I was a bit bored with this one and struggled with the characters.
I loved The Old Man and the Sea so I know it’s more with the plot and characters then his writing style.

I’ll definitely read more books by Hemingway but there’s only so much fishing, drinking, aimless wandering, more drinking, and drunk dudes that a gal can endure.

And if you think about it, it’s not much of a love story at all and more of a cautionary tale.
Jake gets friend-zoned and Lady Brett is a hot f’ing mess.

Anyway, moving on!

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.

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

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 finished The Sun Also Rises in a hotel room in Vienna, and reading it while in transit in Europe perhaps affected how much I liked it – I liked it very much, far more than I expected to after my ambivalent reaction to A Farewell to Arms. The open, wide-ranging view of Europe from Paris to Pamplona is something I feel very in need of right now, and Hemingway's hungover cynicism masquerading as wisdom seems here much more beautiful to me. This is particularly so because instead of the grand tragedy of A Farewell to Arms, the tone is built around a more quotidian resignation which I thought was much more believable and familiar. I have never loved Hemingway's prose style but I do admire the way he writes dialogue in this book, very allusively, with all kinds of ironies and inside jokes and drunken repetitions flying around that make for very rich and dynamic scenes, despite the anonymity of a lot of the cast. The prevalence of dialogue also makes this a surprisingly fast read.

I was wooed early on by the opening descriptions of Montparnasse, where I used to live, and the expat stomping-grounds of the Rotonde, the Sélect, the Dôme, the Closerie des Lilas, all still going strong. (Well, most of them are a bit overpriced and unatmospheric now, although the terrasse of the Lilas is still one of my favourite places in Paris to get melancholically hammered.) Hemingway writes many paragraphs whose meticulous geographic detail is a sure sign of someone trying, by means of concrete landmarks, to understand where the beauty of a particular night inhered:

We came on to the Rue du Pot de Fer and followed it along until it brought us to the rigid north and south of the Rue St 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 Montparnasse, 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.

You could read this book with Google Maps open in front of you; in fact you often feel that's what Hemingway wants. His descriptions of walking and fishing in the Spanish countryside are similarly exact, and – like the drum-beat of American placenames in Jack Kerouac's prose – they betray a deep intensity of emotion.

The most lavish setpieces are those around the running of the bulls, and the bullfights themselves, in Pamplona. After several pages about the behaviour of the ‘bulls’ and the ‘steers’, in which both words are used repeatedly, one is compelled to recall that a steer is a castrated bull and so to realise that this is some kind of guiding metaphor for Hemingway, not just in the context of the novel (whose narrator has been effectively castrated by a war injury), but in a wider investigation into masculinity.

It's more subtle than perhaps I was expecting from Hemingway, because when you look at the cast – a series of men getting ruthlessly friendzoned by one pretty, flighty Englishwoman – you see no sign of his ideal alpha male. Instead there are only men who sometimes try to act like bulls, and are damaged or otherwise made into steers in the process. So there is a deep ambivalence in the writing, because Hemingway is clearly seduced by what he sees as the raw manliness of bullfighting, but apparently sees no way of carrying it over into real life.

Brett Ashley, the ‘damned good-looking’ siren around whom the other characters orbit, is a fabulous and fascinating portrait of the modern, liberated, short-haired divorcée of the 1920s and '30s. She does not behave very well and you feel you should dislike her, but, then again, one sees the appeal. Not unlike Hemingway himself, in my case.

Jake's final condition frequently escapes the contemporary reader, who lacks the historical context for reading the novel. If one misses the ironic and understated references, it may not seem like "such a hell of a sad story" as it did to Hemingway. Unless one understands the moral background of the period, one may find the Latin Quarter life nostalgically romantic and fail to see the reflection of America self-destructing in the twenties. The blithe reader may see Cohn as the cause of all the troubles. It was not Cohn; it was the times. It was Jake Barnes, impotent in more ways than one, caught in his times, his value system jerked from beneath his feet. He is, finally, the prewar man stripped of all defenses, bereft of values, seduced and abandoned by his times. If at Botin's he gets a bit drunk listening to Brett, perhaps we can forgive him, for both the reader and Jake realize that he is a most ineffectual man in a most unpromising place.

These concluding lines from essay "The Sun in Its Time: Recovering the Historical Context" by MICHAEL S. REYNOLDS has prompted me to read the work again. This is a good essay indeed and explains much of the background of this work, which, according to the author is not a tribute to the "Lost Generation". I found his interpretations and opinions interesting.

Will be reading this again hence.

I am firmly in the belief that I don't have the proper literary capacity or knowledge to properly enjoy nor analyze this novel. Hemingway is considered one of the best authors in the recent past and one of the revolutionary ones in American literature. So my mediocre opinion of the novel should not be taken at face value only. It is like a pin in a haystack, easy to forget too. I am sorry to say that none of the characters struck a chord with me. Jake, our narrator himself fell flat for me and Brett annoyed me immensely. It got me thinking, is this how women were always written by male authors back then? Maybe I have not read enough of novel by male authors. But one thing I truly appreciated in the novel (and what aactually compelled to buy this book itself) was the vivid descriptions of Spain and the fiesta. It was the one thing I love about the book. I re-read the parts that involved the bull fighting over and over again. Personally I belong to the generation that thoroughly dislike things such as bullfighting and look down upon it but still I cannot hide the fact that I was highly facinated in the 1920s Spain and the culture of bullfighting.

I do not want to dwell too much in the novel as (I mentioned before too) I did not have a positive experience with it. At least I can say now that I've read Hemingway. I am sure this novel would be phenomenal for those who have more literary knowledge than me but as for me..... I shall just leave it at this point before I incur the wrath of Hemingway fans

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!

"One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose."
- Ecclesiastes

Based on real people and real events in Hemingway's life in Paris and his travel to Spain for the Pamplona festival, The Sun Also Rises is a study of concepts such as love, longing, lust and dissipation; of nature, strength and perseverance.

It's a lot of fun to be in love.

The story which is about a group of American and British expatriates in the post World War I Paris smells of a sense of wistfulness and nostalgia; things that might have been.

I can't stand it to think my life is going so fast and i'm not really living it.

Can this 'Lost Generation', these disoriented, adrift rudderless individuals find a safe harbor or are they destined to remain unanchored for eternity?

You can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.

This book is another example of Hemingway's simple and concise prose style which makes his characters real and natural.

Some people have God...quite a lot.

Occasionally, I find a book from my early days on Goodreads when I only did star ratings and I like to go back and revisit it with a review. This month we are reading The Sun Also Rises for one of my book clubs, so I figured this would be the perfect opportunity to do so. I previously gave it 3 stars but, upon reflection, I am thinking I might push it closer to 4 stars. So, maybe 3.5 stars (rounded up on the official star ranking).

While I cannot say I enjoyed my experience with this book as much as I did with some other Hemingway, I am very glad I read this one. Whether you end up liking it or not I truly believe it is one of the essential Hemingway novels to read; both style and content. After reading The Sun Also Rises, I read The Paris Wife, which is a historical fiction novel with a lot of non-fictional references in it, and realized just how autobiographical this book was.

Also, this book is one of the quintessential novels of the Lost Generation. The Lost Generation was a literary movement coming out of World War I and included, in addition to Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, T.S. Eliot, and others (I must admit I had to go to Wikipedia to make to sure I had this list of authors correct!) While I was reading more about the Last Generation I realized how much the narrative of this book represented the mentality and artistic representation of that group. It’s the perfect companion novel if you want to know more about that time and Hemingway himself.

While I don’t often do this with books I have given 3.5 stars to, I do recommend this one for its classic status. It has so much to offer beyond just being a novel and it just might send you down a rabbit hole looking for other books from and information about this era.

Oceniam z wielkim bólem w sercu

There I was, thinking Twain and Steinbeck were my least favorite American authors, little knowing Hemingway was just waiting in the wings to rush forward and tower mountains about the rest - Mt. Everest style mountains.

I hated this book. Everything about it was trash. I realize this is an unpopular opinion when it comes to the massively venerated Hemingway, but there it is. My favorite part in the book was a fishing trip. A. Fishing. Trip. That's the material I'm working with.

I read a LOT of articles about this book and Hemingway as I was listening to this novel, positive and negative, and I get what they're saying about why this book is famous (or infamous), I just don't care. I thought it was a terrible story that was horribly written.

It's said that this book is one of the greatest representations of "the lost generation." So, you're telling me that after World War One, the majority of serviceman boozed around Paris and pined after women they couldn't have? Because in my mind, the majority of servicemen were like my great-grandparents. They came home and worked their butts off to provide for their families. In my case, on a farm. They raised the generation that would survive through the Great Depression and serve in World War Two. They worked hard their entire lives and saw the world blasted to smithereens twice. They were heroes.

I didn't get any of that from this book. I got spoiled people that feel sorry for themselves. Sorry your life is so hard, too bad most of us don't have the money to drink our way through Europe. (Not that I would want to.) From what I've read of Hemingway, even in the positive articles, he thought very highly of himself. That definitely came through in the book.

I think of this book in three sections.

1. Boozing around Paris and saying "tight."
2. A fishing trip.
3. Boozing around Spain and bull fights.

I thought it was easier to listen to after they left Paris. I had an easier time keeping the people straight. In the beginning it felt like the MC was just jumping from one drunk person to the next and I couldn't keep any of them straight.

I kept listening because it was so short and I figured I might as well just finish it out. I knew I'd never want to return to it. This wasn't my first Hemingway, I actually read For Whom the Bell Tolls in high school. I don't remember any strong feelings about that one, if anything I remembered it more positively. This book may have turned me off completely from Hemingway, though. It was pretty painful for me to get through.

I'm happy that other people find lots of deep, personal meaning in this novel. I am not one of them.