Этот роман "И восходит солнце" (в русском переводе "Фиеста", что существенно переставляет акценты и смыслы), в первую очередь, покоряет своей искренностью. В нем нет позы, а есть лишь усталость, топимая в вине и развлечениях, и поиск смысла. Смысла жизни, смысла любви. Искренность и правдивость во многом достигались тем, что многие герои имели реальных прототипов, в том числе, главный герой Джейк несёт некоторые автобиографические черты, и мастерством писателя их жизненность была перенесена на бумагу.
Эпиграфы, гениально подобранные к произведению, полно и всесторонне раскрывают суть книги. "Потерянное поколение", вернувшееся с полей битв Первой мировой войны, пришло с подорванной психикой, разрушенными идеалами и понятиями о смысле жизни, глубоко травмированные духовно и физически. На смену довоенным представлениям и понятиям приходит трагизм осознания бессмысленности жизни. Слова Экклезиаста "Род проходит, и род приходит, а земля пребывает вовеки.
Восходит солнце, и заходит солнце, и спешит к месту своему, где оно восходит. Идет ветер к югу, и переходит к северу, кружится, кружится на ходу своем, и возвращается ветер на круги своя. Все реки текут в море, но море не переполняется; к тому месту, откуда реки текут, они возвращаются, чтобы опять течь." выражает философские концепции жизни, выраженные в романе, концепции о том, что все в конце концов возвращается на круги своя. В том числе, и надежда "потерянного поколения" вернуться к нормальной жизни.
Из всех возможных способов быть раненым, Джейкоб Барнс получил самое невероятное, заставившее полковника сказать «Вы — иностранец, англичанин (все иностранцы назывались англичанами), отдали больше чем жизнь». Он не мог больше любить физически, что определяет обречённость в отношения с Брет. Но он мог любить сердцем.
Брет также жертва войны, она в те годы работала в госпитале, и также, она прожигает жизнь. Каждый из ее поклонников введены в роман неслучайно. Вообще, противопоставление в романе важно: Париж с его развлечениями ненастоящ, искусственные, эфемерен, Памплона по-крестьянски крепка, реальна и естественна. Природа противопоставляется корриде, резкий контраст стилей двух матадоров формирует два похода к этике и эстетике боя. Точно также поклонники Брет противопоставляются друг относительно друга, выявляя грани их характеров. Кон и Барнс - оба писатели, когда-то вместе учились, но их нравственные принципы слишком различны. Роберт решает проблемы силой, избив и Джейка, и Риверо, хоть он и боксер, в душе он трус. Риверо - артист, гений корриды, но ему всего девятнадцать лет, он не был на войне и его мир чист и непорочен. Майкл - пожалуй, самый неприятный тип "Майкл, когда перейдет черту, нехорош." А черту он переходит постоянно. В размышлениях об оскорблениях Майклом Кона, Джейк приходит к мысли: "Все-таки лучше бы он этого не делал, потому что после я сам себе противен. Это и есть нравственность — если после противно? Нет, это, должно быть, безнравственность."
Джейк мучительно ищет смысл в этой нелепой жизни. "Я думал, что я за все заплатил. Не так, как женщины, платят, и платят, и платят. Не какое-то там воздаяние или кара. Просто обмен ценностями. Что-то уступаешь, а взамен получаешь что-то другое. Или работаешь ради чего-нибудь. Так или иначе за все, хоть отчасти хорошее, платишь. Многое из того, за что я платил, нравилось мне, и я хорошо проводил время. Платишь либо знанием, либо опытом, либо риском, либо деньгами. Пользоваться жизнью не что иное, как умение получать нечто равноценное истраченным деньгам и сознавать это. А получать полной ценой за свои деньги можно. Наш мир — солидная фирма." Разве это основа для здорового мировоззрения? Впрочем, герой и сам это понимает.
"Мне все равно, что такое мир. Все, что я хочу знать, — это как в нем жить. Пожалуй, если додуматься, как в нем жить, тем самым поймешь, каков он." Вот вопрос, который мучает его.

Но открытый финал оставляет надежды на то, что Джейк, всегда бывший для Брет надёжным другом, приходивший по первому зову, когда ей было трудно, преодолеет духовные муки и поиски своего поколения.
«Ах, Джейк, — говорит Брет, — как бы нам хорошо было вместе», и нам остаётся надеяться, что они исцелятся.

Some spoilers below, so steer clear if you want to discover them yourself.

More famously known as "The Sun Always Rises".

Famous for characterising 'the lost generation' - those who came of age in WW1, this is an interesting book. Wealthy people - at least people acting as if wealthy - drinking up a storm, fitting a little work in around the drunkenness. Americans spending their time in France and Spain.

A novel in three parts- the first set in Paris, the second in Pamplona, the third in San Sebastian / Madrid.

Seldom does a book blurb so well explain the plot -I can't do better so "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.

This has lot of Hemingway in it - drinking, fishing, bull fighting, drinking, women, and more drinking. It also has self-destruction, journalism, bankruptcy, flighting and more drinking.

Is is simple in its style, narrated by the main character Barnes, also large proportion is dialogue. It is not a particularly descriptive book - with regards to the scenery and the setting, but it describes well the main features - the running of the bulls, the bull fighting and most importantly, the characters.

It is a brutal life Barnes has been handed. Wounded in the war and lacking the use of his downstairs operation, in love with Brett, and unable to keep her without the sex, he follows her about. She is a notorious slapper, who shacks up with whoever she is currently in love with - Barnes even helps facilitate setting her up with her lovers. Throughout the novel he keeps a fairy balanced outlook - no doubt helped by his almost constant drunkenness, always off to the rescue.
For me, it is a sad look at the lost generation, lost mostly in alcohol.

Four stars.

I suppose this is going to strike some people as being one of my confused reviews. This happens when the writing and intelligence, or experimental courage, floor me with amazement, but the actual ideas disgust me, or the characters are too horrible for me. Part of me is full of admiration for the original brain and/or talent; another part of me is excreting bricks to throw at the author.

Hemingway is one of those authors for me. It's not just this book or that book - it's his entire philosophy of life.He was such an extraordinary witness to everything and everybody around him. He seems to have been an extremely curious person of high energy, willing to do whatever it took to experience every adventure possible. What makes him worthy of a superstar status is how well he writes of what he sees.

However, Hemingway was an ignorant and arrogant fool about what makes being a human worthy of being human. That led him to scorn the variety of being human for all of the wrong reasons. It appears Hemingway strove mightily to become something similar to the John Wayne image. (By the way, according to Wikipedia, the actor John Wayne, whose real name was Marion Morrison, while more complex than his movie character, seems to have had a similar life outlook as Hemingway.)

In Hemingway's worldview, the definition of being a Man can encompass only one definition, and a true woman is defined with only one definition of Woman - one permanent universal role to each allowed. To me, this intentional limiting of gender roles can only cause crippled personalities. It is an emotional blindness that some people seem to have. Life is rewarding to Hemingway only if it doesn’t lead to the Greatest Sin in his mindset- being disrespectful to the single image of being a Man that he thinks is permitted. Anything that deviates from this rigid definition of maleness is suspect and shaming and lowly. No excuses.

Hemingway’s enthusiasm for there being only two pictures of people which represent the apex of perfection of humanity, yet his ability to see unblinkered and clearly the huge variety of real people, must have been as tormenting to him as crookedly hung pictures are to obsessive-compulsives. (It struck me how he might have been a believer of Plato's metaphysics.)

The first chapter in the novel is a history and analysis of a pivotal character - Robert Cohn.  Is Cohn meant to be a character mirroring the poor bulls who are bravely and futilely defying death in the bullfighting ring, but in reverse, as in being a metaphorical steer? Doomed by his inescapable nature?  Cohn begins his friendship with the actual narrator of the story, Jacob Barnes, in Paris after Cohn's divorce from his wife, Francis. Jacob Barnes is an intellectual and a journalist. I think the character Barnes is EH's avatar since his background and beliefs mirror the author's from what I know about Hemingway.

While Barnes is a perceptive observer of the lives of his friends and an exceptional bon vivant, fueled by copious amounts of wine, he is drifting from social event to social event. He works to be able to live, rather than live to work. However, Barnes seems to be losing purpose. He brings along a prostitute, Georgette, to a cafe table of friends, introducing her as his fiancée, in a moment of boredom. Barnes leaves Georgette to fend for herself and walks over to the bar to get a drink. There, he runs into Lady Brett Ashley. The character of Brett is an elemental force of sexuality, a powerful goddess of love disguised - but she is a poisoned goddess, jaded and reluctant to commit. She is the lover of every man in the book; however she clearly is not cut from the same cloth as Georgette. For one thing, Brett is a real titled Lady, from a previous marriage. Cohn meets her at this occasion, and becomes an obsessed man. But Barnes is the man who leaves with Brett. Barnes thinks "She was looking into my eyes with that way she had of looking that made you wonder whether she really saw out of her own eyes." In conversation, she says being in love is "....hell on earth."

Love causes ruptures between the friends after Jake and Bill Gorton decide on a trip to Spain for fishing and the bullfighting fiesta at Pamplona. They travel with Brett and Michael Campbell, Brett’s latest fiancé. Cohn follows.

At this point, the novel is a journey of 'Days of Wine and Roses' with great locales and many drunks. No one minds that alcohol is messing up their fun, with the exception of a hotel owner, Montoya. He sees that all of the men in the Barnes party become distracted and disputatious with the competing for the privilege of Brett's company.

The incident of the loss of Montoya's regard is barely mentioned, but to me, it was HUGE. When we meet Montoya, Barnes and his friends are checking into his hotel at Pamplona for the fiesta and bullfighting. Montoya and Barnes share a deep understanding about bull-fights. They both are aficionados - one who is passionate about the killing of the bulls. It is a spiritual, numinous event; something not overly discussed unless approached in undertones while talking about the expertise of the matadors and customs of the killing. As Barnes says about Montoya, "For one who had aficion he could forgive anything. At once he forgave me all my friends. Without his ever saying anything they were simply a little something shameful between us, like the spilling open of the horses in bull-fighting."

By the end of the book, Montoya is avoiding Barnes. The purity of their love of bull-fighting is no longer a shared emotion between them. Montoya believes that Barnes has tainted his experience of the blood sport, I think. I agree that Barnes is sliding into moral decay, and that his infatuation with Brett is a primary indication of growing dissolution, as well as a partial cause.

Hemingway's linkage of death sports, especially bullfighting, to religious ecstasy and moral purity is twisted, in my opinion. It reminds me of the 'precious bodily fluids' joke in 'Dr. Strangelove' , the famous movie. To me, it very clearly demonstrates this mistaken belief about how to live an examined life of meaning that led Hemingway to his failed marriages and suicide. He tried to build his moral self-regard on a moral singularity of sorts. I think the complexity of people makes this crazy-making. To reduce oneself to one feeling of manliness, rather than accept the songs of myself (Walt Whitman's poem, 'Leaves of Grass'.). Hemingway seemed to conduct his life on an endless search for concreteness and closure through death sports - he appeared unable to give up his idea that this rigid definition of being a Man would lead him to purity of being, and that being a Man of blood sport was the only reason to be alive with self-respect. Of course, Hemingway's war experience could be the initiating cause. He was an ambulance driver, among other things.

Walt Whitman also was an ambulance driver (in the American Civil War) -ironic, eh?

Brett loves the killing of the bulls. Plus, she has no problem with the eviscerating of the innocent horses, who obey their riders trusting their guidance in the ring, unaware of their actual purpose to 'incidentally' die of being gored, guts ripped out, by the bull, if it was considered necessary in winding up the bull to fury while protecting the matador. The crowd looks always to the bull. The horses' death are like the unnoticed sky above the heads of the spectators. I consider this depraved.

Brett is also unable to sit in a church without discomfort and squirms, eventually bolting outside before the end of the service. She is not only Eve, but the snake that destroys the state of innocence and purity in The Garden of Eden.

Hemingway was a man who 'loved' women without much trusting or liking them, I think. He consistently uses fictional women in the destroyer roles in his books, but not in a clean way. I feel he thinks of women as unclean stealers of bodily fluids - testosterone.


I think this is a wonderful book, but a lousy novel.