n  “I don’t remember … I was just a little tight.”n

SEINFELD, arguably one of the most watched and most enjoyed television franchises of all time made its cultural mark by being about nothing. But they got away with it by presenting that “nothing” with some brilliant satire, a constant self-awareness of the inane nature of the theme, some vaudevillian acting, great comedy and the odd departure into heartwarming pathos. Ernest Hemingway’s THE SUN ALSO RISES is also about nothing but it has to be said that, unlike SEINFELD, there are no redeeming features and no moments of brilliance. Clearly, my opinion differs from the mainstream but I’ve got to wonder how this pathetic piece of meandering trash ever earned Hemingway a place in the American Literature Hall of Fame.

The characters – every last one of them – are pathetic, narcissistic, racist, selfish, unmotivated, homophobic and anti-Semitic life failures. The men share the added feature of being misogynistic and pathetic pushovers for the only female character who could probably be safely labeled with the modern euphemism of “teaser”.

If THE SUN ALSO RISES has a theme, perhaps it is the character’s recognition of the ability of copious and endless quantities of alcohol at any time of the day or night (or perhaps more accurately, at ALL times of the day and night) to render their thought processes immune to the wear and tear that might be caused by the recognition of their other shortcomings. At no time, does their conversation ever rise above the base level of drunken inanity. And for reasons which escaped me completely, Hemingway’s characters (or perhaps it was Hemingway himself) seemed obsessively focused on the necessity to take a bath in those rare moments that they took time off from drinking!?

I’m glad that I read THE SUN ALSO RISES. And because Ernest Hemingway was on my lifetime reading bucket list, I also actually finished it. Had it been by a lesser known author, I’m quite certain I would have set it aside long before the final page despite the fact that the novel is mercifully short. Ernest Hemingway is now OFF my reading list forever more. It is worth adding as a final note that, despite my being firmly against the bloodthirsty cruelty of the sport of bull-fighting and the heartless Pamplona Running of the Bulls, Hemingway’s skill in describing the technical side of the “sport” together with what aficionados claim to value about it, is the only thing that earned the second star in my rating.

Paul Weiss

Note, July 15, 2024: I've just made a slight factual correction to a background detail of this review.

In the case of books I've read but disliked, I often indicate that fact with a one-star rating, so people browsing my shelves won't be misled as to my tastes. Some Goodreaders object to the practice of giving single-star ratings without a review to explain why; one likened it to a drive-by shooting. Mindful of their point, I've tried to go back and add reviews in some of these cases; and (to keep the shooting metaphor) this is one where I'm quite glad to come back and pump a few more bullets into the corpse. :-)

As the glowing Goodreads description indicates, Nobel laureate Hemingway is a critical establishment darling, so anybody panning his work risks condemnation as a philistine or worse. In my friends circle, ratings of this book range from five stars to one (and points in between), and some of the former come from friends whose judgment I respect a lot more than I do that of most critics. Of course, literary tastes are subjective; so I can only indicate how and why the work impressed (or failed to impress) me, for whatever that's worth. (As another friend sometimes says, "Your mileage may vary.") It's probably worth noting that I read this while I was in high school, and while it wasn't assigned by a teacher, I read it as something one had to read in order to be "educated." So I wasn't really drawn to it on its own merits; that may have been a factor that helped color my reaction, though a negative reaction didn't need much help.

To begin with, there's the matter of what the author of the Goodreads description (who was probably writing a jacket blurb!) calls the author's "spare but powerful" style: a limited-vocabulary, staccato, sometimes repetitive diction that's averse to adjectives, adverbs and most description of any kind. If prose were bread loaves, this would definitely be industrially-baked, thin-sliced white bread that dissolves in the mouth like slush and is more or less tasteless. It's significant that, despite the critical adulation of Hemingway as a stylist, this way of writing is virtually unique to him; it's usually explained in textbooks as a result of his background in newspaper journalism, but I've never encountered any newspaper story that affected this style, and no subsequent fiction writers I know of have chosen to imitate him (though a few have dared to parody him, sometimes to hilarious effect). There's just so much verbal richness to the English language, in vocabulary and syntax, so many expressive possibilities, that are simply lost here! So, especially given that the English-language writers I admire the most as stylists --Poe, H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, C. L. Moore, Tanith Lee, and others-- have a much lusher, more fulsome style, it might be expected that I'm not an admirer of Hemingway's. Before reading this novel, I'd been exposed to it in some of his short fiction; I didn't like it there, and didn't appreciate it here.

More importantly, there are the more substantial matters of message, plot, and characters. Basically, the premise here can be summed up as: socially useless expatriates in Paris, whose worldview is comprised of cynicism, nihilism and hedonism, sit around killing time by drinking, fornicating, being bored, and going on jaunts to other places where they can sit around and do the same. That also pretty much summarizes the plot; if you're looking for eventful storytelling, examinations of constructive human relationships, a tale of some goal achieved or conflict undertaken, moral choices made or principles stood upon, you won't find it here. Of course, Hemingway was following the adage, "Write what you know;" (Jake Barnes could be his alter ego). He was part of a vast sea of human flotsam that came out of World War I with their shallow beliefs destroyed, and nothing to put in their place, convinced that life is futile; and he wrote this novel as a literary testament to that conviction. The symbolism of the title expresses the thought in a nutshell, being taken from the epigraph from Ecclesiastes (having been raised in a Congregational church, Hemingway was familiar with the Bible); the quoted verses make it clear that from a purely earth-bound perspective, human life is a cycle of vanity that doesn't go anywhere but in the same pointless circle. (For the Biblical writer, of course, in context, this is balanced by an awareness of the divine and transcendent that breaks the circle; but there's no such awareness here.) Since the literary critical establishment of the mid-20th century came out of the same "lost generation" (to quote the novel's other epigraph), this is the kind of self-referential, navel-gazing literature that they could eat up with a spoon and solemnly declare to be Great Truth. But if you recognize that life and the universe are meaningful, this doesn't come across as Great Truth, but as whiny drivel from people who need to grow up and get a life. Nor does it really succeed as a literary portrait to help us understand what makes these people tick, or to present it alongside the backdrop of an alternative; Hemingway isn't perceptive enough to analyze what makes his characters this way, and he hasn't got an alternative.

To be sure, there's a kind of vestigial plot, in the form of a triangle of sorts (I wouldn't go so far as to call it a "love" triangle) involving Jake, Lady Brett Ashley, and Robert Cohn --the latter two have a brief sexual dalliance, and the former two are quite scandalized that he's so gauche as to expect it to be anything more. (The reader might be scandalized, too --but not by that.) But none of these characters are likeable enough to arouse any emotional connection, or caring one way or the other about what they do or who they end up with --at least, I didn't. The book did, though, evoke one emotional reaction: resentment and distaste for its anti-Semitic undercurrent. Hemingway takes pains to note Cohn's Jewishness, paints him in as unflattering a light as he can, even compared to the other characters, and puts in one character's mouth the line, "Brett's gone off with men. But they weren't ever Jews, and they didn't come and hang about afterward." (This represents, of course, the author's way of trying to hurt the feelings of his nominal friend Gertrude Stein, towards whom he harbored pretty ambivalent feelings that included a hefty component of resentment.) If the critics hadn't already canonized this book before the Nazis gave anti-Semitism a bad name in respectable circles, one suspects it wouldn't be so highly rated today.

So, if this book "educated" me with any lesson, it was that I never wanted to read another Hemingway novel. :-) One might assume that this was an adolescent negative reaction to fiction from that era. But at the same time of my life, I read and liked works by such Hemingway contemporaries as Cather, Sinclair Lewis, and Arthur Koestler. Nor is it a blanket rejection of fictional writers with Hemingway's worldview --Lovecraft was, like Hemingway, an atheist and materialist (and from the same generation), but he became one of my favorite writers. He also produced a body of fiction that has something to offer in terms of literary enjoyment and rewards, whether you accept his worldview or not. Alas, that's not something I personally can say of Hemingway.

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 فرستا��؛ 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

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: n  

“It seemed like a nice cathedral, nice and dim, like Spanish churches”?

n 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: n  

“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.”

n 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, but there is still something that bothered me; why wasn’t the heroic and idealized Pedro Romero killed? Wouldn’t that have been so much more interesting/tragic/thematically significant in light of Hemingway’s oft used “failed masculinity”, if Pedro Romero had been killed? He is the ultimate symbol of macho libido; wouldn’t that have played so well into a book about an impotent man? But instead we’re told that a Vicente Girones died; who the fuck is that? Why do I even care? It’s all this meaningless minutia of names and places, that fall completely flat and hardly engage me as a reader. 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"

For a long time I was convinced that there were two sorts of people in the world: those who adore Hemingway, gush about his genius and lavish praise upon him at every opportunity, and those who despise him utterly. As it turns out, there is a third category: those who have read him and still remain wholly indifferent. I am that third category.

I found my copy of The Sun Also Rises in a thrift-store for a buck, and I figured, 'meh, what the hell?' It is supposed to be one of the fabled great American novels, after all.

I feel rather odd about this book. I couldn't honestly tell you that I liked it, but I can't honestly say I disliked either. It's definitely not a bad novel, but I found I liked how Hemingway writes far more than I liked what he was writing about and so I have a hard time calling it good either. The story seemed to me to be somewhat flat, and the characters more like puppets than people. The narrator/main character seemed mostly detached from the actual story, and it felt like I was listening to a very interesting and eloquent man retelling an anecdote about some business he found himself in the middle of, but that he found very trying and tedious.

I don't know... maybe Hemingway just isn't for me. If this novel is indicative of the rest of his work I probably won't be reading very much more of him.

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!

This is my favorite Hemingway novel, maybe because it was my first. The Sun Also Rises was to Hemingway what The Great Gatsby was to Fitzgerald.

I read this book for the first time my sophomore year of highschool, and I decided it was time to revisit it. This one started off slow for me. Hemingway's narrative at the beginning of the story is quite fragmented and hard to follow at times - especially with new characters being frequently introduced. However, as the story proceeded, the narrative, and I believe the main character, regained some clarity and began to make more sense. If you read this one, my advice is just to stick it out through the first 50 pages, and then things become more clear. This story truly entranced me. Each character is vitally flawed, and as a group they bring out the worst in each other. I've never read a novel in which *all* of the characters are so heavily flawed, but this one certainly checked that off the list. Based on what I read in the preface, this was in all likelihood Hemingway's attempt to capture the post war generation's struggles. This novel broke my heart in a lot of ways. Watching these characters make circumstances worse and worse for themselves was trying, but Hemingway does this to beg the question: what do they have to lose? In a generation scarred by war, what more can they lose? Overall, this book, entrancing and incredibly well written, was a sobering reminder of what happens when we let our grip on out personal sense of humanity slip. Another thing I particularly loved about this one were the multiple settings, between Paris and Pamplona, this novel is full of breathtaking locations and descriptions. I really enjoyed this one, and would recommend to anyone, but having some experience with classic literature would help with this one.

“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 happening. Under the wine I lost the disgusted feeling and was happy. It seemed they were all such nice people.”

Well, I didn’t find them nice people at all, but then I didn’t have any of the wine.

And I didn’t like the story either. Jake Barnes and his expatriate friends drink and argue in 1920’s Paris, take a little fishing break, then drink and argue through the fiesta in Pamplona, Spain. I found the drinking tedious, the bull fighting horrific, and the frequent antisemitism offensive.

But despite all that, I must admit I do really enjoy Hemingway’s style. Not all the time, but it makes for a very refreshing break from more florid writing (such as the Dostoevsky I just finished--what a contrast!) It’s an excellent palate cleanser.

I’m sure others can describe his style much better than me, but I was struck by one thing in particular. When the narrator feels something, it’s so beautifully realized--so subtle and surprisingly touching. He leaves out all the typical descriptions, exposing the bare truth, and there’s something so vulnerable in the subtlety that it almost breaks your heart.

And that I did enjoy, very much.

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.

I read about 30 pages and then asked my wife "Why do so many people like this book?" ... I am not one of them, and I have put it aside.

n  The wind goes towards the south,
And turns around to the north,
The wind whirls about continually,
And comes again on its circuit [...]
The eye is not satisfied with seeing,
Nor the ear filled with hearing [...]
And there is nothing new under the sun. [...]
There is no remembrance of former things,
Nor will there be any remembrance of things that are to come'n
- Ecclesiastes

-------

As complex as it may be, Hemingway's book boils down to one chief topic. It isn't a book about Paris, neither about road trip or pilgrimage, nor corrida, nor fashion, nor heavy booze, nor love.

Fiesta is chiefly a book about loss.


I read this one in 2015. There are passages when this book bored me stiff. And I was not far to think this book rubbish. It is almost as if no significant change could ever happen to the characters. By the middle of the book you hardly wait any twist or major spin in the plot. And right you are. What happens is only the same everlasting and dispiriting present, 'the same old bad play'.

I didn't enjoy this read, yet, I acknowledge Hemingway's efforts to be true-to-life. In my opinion, he scores a point when it comes to tackling the subject of loss.


Wild displays of pent-up tension hint at deeper issues and losses :

- Loss of illusions for Cohn, loss of trust and faith for Jake, who dumps Brett with Romero, loss of honour for Romero the bullfighter, who bends his stiff code of honour and is viewed as the worst casualty in this ride.

- Sheer waste of time.
As the story hovers from one bar to another restaurant, there are passages when this book bored me stiff. You may think it quite odd, but this miserable rambling is almost the same as in American Psycho. Strange as it is, by many features, it struck me as very close to Hemingway's novel.

In American Psycho, a pack of traders spend all their time in expansive restaurants and idle chats and make-belief, and pretense, and shallow social intercourse. Without intending at all to get better acquainted with one another. In fact, they even mix up first names and swap them with one another. Now, in Fiesta, this is the same disheartening frozen time. All this conveys an awkward impression of everlasting present. Is this a chance likeness? I assume it isn't: both novels are partly 'devoted' to loss and absence.

- The last and most salient feature of loss : the loss of enjoyment of life.
Initially, this journey was planned as a recreational ride. Mind that their recreational ride in Spain, an image for the fun in eternal youth, soon turns out to be a glimpse of hell.
I don't know about your own conception of hell. Here is mine : I size up hell as a place where people you love are absent on a regular basis, also you have no means to know how they get by. On top of that, a place devoid of any hint of purpose, where you spend time waiting for nothing to happen.
A place where you have null enjoyment in the present, you can't.


I have a mind to link their experience in Spain with Goya's series of Black Paintings...



Ever seen this eye-candy? This is Saturn devouring one of his sons, the most famous of all Black Paintings. Completed by 1823, the Black Paintings are an infamous series of 16 paintings interweaving images from Spain and manifold mythological pictures of horror, mock enjoyment and profound dismay. Quite like Fiesta when you give it a thought.


To me, this is, by far, the picture most akin to Fiesta.

La romería de San Isidro, 1823, carries a huge load of false merriment and jollity, strongly similar to parties in Fiesta. At the fore, a party of strollers, with a guitar player, singing out loud. On the rear, a herd of people, trailing after the procession in the hills, surrounding Madrid.
This results in a curious double-play between the mock jollity in the foreground and the gloomy throng of woeful drab and black-clothed people in the rear. This hardly resembles any merriment or cheerful communion.

Note the sharp contrast with La pradera de San Isidro, a picture from 1788, which features the same place!


These two pictures are far from one another as Fiesta is from a simple, carefree bit of fun between friends.


The farther they get, the fewer and the more stranded they are, the more estranged they feel from one another. High hopes, wishful thinking and a reckless drive to live without a past cost the characters past, present and future.

And loss isn't bound to entail future happiness, mind you. Hemingway doesn't provide you with any hope for the future.

I am quite happy with this blunted end, an end that adds nothing, hardly an end, really.
There is no way this situation could significantly evolve. The characters are left with no certainty about each other, about themselves, about their living the life to its full, about their futures. We all crave for control over our lives, but it is a fantasy.

All you are left with is loss. Different kinds of losses.
Pick your losses carefully.

n  - Written in 2015n


Spanish Theme - Pink Floyd