The Sun Also Rises

I read this coming off The Scarlet Letter, and it was whiplash. Hawthorne and Hemingway are as close to opposite in style as writers can get. Where Hawthorne never settled for one word when forty would do, Hemingway is sparse to the point that I feel like half the actual story is something he expects you to just sort of infer from very plain statements. "This happened. Then this happened. Quip. Counterquip. Quip. This happened."

The first two-thirds of the story feels like an introduction to the real story, which starts when the group arrives at Pamplona and the running of the bulls. I had been sort of just going along with it until then, and afterward it became clear that this story was about, and had been about, a group of young, show more assholish, and completely hopeless people and the whole theme of the 'lost generation' became clear.

Holy crap though, how are all these people not dead of alcohol poisoning already? Basically they're brownout drunk 24/7. show less

Those familiar with Hemingway know he writes in a very particular style. The sentences themselves tend to be plain and unornamented, yet there's much that goes unsaid. To truly understand a book like this, one must read between the lines, which may be delightful for some and frustrating for others. It also increases the chances of readers interpreting the text in very different ways.

But unless you happen to be an incel combined with a white supremacist with a variety of other intolerances thrown in, modern readers can all agree the characters are awful people. I think that even Hemingway intended us to see them as deeply flawed, although I suspect his conception of their flaws differs greatly from mine. I certainly hope a major point of show more the book is for the reader to view these characters critically, recoiling from their racial slurs and antisemitism and threats invoking the KKK. If it wasn't intended, at least it's possible to read it that way, given the fact that the book has a first-person narrator the reader can disagree with whenever he voices an unsavory opinion.

I also felt free to make up my own mind about the leading female character, which was aided by the fact that she has deep flaws even when applying modern standards instead of old-fashioned sexist ones. Combined with the read-between-the-lines approach, I was able to choose to believe the narrative was criticizing her for, say, holding with intolerant attitudes and failing to establish an open relationship with her fiancé. Although I certainly had an inkling of how Hemingway might have wanted me to think about her instead.

Plotwise, the book starts very slow and never gets much better. Personally, my interest picked up a bit after the characters set off for Spain, although at first that was only because I was actually interested in long descriptions of the people and places they encountered. If you want a narrative picture of 1920's Spain, that will be a highlight of this book for you. Otherwise you'll have to wait for the festival and be satisfied with bull fighting and interpersonal drama.

I suspect most modern readers won't want to pick this up purely for entertainment value. Perhaps you love a classic novel that allows you to reflect on what the author might be saying about post-war disillusionment and the way it affected a generation (as multiple sources claim is the point... I found more value in analyzing the psyches of individual characters). Perhaps, like me, you're a writer interested in studying Hemingway's style in greater depth. Like me, you may find the ending to be satisfying, in that it's thought-provoking, perhaps a suitable reward for the attention you paid over long passages leading up to it. But unless you find something else to enjoy or at least be interested in along the way, you're likely to give up and declare this book to be terribly boring.

If you want to try some Hemingway, I recommend reading a short story first to see if his style appeals to you. show less

If Hemingway’s goal was to portray the moral bankruptcy of the “lost generation,” he succeeded brilliantly…but that doesn’t make this something I enjoyed or would ever read again. I’m sure that literary critics can mine all kinds of deep themes from a bunch of feckless drunk expats hanging out in Paris cafe’s and watching bullfights at the Festival of San Fermin in Pamplona while lusting after and fighting over a loose woman (and throw in some nasty antisemitism just to spice things up). For me, it was just morally gross and my dislike-bordering-on-hatred of Hemingway is undimmed.

There is much to like in this book. For instance, the deceptively simple writing style. There are fewer short, simple sentences than one would expect from a disciple of William Allen White of the 110 edicts. Avoid adjectives was another White dogma. It struck me how often Hemingway uses adjectives, but they are empty ones such as "nice."
There's a repetition of words and a subtle rhythm to the sentences that fascinates me. Chapter 12 is a nice set-piece on a day spent fishing that would go well alongside Hemingway's Upper Michigan stories. My grammar editor wants me to choose another adjective for that sentence, but if "nice" is good enough for Hem, well. . . .
It probably says something that I discuss style before plot and character. I show more enjoyed this book, but it leaves me ambivalent.
There's hardly another writer whose biography is as well-known as Hemingway's, and this, his first novel, is transparent. Didn't his companions on the trip see him scribbling incessantly in his Moleskines? What did they suppose he was recording? We can't help but see Hemingway in our minds when we read of Jake Barnes. It's hard to resist falling into the biographical fallacy.
Barnes comes off better than anyone in the circle of friends with whom he descends on Pamplona. When he and Bill arrive in Spain, Bill repeatedly complains of the cold, but Jake is stoical. There's a lot of drinking in the book, but apparently, Jake is the only one who can hold his liquor. Mike and Bill are loud, obnoxious drunks, Brett's hand shakes until she gets the glass to her lips for a first sip. Jake remains stoic, even when the room around him is reeling. The effect is to make the book seem mean-spirited. A settling of scores perhaps none of his real-life friends knew were open. Does a writer have to be so ruthless? Did Hemingway need a new circle of friends after every book?
It's also telling that two of the circle of friends are writers. There's a competition going on here that's about more than drinking and fishing and the question of who is the only true aficionado of bull-fighting. The two writers have successfully published, while Jake is still a newspaper reporter, measuring himself against them. The gratuitous put-downs of Mencken are another indication of what Harold Bloom would call the anxiety of influence.
There's a common thread: It seems his friendships were pugilistic, his approach to writing agonistic. Bull-fighting is more than the backdrop; it's a way of life. It appears as if the only person Jake admires in the book is the young bull-fighter, Pedro Romero. If he were a writer, Jake would hate him. But since his excellence is in an activity that Jake doesn't perform in, he can accept him.
And just how much anti-semitism can we simply write off as reporting the attitudes that would have existed in a circle such as that at the time? To me, it goes beyond that, and it leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
And yet. . . . After it seems as if Hemingway will spend the entire book with his characters moving from Paris to Pamplona, and from dining table to bar stool, all of a sudden he lands a punch that you realize he's been building toward since the first page. You just have to admire it. And the denouement, leading to one of the best final lines in literature, is perfect. show less

I like Hemingway's books. His style should be boring, it should be less interesting than it is. But I can visualize the story, I can hear the voices. Ernest's iceberg theory is on full display here. There is a lot lying beneath the story that his readers would have gotten intuitively. It was published a few years after WWI, a terrible, brutal engagement that traumatized everyone who was involved. He didn't have to talk about the war in the book, it was an accepted fact known to everyone.

The characters in this novel were all in the war in some way or other. Jake Barnes, the narrator, even has some PTSI. He's also been terribly injured, and is therefore impotent, but doesn't dwell much on his trauma. The other men also were in the war, show more and Brett was a VAD nurse who lost the love of her life to the fighting.

In fact, everyone has lost everything. The only thing they have left is to eat, drink, and be merry. And since this is also during Prohibition, it it easier to do in Europe than in America. And that's just all the background. This is a story about some terribly wounded people who are coping with life as best they can. But they are all stuck in a limbo of alcohol and sex (except Jake, who is impotent), trying to fill their empty lives and numb their pain. The tragedy is that Jake and Brett love each other, but can never consummate that love. Jake finds solace in alcohol, and Brett finds solace with other men.

In keeping with the times, there is quite a bit of anti-semitism and some racist language. show less

I have had very little experience with Hemingway prior to picking up this book. For some reason I had it in my head that his writing would be haughty, inaccessible and laborious to read. I was pleasantly surprised that none of my preconceptions were true.

The writing style in Sun Also Rises is fluid, simple and easy to follow. His sentences are short and easy to follow. His dialog is natural. His descriptions are straightforward and to the point.

Even though the simplicity of the style made the reading quick and easy, I quickly saw that there was a lot going on "between the lines." As terse as much of the writing is, it was apparent that what was left out was just as important (perhaps more so) than what was on the page.

As a case in show more point, nowhere in the book does Hemingway explicitly identify the nature of the wound that Jake received in the war. In fact, if a reader wasn't paying close attention, the importance of that wound would quickly fade into the background. However, there are plenty of clues as to the type of injury and the nature and extent that it has affected Jake's life. The injury was probably the largest case of something "not written" that was important. There were a few other instances where I felt like Hemingway was leaving out significant details while alluding to their importance.

The character development in the book was very interesting.

With the first person narrative, we only really get into Jake's head (although, as mentioned above, there's plenty of detail he leaves out even about himself) and everything is tainted by his view of life. At first his view felt fairly realistic and trustworthy but it quickly became apparent that he was jaded and cynical.

I felt like we got a pretty good feel for Cohn by the end of the novel. His character seemed to be the most straightforward and easy to understand and also seemed to follow along with the narrator's initial description of him in the opening.

Lady Brett Ashley's character was a bit more troublesome. She generally felt like a party girl who absolutely loved life and was always happy, but as the layers came back, she had more emotional depth than first expressed.

The other characters in the novel were intriguing but again it was hard to unravel their motivations and get at the heart of their character because their words and motives were often veiled by volatile or sullen behavior. The various lovers of Brett and friends of Jake were interesting but seemed to serve as reflections to play off Brett and Jake and let us gain more depth into those personalities. The drunken repartees and the random banter was funny at times, harsh at others.

The overall tone of the book was almost paradoxical. As readers, we're following around a group of expatriates as they party and travel around Europe reveling and enjoying life for all its worth. From a high level, you would think that this would be great fun. But as we drill down into the hearts and heads of these characters, the true story became rather depressive. Instead of a semi-aristocratic party crowd, in the end it felt like we were following a bunch of slovenly lounge-a-bouts who only lived for the next drink.

Both Brett and Jake had a yearning for some true emotion or passion in life but neither was able to find a clear path to that state of happiness. Instead, all of the characters lived lives of broken, or disabled, relationships. They wandered aimlessly through life spending money like water in order to try and find some sort of emotional high (or perhaps a liquor induced numbness) to detract from their otherwise unfulfilled lives.

After reading this book, I have a desire to seek out more Hemingway and read more of his stuff. I really enjoy the style he used in this book and found his characters intriguing and approachable. The story and emotions were thought provoking and effective.

Definitely recommended.

****
4 stars out of 5 show less

My first taste of Hemingway and, honestly, i really have no idea what all the hype is about.

The Sun Also Rises is nothing but rich-alcoholics-get-bored-with-Paris-so-go-off-to-a-fiesta-in-Spain-for-a-week-to-get-drunk-there-instead.   They mostly do nothing but drink alcohol of various types and expenses of which Hemingway will inform you like any decent, decadent, wealthy alcoholic would.   They eat when they get hungry, sleep when they feel they need to and watch a few bull fights; about which, Hemingway is rather keen to portray to the world that the local Spanish know him to be an "officianado", and that everyone must accept that it's the height of art and wonder to brutalise animals for the entertainment of drunks.

Oh, and there's show more lots of pathetic drunken arguments with pathetic drunken people arguing about other drunken people, or about people who won't get drunk with them -- with a good dose of antisemitism thrown in, which was only necessary if Hemingway was eager to portray his antisemitic credentials to the world as it bought absolutely nothing whatsoever to the actual story.

Blah, blah, blah...

...mostly, it's all just typical drunken alcoholic boring twaddle written down through the haze of a hangover the next morning.

And now i can't be bothered to write another word about Hemingway ever again, and i certainly won't be reading any of his other books.   I gave him a chance and he failed miserably -- but failing miserably is what alcoholics do best. show less