'm qualified to make that assertion.)
Sometimes, people who don't rate books critically look at the ratings of myself or others like me and say, "Pick books you'll actually like, then." Or, "Someone doesn't know how to decide what to read."
And in response to them I say: to the former - I'm trying, and to the latter - correct.
I never know what I'll like, because I like everything and nothing. I have been known to read in every genre and to be disappointed by the ones I read most. I have tried picking up authors I've always liked to be treated to a garbage fire, and authors I've despised have written some of my yearly favorites. When it comes to reading I have learned to live and let live and hope for the best.
Which is why I should have picked this up sooner.
I owned this book for 6 years and never even considered picking it up. I assumed I wouldn't like it, but I picked it up to be delighted by the following:
- beautiful, clean writing
- a plot I was invested in
- characters who interested me from the first page to the last, from our protagonist to every supporting character
There were things I have historically hated reading about (bullfighting) that this time I found enjoyable. There were tropes I've always detested (cheating and affairs and what have you) that didn't bother me in the least. There were clichés of the time (melancholy men and the women whose love they feel entitled to) done differently enough to be a pleasure.
I'm still in a state of disbelief.
Bottom line: This is my first Ernest Hemingway book, but baby, it won't be my last!!!
---------------
pre-review
i've owned this book for six years and i've meant to read it for even longer and never once in all that time did i expect to like it this much.
review to come / 4.5 stars
---------------
currently-reading updates
feeling: scholarly.
clear ur sh*t book 40
quest 19: a book you forgot you owned
---------------
tbr review
i've never read an ernest hemingway book, but i have had two of them on my owned tbr for six years. so that's kind of the same thing
(Also, as a former member of the aforementioned freshman girls, I'm qualified to make that assertion.)
Sometimes, people who don't rate books critically look at the ratings of myself or others like me and say, "Pick books you'll actually like, then." Or, "Someone doesn't know how to decide what to read."
And in response to them I say: to the former - I'm trying, and to the latter - correct.
I never know what I'll like, because I like everything and nothing. I have been known to read in every genre and to be disappointed by the ones I read most. I have tried picking up authors I've always liked to be treated to a garbage fire, and authors I've despised have written some of my yearly favorites. When it comes to reading I have learned to live and let live and hope for the best.
Which is why I should have picked this up sooner.
I owned this book for 6 years and never even considered picking it up. I assumed I wouldn't like it, but I picked it up to be delighted by the following:
- beautiful, clean writing
- a plot I was invested in
- characters who interested me from the first page to the last, from our protagonist to every supporting character
There were things I have historically hated reading about (bullfighting) that this time I found enjoyable. There were tropes I've always detested (cheating and affairs and what have you) that didn't bother me in the least. There were clichés of the time (melancholy men and the women whose love they feel entitled to) done differently enough to be a pleasure.
I'm still in a state of disbelief.
Bottom line: This is my first Ernest Hemingway book, but baby, it won't be my last!!!
---------------
pre-review
i've owned this book for six years and i've meant to read it for even longer and never once in all that time did i expect to like it this much.
review to come / 4.5 stars
---------------
currently-reading updates
feeling: scholarly.
clear ur sh*t book 40
quest 19: a book you forgot you owned
---------------
tbr review
i've never read an ernest hemingway book, but i have had two of them on my owned tbr for six years. so that's kind of the same thing
February 24, 2019
"Don't you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you're not taking advantage of it? Do you realize you've lived nearly half the time you have to live already?"
Looking through my copy of The Sun Also Rises, I believe it is the most quotable Hemingway I have read. Line after line resonates with me on the deepest level possible. I used to think the Lost Generation represented a unique time in history, and I was vaguely jealous of their beautiful misery. The older I get, the more I believe this is the universal novel describing the human condition. The hardboiled by day, broken by night attitude to life hurts and attracts. As a person who has been dragging myself along from country to country, I know Hemingway was right when he said you can't escape yourself by moving.
But you can build that fashionable surface of the glorious expatriate - which haunts you by night.
Wonderful, wonderful prose!
Looking through my copy of The Sun Also Rises, I believe it is the most quotable Hemingway I have read. Line after line resonates with me on the deepest level possible. I used to think the Lost Generation represented a unique time in history, and I was vaguely jealous of their beautiful misery. The older I get, the more I believe this is the universal novel describing the human condition. The hardboiled by day, broken by night attitude to life hurts and attracts. As a person who has been dragging myself along from country to country, I know Hemingway was right when he said you can't escape yourself by moving.
But you can build that fashionable surface of the glorious expatriate - which haunts you by night.
Wonderful, wonderful prose!
March 31, 2024
It must be me. Ernest Hemingway is an esteemed author and The Sun Also Rises is one of his many books that gets very high ratings.
I decided to read this book because I will be hiking the 500 mile Camino de Santiago in Spain. Many pilgrims on the Camino refer to The Sun Also Rises in their memoirs due to the reference of the running of the bulls in Pamplona. I will be spending time in Pamplona and thought this book would give me insight into Spain and Pamplona.
The book seemed to meander and the use of the "n" word was jarring. It wasn't my cup of tea.
I encourage readers to read the many varied reviews about this book.
I decided to read this book because I will be hiking the 500 mile Camino de Santiago in Spain. Many pilgrims on the Camino refer to The Sun Also Rises in their memoirs due to the reference of the running of the bulls in Pamplona. I will be spending time in Pamplona and thought this book would give me insight into Spain and Pamplona.
The book seemed to meander and the use of the "n" word was jarring. It wasn't my cup of tea.
I encourage readers to read the many varied reviews about this book.
June 30, 2024
Reposting in conjunction with the annual "running of the bulls" in Pamplona, Spain, where much of this novel takes place.
“Everyone behaves badly”—Jake
“You are all a lost generation”—Gertrude Stein
Since I had just found Everyone Behaves Badly: The Story Behind the Making of The Sun Also Rises; since I was meeting up with friend BC, who wrote his MA thesis on this book; since I was flying from Chicago to Palm Springs to participate in a “bachelor’s party” this weekend, and because the kind of excessive and regrettable bad behavior depicted in the book is also a feature of bachelor’s parties and I thought it would be interesting to reflect on that IN that process, I decided to pull this classic novel off the shelf, dust it off and reread it on the plane there. I had the luxury of basically reading it in one sitting!
The story takes place from Paris to Pamplona during the Fiesta we know now as featuring The Running of the Bulls. The centerpiece of the story is a woman, Lady Brett Ashley, whom my noir reading leads me to identify as Hemingway's characterization of a femme fatale, who ignites (or sometimes merely walks into a room and watches) a lot of drunken, jealous bad behavior over her, the young men lying in waste at her feet.
“She takes her razor from her boot, and a thousand pigeons fall around her feet”—Tom Waits
There’s a lot of funny drinking talk and bar stories in this book that begin to wear on you over time, as they will and should, as Hem would have you experience it, as you learn to pay attention to the underlying tensions between various men over their fatal attraction to this strikingly attractive 34-year old woman. Jake, our American journalist Hem-based hero, injured “down there” during the war, would be Lady Brett's lover, but he can’t consummate their love, and sex is apparently part of the regular daily diet of Brett with, among others, Mike, her Scottish fiancé; Bill, Jake’s American fishing buddy; Robert Cohn, the writer and amateur boxer whose skills in the latter figure in a scene we build toward in the whole book, and Pedro Romero, a 19-year old bull fighter, with a true passion for bullfighting, and, as it turns out, older women. Jake is still in love with Brett, but kind of just watches in anguish as this train wreck unfolds.
When I was reading it in my early twenties I wanted to be one of those expatriates, reading and writing and drinking my way through Europe with other people my age, and I did go there in my twenties to zig zag across the continent and hang out with people from all over the place, and over the years have traveled from Paris to Pamplona, from Florence to London, from Amsterdam to Zurich, my backpack on my back. But now I feel less charitable about these folks behaving badly, and see this bad-behaving as largely the point of the book this time around.
“You're an expatriate. You've lost touch with the soil. You get precious. Fake European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed with sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. You are an expatriate, see? You hang around cafes.”
This “lostness” of people living in “arrested development,” not sure what their futures hold, not sure how to live their lives, aching for something that happens to be largely fleeting. Hemingway’s departures from the drunken lust--classic descriptions of fishing and Romero’s bullfighting (yes, I know they are murdering bulls)--have a kind of (intended) purity to cleanse the palate of Jake, who at one point, sick of it all, says “To hell with people”. Hemingway’s moral/social code gets established early on: Independence, faithfulness, connections to nature, and acute powers of observation.
“In the morning I walked down the Boulevard to the rue Soufflot for coffee and brioche. It was a fine morning. The horse-chestnut trees in the Luxembourg gardens were in bloom. There was the pleasant early-morning feeling of a hot day. I read the papers with the coffee and then smoked a cigarette. The flower-women were coming up from the market and arranging their daily stock. Students went by going up to the law school, or down to the Sorbonne. The Boulevard was busy with trams and people going to work.”
I think this may be only my third time reading it; while I think this is BC’s favorite Hem, I have liked A Farewell to Arms, Old Man and the Sea and (especially) the stories better. But despite the fact that Hem damaged a lot of friendships by writing this book (the fictional characters were thinly disguised portraits of all the friends he drank with there), it is nevertheless really well-written, has passages in it lyrical enough to bring tears to your eyes, and is in my opinion still one one of the greats of American literature, a companion for other tales of misguided desire and wrecked lives, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night.
“Oh Jake," Brett said, "We could have had such a damned good time together."
Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly, pressing Brett against me.
"Yes," I said. "Isn't it pretty to think so?”—Sun
Uh.
“Everyone behaves badly”—Jake
“You are all a lost generation”—Gertrude Stein
Since I had just found Everyone Behaves Badly: The Story Behind the Making of The Sun Also Rises; since I was meeting up with friend BC, who wrote his MA thesis on this book; since I was flying from Chicago to Palm Springs to participate in a “bachelor’s party” this weekend, and because the kind of excessive and regrettable bad behavior depicted in the book is also a feature of bachelor’s parties and I thought it would be interesting to reflect on that IN that process, I decided to pull this classic novel off the shelf, dust it off and reread it on the plane there. I had the luxury of basically reading it in one sitting!
The story takes place from Paris to Pamplona during the Fiesta we know now as featuring The Running of the Bulls. The centerpiece of the story is a woman, Lady Brett Ashley, whom my noir reading leads me to identify as Hemingway's characterization of a femme fatale, who ignites (or sometimes merely walks into a room and watches) a lot of drunken, jealous bad behavior over her, the young men lying in waste at her feet.
“She takes her razor from her boot, and a thousand pigeons fall around her feet”—Tom Waits
There’s a lot of funny drinking talk and bar stories in this book that begin to wear on you over time, as they will and should, as Hem would have you experience it, as you learn to pay attention to the underlying tensions between various men over their fatal attraction to this strikingly attractive 34-year old woman. Jake, our American journalist Hem-based hero, injured “down there” during the war, would be Lady Brett's lover, but he can’t consummate their love, and sex is apparently part of the regular daily diet of Brett with, among others, Mike, her Scottish fiancé; Bill, Jake’s American fishing buddy; Robert Cohn, the writer and amateur boxer whose skills in the latter figure in a scene we build toward in the whole book, and Pedro Romero, a 19-year old bull fighter, with a true passion for bullfighting, and, as it turns out, older women. Jake is still in love with Brett, but kind of just watches in anguish as this train wreck unfolds.
When I was reading it in my early twenties I wanted to be one of those expatriates, reading and writing and drinking my way through Europe with other people my age, and I did go there in my twenties to zig zag across the continent and hang out with people from all over the place, and over the years have traveled from Paris to Pamplona, from Florence to London, from Amsterdam to Zurich, my backpack on my back. But now I feel less charitable about these folks behaving badly, and see this bad-behaving as largely the point of the book this time around.
“You're an expatriate. You've lost touch with the soil. You get precious. Fake European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed with sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. You are an expatriate, see? You hang around cafes.”
This “lostness” of people living in “arrested development,” not sure what their futures hold, not sure how to live their lives, aching for something that happens to be largely fleeting. Hemingway’s departures from the drunken lust--classic descriptions of fishing and Romero’s bullfighting (yes, I know they are murdering bulls)--have a kind of (intended) purity to cleanse the palate of Jake, who at one point, sick of it all, says “To hell with people”. Hemingway’s moral/social code gets established early on: Independence, faithfulness, connections to nature, and acute powers of observation.
“In the morning I walked down the Boulevard to the rue Soufflot for coffee and brioche. It was a fine morning. The horse-chestnut trees in the Luxembourg gardens were in bloom. There was the pleasant early-morning feeling of a hot day. I read the papers with the coffee and then smoked a cigarette. The flower-women were coming up from the market and arranging their daily stock. Students went by going up to the law school, or down to the Sorbonne. The Boulevard was busy with trams and people going to work.”
I think this may be only my third time reading it; while I think this is BC’s favorite Hem, I have liked A Farewell to Arms, Old Man and the Sea and (especially) the stories better. But despite the fact that Hem damaged a lot of friendships by writing this book (the fictional characters were thinly disguised portraits of all the friends he drank with there), it is nevertheless really well-written, has passages in it lyrical enough to bring tears to your eyes, and is in my opinion still one one of the greats of American literature, a companion for other tales of misguided desire and wrecked lives, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night.
“Oh Jake," Brett said, "We could have had such a damned good time together."
Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly, pressing Brett against me.
"Yes," I said. "Isn't it pretty to think so?”—Sun
Uh.
June 12, 2007
I think there is something cheesey about reviewing an old book, but I felt I had to write something, as I constructed my senior thesis in college with this book as the cornerstone, I have read it at least six times, and I consider The Sun Also Rises to be the Great American Novel. Why?
1) Hemingway was, if nothing else, a great American. A renaissance man, a soldier, a fisherman, and a sportswriter, a romantic and an argumentatively direct chauvinist, a conflicted religious agnostic who never abandoned religion (and, it could be argued, never wrote about anything but his conflicts with religion), Hemingway was a stereotype red-blooded American like no other great writer. An argument could be made for Fitzgerald, but the crux of that argument lies in his relationship to Hemingway (and his psychotic wife. By the way, I love Fitzgerald. He is just a touch wordy).
2) The Sun Also Rises describes (among other things) disillusionment with the "American Way" and what that had come to mean (especially emphasized through the walking wounded, contrasted always with previous generations' "Dulce et decorum est pro patria more" mentality). Unlike other similarly-themed novels, however, the book does not take place in America. I postulate the Great American Novel must take place somewhere other than America, to reveal the way in which Americans can be defined as such anywhere, and to ephasize said disillusionment. I have other reasons to think thus, but suffice to say for the moment.
3) The Sun Also Rises does not end so drastically as other great works of Hemingway's, such as A Farewell to Arms (not afraid to say I shed tears at the end of that one) or For Whom the Bell Tolls. His best ending was in Old Man and the Sea, but that work (at the risk of sounding blasphemous here) was slightly too poppy to be his best.
4) The book does not begin with the narrator (the opening describing Robert Cohen). Americans exist in relationship to one another. The country has been built through a competitive spirit- fostered by democracy and that ideal we call "The American Dream". The backlash of all that is a natural inclination to "Keep up with the Jones'," as it were. Jake Barnes is an observer, separated from the Americans and from the Europeans yet constantly comparing himself, directly or by insinuation, to others.
In short, read the damn book. If you don't get it, read it again. It is arguable (perhaps, though I doubt it) that this book may not be the best ever written, but I do believe no greater has ever been penned.
You want a great trifecta? Read The Sun Also Rises, then The Great Gatsby, then Eliot's The Wasteland. Follow those up by reading Ecclesiastes 1 and the Revelations of John. Now go to a cocktail party and start a conversation. You're welcome.
1) Hemingway was, if nothing else, a great American. A renaissance man, a soldier, a fisherman, and a sportswriter, a romantic and an argumentatively direct chauvinist, a conflicted religious agnostic who never abandoned religion (and, it could be argued, never wrote about anything but his conflicts with religion), Hemingway was a stereotype red-blooded American like no other great writer. An argument could be made for Fitzgerald, but the crux of that argument lies in his relationship to Hemingway (and his psychotic wife. By the way, I love Fitzgerald. He is just a touch wordy).
2) The Sun Also Rises describes (among other things) disillusionment with the "American Way" and what that had come to mean (especially emphasized through the walking wounded, contrasted always with previous generations' "Dulce et decorum est pro patria more" mentality). Unlike other similarly-themed novels, however, the book does not take place in America. I postulate the Great American Novel must take place somewhere other than America, to reveal the way in which Americans can be defined as such anywhere, and to ephasize said disillusionment. I have other reasons to think thus, but suffice to say for the moment.
3) The Sun Also Rises does not end so drastically as other great works of Hemingway's, such as A Farewell to Arms (not afraid to say I shed tears at the end of that one) or For Whom the Bell Tolls. His best ending was in Old Man and the Sea, but that work (at the risk of sounding blasphemous here) was slightly too poppy to be his best.
4) The book does not begin with the narrator (the opening describing Robert Cohen). Americans exist in relationship to one another. The country has been built through a competitive spirit- fostered by democracy and that ideal we call "The American Dream". The backlash of all that is a natural inclination to "Keep up with the Jones'," as it were. Jake Barnes is an observer, separated from the Americans and from the Europeans yet constantly comparing himself, directly or by insinuation, to others.
In short, read the damn book. If you don't get it, read it again. It is arguable (perhaps, though I doubt it) that this book may not be the best ever written, but I do believe no greater has ever been penned.
You want a great trifecta? Read The Sun Also Rises, then The Great Gatsby, then Eliot's The Wasteland. Follow those up by reading Ecclesiastes 1 and the Revelations of John. Now go to a cocktail party and start a conversation. You're welcome.
June 8, 2023
Dry. Bare. Brittle. But not drying out so far. Quite the contrary.
Dry like a very dry Jerez, a "manzanilla." But he doesn't drink Jerez in Spain before, brandy de Jerez from Fundador, after a few bottles of dry rioja.
In Paris, however, he always has a siphon close at hand for his whiskey, and the fine is still in the water, but the wine remains dry, whether it is Piquette or Chateau-Margaux.
He drinks dry and writes dry. He's Hemingway, but he's also his hero, Jacob (Jake) Barnes. A journalist who haunts bars and nightclubs in the Quartier Latin with friends thirsty as him and on both shores. From Montparnasse too. Americans like him. And in English sometimes. And an English one. A Unique. Lady Ashley. Brett has a boyish hairstyle. Who quickly becomes infatuated and passes from the arms to the arms. By love? But no! Infatuation, perhaps. Need escort, parade, never in the arms of Barnes. And yet. But it is impossible. They got to know each other; she is a volunteer nurse and hurts him. There's a nasty wound that keeps them from materializing their love. Since then, they turn around, and he follows his connections calmly.
The reader travels with them for a long time in Paris until they decide to leave in a group for Spain, fish for trout, and especially for the feast of San Fermin in Pamplona. The Fiesta! Los Sanfermines! The bulls ran in the streets to the corrals, the bullring enclosures, and the Plaza de Toros. The raging crowd rushed past them. And the bullfights! The ballet of bullfighters and the smell of blood in the air! And eight days of festivities, fireworks, songs and dances, bands of jota dancers, bands of fifes and drums! It will be eight days of dreams and nightmares for the Barnes gang. Eight days of drunkenness, or they will explode. They will insult each other; they will fight, always for them. - or because of - the beautiful eyes of Brett, who, affirming his inconstant pose, will leave them, will reject the English of service which was to marry her to follow a beautiful toreador of 19 years. Inconstancy? Constance, instead, is in a love that she knows is impossible, unrealizable. And so the end of the book can only bring us back to its beginning, in a kind of loop without exit, without hope, dry, dry to prevent the tears from blooming:
"- Oh, Jake, " said Brett, " We could have been so happy together!
In front of us, an officer in khaki controlled traffic from the top of his horse. He raised his staff. The cab suddenly slows down, pressing Brett against me.
- Yes, I say. But, of course, it's always nice to think about. "
Very dry writing. Descriptions and dialogues. Without introspective passages. Without psychological explanations. And that gives a moving book. This work is the secret of Hemingway's "iceberg writing": it reveals what we see, and the reader senses the enormous mass of emotions that lurk beneath the surface. Some saw it as a description of the interior of the famous "lost generation" of Americans exiled in Paris; others as an ode to hedonism. I saw perhaps the opposite: a cry of alarm, a cry for help, and above all, a remarkable love story. Impossible, of course, for the most incredible compassion, for the most excellent emotion of the reader. And suppose we want at all costs to speak of a lost generation. In that case, it is perhaps the whole generation of the post-war period, the post-World War I, the horror of trenches. Still, it is precise to her that Hemingway dedicates the title of his book (after trying to call it Fiesta): The Sun Also Rises, the Sun Also Rises. After the night always comes the day. The Sun rises every day and will always give us light and hope. Precarious, not assured, but hope all the same.
I will repeat myself, and you will forgive me: it is a remarkable love story.
Dry like a very dry Jerez, a "manzanilla." But he doesn't drink Jerez in Spain before, brandy de Jerez from Fundador, after a few bottles of dry rioja.
In Paris, however, he always has a siphon close at hand for his whiskey, and the fine is still in the water, but the wine remains dry, whether it is Piquette or Chateau-Margaux.
He drinks dry and writes dry. He's Hemingway, but he's also his hero, Jacob (Jake) Barnes. A journalist who haunts bars and nightclubs in the Quartier Latin with friends thirsty as him and on both shores. From Montparnasse too. Americans like him. And in English sometimes. And an English one. A Unique. Lady Ashley. Brett has a boyish hairstyle. Who quickly becomes infatuated and passes from the arms to the arms. By love? But no! Infatuation, perhaps. Need escort, parade, never in the arms of Barnes. And yet. But it is impossible. They got to know each other; she is a volunteer nurse and hurts him. There's a nasty wound that keeps them from materializing their love. Since then, they turn around, and he follows his connections calmly.
The reader travels with them for a long time in Paris until they decide to leave in a group for Spain, fish for trout, and especially for the feast of San Fermin in Pamplona. The Fiesta! Los Sanfermines! The bulls ran in the streets to the corrals, the bullring enclosures, and the Plaza de Toros. The raging crowd rushed past them. And the bullfights! The ballet of bullfighters and the smell of blood in the air! And eight days of festivities, fireworks, songs and dances, bands of jota dancers, bands of fifes and drums! It will be eight days of dreams and nightmares for the Barnes gang. Eight days of drunkenness, or they will explode. They will insult each other; they will fight, always for them. - or because of - the beautiful eyes of Brett, who, affirming his inconstant pose, will leave them, will reject the English of service which was to marry her to follow a beautiful toreador of 19 years. Inconstancy? Constance, instead, is in a love that she knows is impossible, unrealizable. And so the end of the book can only bring us back to its beginning, in a kind of loop without exit, without hope, dry, dry to prevent the tears from blooming:
"- Oh, Jake, " said Brett, " We could have been so happy together!
In front of us, an officer in khaki controlled traffic from the top of his horse. He raised his staff. The cab suddenly slows down, pressing Brett against me.
- Yes, I say. But, of course, it's always nice to think about. "
Very dry writing. Descriptions and dialogues. Without introspective passages. Without psychological explanations. And that gives a moving book. This work is the secret of Hemingway's "iceberg writing": it reveals what we see, and the reader senses the enormous mass of emotions that lurk beneath the surface. Some saw it as a description of the interior of the famous "lost generation" of Americans exiled in Paris; others as an ode to hedonism. I saw perhaps the opposite: a cry of alarm, a cry for help, and above all, a remarkable love story. Impossible, of course, for the most incredible compassion, for the most excellent emotion of the reader. And suppose we want at all costs to speak of a lost generation. In that case, it is perhaps the whole generation of the post-war period, the post-World War I, the horror of trenches. Still, it is precise to her that Hemingway dedicates the title of his book (after trying to call it Fiesta): The Sun Also Rises, the Sun Also Rises. After the night always comes the day. The Sun rises every day and will always give us light and hope. Precarious, not assured, but hope all the same.
I will repeat myself, and you will forgive me: it is a remarkable love story.
February 5, 2012
She Aches Just like a Woman
I’ll start off with something that I thought was interesting (hint: it borders on being annoying). For the first 75 pages, characters move in and out of this book with such swiftness and with no mention of physical description or notable characteristics, it mimics the effect of being at a really crowded party where you meet face after face, name after name and you have no time to process who is who, why they are significant and if you should even bother to remember them; so at the very least, the book is able to imitate the “big-party-greeting” that seems to permeate throughout the lives of the characters, but this only goes so far; that section is one long boring party that requires the minimum amount of your attention to understand what all these vapid, vacuous people are doing and what their current life drama is all about. Sure, there might be a great deal of interesting people moving in and out of your living room, but everyone is so focused on getting plastered drunk (on absinthe mind you), that no one cares about anything but what the most superficial impression of a person can yield.
Whoo, my attempt at a complement turns into a nasty criticism and my struggle to appreciate Hemingway continues.
The Iceberg Theory. Ya’ll know it. It doesn’t bear repeating but I will anyway. The gist of it is, is that in order to involve the reader as the author should, he must properly convey the depth of human emotion by giving the most minute of details, so that the full depth of a scene is communicated implicitly not explicitly. The theory revolves around the idea that feelings unspoken, are more profound than feelings spoken. And up until this point, I couldn’t agree with Hemingway more. How many times can you read a story that gives it all away? What’s the point of feeling the emotion of a story, if we have to be reminded that “John is feeling sad. John cried”. It freezes the drama; the characters go stiff. Yet, I couldn’t disagree more with Hemingway’s execution of the iceberg theory. If words are to allude to a much deeper reservoir of meaning, then shouldn’t each word be dense, double-entendréd and deeply consequential? I am reminded time and time again, that there is a wrong way to take this theory. Plus I am overcome with the feeling that all of poetry operates on this same principle, yet Hemingway writes the most dull and framework prose I’ve ever read. How could someone fully embrace the Iceberg Theory and then write a line like:
Then there are literal chunks of this book that scream look at me! Look how much I researched for this novel!, that contain descriptions making an american tourist of France's handbook seem like a high-octane thrill ride:
There could be a lot of emotional depth coursing underneath all this banal prose, but it is all lost on me. I know that many people find this book to be their favorite of Hemingway, but without much action, where is the pleasure? Which I posit to be Hemingway’s biggest strength. All the bull-fights and the corriendo de los torros were quite strong; they were the only things worthwhile, I could learn a lot from Hemingway about how to properly write brutal violence or any scene where men face tough adversity. Heck, even the fishing trip is one of the more exciting parts of this book. Hemingway’s strengths are on beautiful display in For Whom the Bell Tolls. This is because the book is set during the Spanish Civil War. I even enjoyed the imitation Castilian Spanish, and needlessly translated dialogue; I felt that Hemingway had achieved a tone that befit the old-time feel of its characters and story, but without much of anything happening in The Sun Also Rises, I can’t say that this would be worth your time.
One last thing, to tie in the review’s title. I couldn’t stand the main female character. Like not even for a few pages. I started to loath her so much, that I started to wonder is this the point?. Now, enough ink has been spilled over Papa Hemingway’s possible sexist leanings, but this is one despicable cock-tease of a female protagonist. Whoever inspired him to feature such a lady to be the only female character in the entire book must have given Hemingway’s heart quite the roller coaster ride. That being said, this book was written in the 20’s. And I have to maintain my rule of thumb that anything written before 1975 containing flagrant sexism or racism must be given a cultural pass. It’s messed up, I know. But I must take the fact that there is a racial slur on every other page of this book with a grain of salt.
As I read this review over, it really seems like I hated this book. Well I did. But there were parts that were great.
So here’s the thing.
I will admit that I’m not one who takes to plot very often. I tend to err on the side of beautiful writing, even if it’s for the sake of beautiful writing. I am willing to admit, at any time, that Hemingway is just not for me. But I’m struggling to understand how Hemingway could be for anyone.
I am always open to having my mind changed. That is what I love about this site. So please, make your case for the Papa! I want to hear why I’m wrong. Bring it on!
Because I want to love Hemingway. I really do.
p.s. Goodreads wouldn't let me post my real recommendation.
It should say "I would recommend to: Men who enjoy their women like their bull-fights, wild, violent and leaving a gaping hole where your heart used to be"
I’ll start off with something that I thought was interesting (hint: it borders on being annoying). For the first 75 pages, characters move in and out of this book with such swiftness and with no mention of physical description or notable characteristics, it mimics the effect of being at a really crowded party where you meet face after face, name after name and you have no time to process who is who, why they are significant and if you should even bother to remember them; so at the very least, the book is able to imitate the “big-party-greeting” that seems to permeate throughout the lives of the characters, but this only goes so far; that section is one long boring party that requires the minimum amount of your attention to understand what all these vapid, vacuous people are doing and what their current life drama is all about. Sure, there might be a great deal of interesting people moving in and out of your living room, but everyone is so focused on getting plastered drunk (on absinthe mind you), that no one cares about anything but what the most superficial impression of a person can yield.
Whoo, my attempt at a complement turns into a nasty criticism and my struggle to appreciate Hemingway continues.
The Iceberg Theory. Ya’ll know it. It doesn’t bear repeating but I will anyway. The gist of it is, is that in order to involve the reader as the author should, he must properly convey the depth of human emotion by giving the most minute of details, so that the full depth of a scene is communicated implicitly not explicitly. The theory revolves around the idea that feelings unspoken, are more profound than feelings spoken. And up until this point, I couldn’t agree with Hemingway more. How many times can you read a story that gives it all away? What’s the point of feeling the emotion of a story, if we have to be reminded that “John is feeling sad. John cried”. It freezes the drama; the characters go stiff. Yet, I couldn’t disagree more with Hemingway’s execution of the iceberg theory. If words are to allude to a much deeper reservoir of meaning, then shouldn’t each word be dense, double-entendréd and deeply consequential? I am reminded time and time again, that there is a wrong way to take this theory. Plus I am overcome with the feeling that all of poetry operates on this same principle, yet Hemingway writes the most dull and framework prose I’ve ever read. How could someone fully embrace the Iceberg Theory and then write a line like:
“It seemed like a nice cathedral, nice and dim, like Spanish churches”?A few lines earlier we were told that they are in Spain. So Hemingway writes that the nice churches located in Spain are like nice Spanish churches. Ugh.
Then there are literal chunks of this book that scream look at me! Look how much I researched for this novel!, that contain descriptions making an american tourist of France's handbook seem like a high-octane thrill ride:
“We came unto the Rue du Pot de Fer and followed it along until it brought us to the rigid north and south of the Rue Saint Jacques and then walked south, past Val de Grâce, set back behind the courtyard and the iron fence, to the Boulevard du Port Royal. . . We walked along Port Royal until it became Mountparnasse, and then on past the Lilas, Lavigne’s, and all the little cafés, Damoy’s, crossed the street to the Rotonde, past its lights and tables to the Select.”This is not what I read fiction for.
There could be a lot of emotional depth coursing underneath all this banal prose, but it is all lost on me. I know that many people find this book to be their favorite of Hemingway, but without much action, where is the pleasure? Which I posit to be Hemingway’s biggest strength. All the bull-fights and the corriendo de los torros were quite strong; they were the only things worthwhile, I could learn a lot from Hemingway about how to properly write brutal violence or any scene where men face tough adversity. Heck, even the fishing trip is one of the more exciting parts of this book. Hemingway’s strengths are on beautiful display in For Whom the Bell Tolls. This is because the book is set during the Spanish Civil War. I even enjoyed the imitation Castilian Spanish, and needlessly translated dialogue; I felt that Hemingway had achieved a tone that befit the old-time feel of its characters and story, but without much of anything happening in The Sun Also Rises, I can’t say that this would be worth your time.
One last thing, to tie in the review’s title. I couldn’t stand the main female character. Like not even for a few pages. I started to loath her so much, that I started to wonder is this the point?. Now, enough ink has been spilled over Papa Hemingway’s possible sexist leanings, but this is one despicable cock-tease of a female protagonist. Whoever inspired him to feature such a lady to be the only female character in the entire book must have given Hemingway’s heart quite the roller coaster ride. That being said, this book was written in the 20’s. And I have to maintain my rule of thumb that anything written before 1975 containing flagrant sexism or racism must be given a cultural pass. It’s messed up, I know. But I must take the fact that there is a racial slur on every other page of this book with a grain of salt.
As I read this review over, it really seems like I hated this book. Well I did. But there were parts that were great.
So here’s the thing.
I will admit that I’m not one who takes to plot very often. I tend to err on the side of beautiful writing, even if it’s for the sake of beautiful writing. I am willing to admit, at any time, that Hemingway is just not for me. But I’m struggling to understand how Hemingway could be for anyone.
I am always open to having my mind changed. That is what I love about this site. So please, make your case for the Papa! I want to hear why I’m wrong. Bring it on!
Because I want to love Hemingway. I really do.
p.s. Goodreads wouldn't let me post my real recommendation.
It should say "I would recommend to: Men who enjoy their women like their bull-fights, wild, violent and leaving a gaping hole where your heart used to be"
March 13, 2019
Can't quite believe this was not only Hemingway’s first novel, but my first Hemingway book since The Old man and the sea years ago. And, pardon the pun, this completely blew that out the water! Why did it take so long for me to get to him again? Just so glad that I did. His spare writing style, which went down a treat with me, is deceptively simple and just so readable that I found it a struggle to put the book down most of the time. I didn't want to leave it's company. I felt right at home within these pages. Wine glass in one hand, book in the other. Bliss. Starting off in Paris before relocating to Spain, Hemingway's novel in a nutshell focuses on the anguished love affair between the expatriate American war veteran Jake Barnes and the Lady Brett Ashley, an early sort of femme fatale that was representative in the writer’s mind of 1920s womanhood. For some, the heart and highlight of the novel is the bullfighting later on, but for me I just loved the whole darn thing equally, without the need to pick out one particular moment.
So then, Jake and his buddies head off to Spain, to fish, to witness Pamplona's Festival, the bullfighting, sinking bottle after bottle as they restlessly move from bar to bar, cafe to bar, and cafe to cafe. It sounds like parade! but all this comes at a cost, as the party that always seems to be in full swing slowly starts to crack. With all that sun, booze, and late nights the tension between the characters escalates, and everyone that seeks a connection in some way always ends up alone and disappointed come morning. In a way the the novel produces the effect of a terrible hangover as we move around in circles between the characters as they drink, eat, drink, and drink some more. Some may bemoan that things do get repetitive, but maybe that's the whole point. This group of wanderers simply don't want the party to end. It's like that melancholic feeling of lapping up the final days of summer knowing it won't be long before the clouds and the rain come along and spoil everything.
Parts reminded me of F. Scott Fitzgerald, so certainly no harm done there, and the love affair of Jake and the lovely, impulsive tease that is Lady Brett Ashley might easily have descended into bathos. It is an erotic attraction which is destined from the start to be frustrated and doomed. Hemingway has such a sure hold on his values that he makes an absorbingly tender narrative out of it. When Jake and Brett fall in love, and know, with that complete absence of reticence of the war generation, that nothing can be done about it, the thing might well have ended there and then. But Hemingway shows uncanny skill in prolonging it and delivering it of all its implications. He makes his characters say one thing, convey still another, and when a whole passage of talk has been given, the reader finds himself the richer by a totally unexpected mood, a mood often enough of outrageous familiarity with obscure heartbreaks.
I simply loved it, and was dazzled from start to finish!
So then, Jake and his buddies head off to Spain, to fish, to witness Pamplona's Festival, the bullfighting, sinking bottle after bottle as they restlessly move from bar to bar, cafe to bar, and cafe to cafe. It sounds like parade! but all this comes at a cost, as the party that always seems to be in full swing slowly starts to crack. With all that sun, booze, and late nights the tension between the characters escalates, and everyone that seeks a connection in some way always ends up alone and disappointed come morning. In a way the the novel produces the effect of a terrible hangover as we move around in circles between the characters as they drink, eat, drink, and drink some more. Some may bemoan that things do get repetitive, but maybe that's the whole point. This group of wanderers simply don't want the party to end. It's like that melancholic feeling of lapping up the final days of summer knowing it won't be long before the clouds and the rain come along and spoil everything.
Parts reminded me of F. Scott Fitzgerald, so certainly no harm done there, and the love affair of Jake and the lovely, impulsive tease that is Lady Brett Ashley might easily have descended into bathos. It is an erotic attraction which is destined from the start to be frustrated and doomed. Hemingway has such a sure hold on his values that he makes an absorbingly tender narrative out of it. When Jake and Brett fall in love, and know, with that complete absence of reticence of the war generation, that nothing can be done about it, the thing might well have ended there and then. But Hemingway shows uncanny skill in prolonging it and delivering it of all its implications. He makes his characters say one thing, convey still another, and when a whole passage of talk has been given, the reader finds himself the richer by a totally unexpected mood, a mood often enough of outrageous familiarity with obscure heartbreaks.
I simply loved it, and was dazzled from start to finish!
September 6, 2021
Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises: "Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton".
This phrase sums up the relationship between the narrator and his subject, Mr. Cohn quite perfectly. He shows the Robert's glory was pretty mediocre ("middleweight") and a long time ago ("once") and not actual. It also shows the pretentiousness of the character through the association with Princeton. It is almost the prototypical Hemmingway prose as well being dry and direct and to the point. The reference to boxing which is a violent, masculine sport, gives us an inkling of the bull fighting that will become the center of this early 20th century masterpiece.
The relationship between Jake and Brett is an old one of disappointment and resignation, Brett always doomed to make poor decisions and Jake always doomed to clean up the messes she leaves behind.
The great irony I find in Hemingway is that he uses a very direct language with a limited vocabulary and repetition, and yet there is an incredible subtlety here. Jake’s wartime injury castrated him, but we only learn this by inference: when Georgette tries to touch him there, he moves her hand away and says he’s sick, later with Brett their contact is limited to kisses and he cries when she leaves him, he observes himself naked in the mirror in his room and only then does he talk in roundabout terms about getting injured in the war and how the other officers made a joke about it. As a result of this castration, and his inbred anti-Semitism, he acts as a entremetteur in trying to tempt his erstwhile friend Robert Cohn into infidelity at the beginning of the book when he mentions the girl in Strasbourg in front of his wife, Frances. Tragically, this playing matchmaker later backfires on him when he learns that Brett has spent a weekend in Bayonne with Robert rather than coming to Spain with him.
It is admittedly upsetting to see Hemingway’s anti-Semitism in his description of how Robert had “ a hard, Jewish, stubborn streak.” (p. 10) There is also unveiled homophobia in Jake’s hostile reaction to the gay men with whom Brett shows up to the bal musette in the Latin quarter: “Somehow they always made me angry. I know they are supposed to be amusing, and you are should be tolerant, but I wanted to swing on one, any one, anything to shatter that superior, simpering composure.” (p. 20) Note the alliteration there, “ swing, shatter, superior, simpering”; that is one of the great markers of Hemingway’s writing that makes one want to forgive him for his many many faults. In that same section, the phrase “with them was Brett” is repeated twice reemphasizing how Jake’s sudden feeling of violence is tied up in his own impotence - they are gay and will not make love to her either, but this just reminds him of how much he would like to making him more angry. It is a lot to unpack, but the terse prose brings out all this nervousness in the words themselves.
I had forgotten that most of the novel takes place in Paris entre-guerres and recall that the first time I read this 3 decades ago or more, I had never seen much less dreamed of living in Paris. And so it goes.
Late in the book when Jake returns briefly to France before a final return to Spain, he makes a comment about French servers not having a “my friend” attitude and that you get what you pay for - I have found this to be the case and despite my past annoyance with arrogant French service, it is true that pedantic, over-friendly service elsewhere in desperate attempts to solicit a tip is even more annoying.
I love Papa’s writing: the spartan use of language, the evocation of things in such an abbreviated, staccato manner…and I had also forgotten how much drinking goes on in this book!
One day before I am too old, I truly want to see a bullfight in Pamplona. Some day….
Don't miss my review of the Meyer biography of Hemingway: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
July 19, 2024
کتاب خورشید هم چنان می دمد با وجود شاد نوشی ها و مستی ها ی فراوان ، جشن ، کارناوال ، رقص ، شور ،عشق وخوشگذرانی پیامی متفاوت از خوشبختی ، لذت و شادی دارد ، همینگوی در این کتاب دستان پرقدرت گذشته ای را ترسیم کرده که هیچ گاه در بند زمان نمانده ، همواره در تمام دقایق حضور داشته و فراموش شدنی نیست ، همانند آثار دیگر همینگوی جنگ نقش مهمی دررمان داشته و حال و آینده افراد را تعیین می کند .
راوی داستان جیک بارنز خود حکایت عجیبی ایست ، زخمی که او در جنگ اول برداشته ( عقیم شدن و ناتوانی جنسی ) هم جسم او را رنجور ساخته و هم روحش را سخت مجروح کرده ، او خود را در کار زیاد ، خوردن و نوشیدن غرق کرده ، اما قلم جادویی همینگوی ظاهر بارنز را برای خواننده رو کرده ، به قول نویسنده روز آدم می تواند قیافه بگیرد ولی شب چیز دیگری ایست ، کار بارنز بیچاره شب ها گریه کردن است اما روزها بر خود مسلط شده و لذتی را که نمی تواند از کام زنان بگیرد با خوردن و آشامیدن تلاش در جبران آن دارد تا شاید رنج هستی را این گونه فراموش کند .
شرح زندگی بارنز در پاریس را شاید بتوان مانند مقدمه ای بر داستان و سفر نه چندان عرفانی شخصیتهای آن دانست ، اگرچه که به لطف قلم توانای همینگوی ، خواننده با جادو و جذابیت پاریس و زندگی پر هیجان شبانه آن آشنا می شود ، زندگی در پاریس با وجود آنکه شاد و پرزرق و برق به نظر می رسد اما از درون خالی ایست ، پاریس هم همانند مردان کتاب مصیبت دیده است و جنگ زده .
اساس داستان را باید در سفر به اسپانیا دانست ، هنگامی که اندک اندک جمع مستان رسیده و از پاریس مدرن رهسپار اسپانیا قدیمی و سنتی هستند ، اسپانیا که در جنگ شرکت نداشته ، شور و شوق و گرما در مردمان و طبیعت آن کاملا حس می شود . بدون شک همینگوی استاد توصیف است ، او چنان تصویر جادویی از طبیعت اسپانیا نشان داده که خواننده را هم همراه کاراکتر های همواره مست کتاب ، مست و مخمور اسپانیا می کند . اگر چه که اسپانیا زیباست و برت ، تنها زن همراه مردان هم دلربا ست و بساط عشق هم گسترده ، اما نه عشق واقعی شکل گرفته و نه شور و حالی پدید می آید
پامپلونا و فستیوال گاوبازی سن فرمین جایی ایست که تمامی افراد داستان به پوچی خود ، تلخی زندگی و تلاش ناکام خود برای فراموش کردن گذشته پی می برند ، خماری مستی که زندگی واقعی را پوشانده بود اگر چه برای لحظه ای کوتاه پریده اما دوباره و این بار قویتر باز می گردد ، آنچه آنان در جنگ کشیده اند ، پوچی ، تنهایی ، گویا درمانی ندارد جزمستی .
خواندن کتاب خورشید همچنان می دمد دید و نگاه متفاوتی از جنگ و فروپاشی روحی پس از آن را نشان می دهد ، در این کتاب نویسنده کاری با شهرهای ویران ، مردان مجروح و معلول ندارد ، او روح متلاشی شده پس از جنگ را دیده و تجسم کرده است ، چه شهر و چه انسان ها در داستان همینگوی خالی ، پوشالی ، پوچ و تهی هستند ، زیبایی و حقیقت را می توان در اسپانیا محبوب همینگوی و البته گریختن به طبعیت بکر آن یافت ، اگر چه که در همین اسپانیا ست که افراد پی به پوچی خود می برند .
در پایان می توان گفت آنچه همینگوی در این کتاب نشان داده نمایش شور بختی انسان و تلاش برای رهایی از آن است ، تلاشی که نه تنها شکست خورده بلکه افراد داستان را هم بیشترخرد و ویران کرده و سرانجام در چاه شوربختی زندگی فرو برده است .
راوی داستان جیک بارنز خود حکایت عجیبی ایست ، زخمی که او در جنگ اول برداشته ( عقیم شدن و ناتوانی جنسی ) هم جسم او را رنجور ساخته و هم روحش را سخت مجروح کرده ، او خود را در کار زیاد ، خوردن و نوشیدن غرق کرده ، اما قلم جادویی همینگوی ظاهر بارنز را برای خواننده رو کرده ، به قول نویسنده روز آدم می تواند قیافه بگیرد ولی شب چیز دیگری ایست ، کار بارنز بیچاره شب ها گریه کردن است اما روزها بر خود مسلط شده و لذتی را که نمی تواند از کام زنان بگیرد با خوردن و آشامیدن تلاش در جبران آن دارد تا شاید رنج هستی را این گونه فراموش کند .
شرح زندگی بارنز در پاریس را شاید بتوان مانند مقدمه ای بر داستان و سفر نه چندان عرفانی شخصیتهای آن دانست ، اگرچه که به لطف قلم توانای همینگوی ، خواننده با جادو و جذابیت پاریس و زندگی پر هیجان شبانه آن آشنا می شود ، زندگی در پاریس با وجود آنکه شاد و پرزرق و برق به نظر می رسد اما از درون خالی ایست ، پاریس هم همانند مردان کتاب مصیبت دیده است و جنگ زده .
اساس داستان را باید در سفر به اسپانیا دانست ، هنگامی که اندک اندک جمع مستان رسیده و از پاریس مدرن رهسپار اسپانیا قدیمی و سنتی هستند ، اسپانیا که در جنگ شرکت نداشته ، شور و شوق و گرما در مردمان و طبیعت آن کاملا حس می شود . بدون شک همینگوی استاد توصیف است ، او چنان تصویر جادویی از طبیعت اسپانیا نشان داده که خواننده را هم همراه کاراکتر های همواره مست کتاب ، مست و مخمور اسپانیا می کند . اگر چه که اسپانیا زیباست و برت ، تنها زن همراه مردان هم دلربا ست و بساط عشق هم گسترده ، اما نه عشق واقعی شکل گرفته و نه شور و حالی پدید می آید
پامپلونا و فستیوال گاوبازی سن فرمین جایی ایست که تمامی افراد داستان به پوچی خود ، تلخی زندگی و تلاش ناکام خود برای فراموش کردن گذشته پی می برند ، خماری مستی که زندگی واقعی را پوشانده بود اگر چه برای لحظه ای کوتاه پریده اما دوباره و این بار قویتر باز می گردد ، آنچه آنان در جنگ کشیده اند ، پوچی ، تنهایی ، گویا درمانی ندارد جزمستی .
خواندن کتاب خورشید همچنان می دمد دید و نگاه متفاوتی از جنگ و فروپاشی روحی پس از آن را نشان می دهد ، در این کتاب نویسنده کاری با شهرهای ویران ، مردان مجروح و معلول ندارد ، او روح متلاشی شده پس از جنگ را دیده و تجسم کرده است ، چه شهر و چه انسان ها در داستان همینگوی خالی ، پوشالی ، پوچ و تهی هستند ، زیبایی و حقیقت را می توان در اسپانیا محبوب همینگوی و البته گریختن به طبعیت بکر آن یافت ، اگر چه که در همین اسپانیا ست که افراد پی به پوچی خود می برند .
در پایان می توان گفت آنچه همینگوی در این کتاب نشان داده نمایش شور بختی انسان و تلاش برای رهایی از آن است ، تلاشی که نه تنها شکست خورده بلکه افراد داستان را هم بیشترخرد و ویران کرده و سرانجام در چاه شوربختی زندگی فرو برده است .
September 23, 2016
Such a boring book. I get that Hemingway captures the decadence and dissolution of the Lost Generation. I get that his writing style brings to mind adjectives like "sparse" and "blunt" and "elegiac." But I do not get how to find enjoyment from such a repetitive book that glamorizes violence, excessive drinking, outdated forms of masculinity, homophobia, and antisemitism. One could argue that Hemingway reports these toxic ideas as ideals of the time, but even then, he does nothing special with his story to rise above the trials of the 1920s. I also cannot forgive his monotonous and mind-numbing prose. As I said in another review, if an author without Hemingway's name tried to get by with this style of writing, I doubt they would succeed.
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