It's hard to resist falling into the biographical fallacy.īarnes comes off better than anyone in the circle of friends with whom he descends on Pamplona. 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. There's hardly another writer whose biography is as well-known as Hemingway's, and this, his first novel, is transparent. I enjoyed this book, but it leaves me ambivalent. It probably says something that I discuss style before plot and character. My grammar editor wants me to choose another adjective for that sentence, but if "nice" is good enough for Hem, well.
Chapter 12 is a nice set-piece on a day spent fishing that would go well alongside Hemingway's Upper Michigan stories. There's a repetition of words and a subtle rhythm to the sentences that fascinates me. It struck me how often Hemingway uses adjectives, but they are empty ones such as "nice." Avoid adjectives was another White dogma. There are fewer short, simple sentences than one would expect from a disciple of William Allen White of the 110 edicts. For instance, the deceptively simple writing style. What I will say is that I thoroughly enjoyed re-reading this book and would recommend it highly to anyone who has not yet read it. When it comes to classics like this it doesn't feel right to assign them a rating (I've thrown a 3 on this LibraryThing review as a "neutral" response hoping not to throw off the average too much). The spareness and understatedness he’s known for is at a peak in this book. It's Hemingway’s writing style that makes the book transcend its story of lost souls spending their prime in partying and dissipation. Through it all, even through the fist fight at the climax of the book, Jake remains detached while still a part of events, a reflection of the detachment of his whole lost generation. Cohn keeps hanging around though others in the group (especially the would be fiance) repeatedly urge him to just go away. This, despite being accompanied by her supposed fiance Michael on the trip to Pamplona and having just completed a dalliance with Robert Cohn. Given that Brett is the epitome of the 1920s New Woman - liberated and promiscuous - it’s not unexpected that she falls for the handsome young bullfighter. Bullfighting means even more than that to Hemingway, who wrote later that attending a bull fight is like watching a great tragedy - like “having a ringside seat at the war with nothing going to happen to you.” The tragedy that surrounds the bullfighting in the book mirrors the misadventure that the happy trip of Barnes and his friends becomes. He is a true aficionado of bullfighting, and he takes the time to let us know that he's recognized as such by the Spaniards he has befriended in Pamplona. Jake’s love of bull fighting is in some sense a compensation for his own perceived lack of manliness given his war wounds. It's clear that Hemingway sees bullfighting as a metaphor for manliness. They take part in the annual running of the bulls and are daily spectators at the bull fights. The main action in the book is the result of a love triangle around Brett that plays out on a trip to Pamplona, Spain where the group goes to take part in the Fiesta de San Fermin. The English Lady Brett Ashley proclaims her love for Jake but given his inability to have sex they both realize they’ll never be more than confidants and close friends.
He is surrounded by a group of friends, American and British.
The story is told through the eyes of Jake Barnes, an American news reporter in Paris whose war wounds have left him impotent.
More recently the book has been criticized for the antisemitism and bigotry of its characters - the derogatory language used about the Jewish character Robert Cohn, and the use of both the N word (repeatedly) and the F word - as well as its realistic depiction of bull fighting. In fact, The Sun Also Rises was considered scandalous by many when published, including Hemingway’s own mother, who reportedly wrote to the author that his was “one of the filthiest books of the year”, and that “every page fills me with sick loathing.”īack then the scandal about the book had to do with its use of swear words and its depiction of “loose morals” in the relationships between the male and female characters. Many like those in this book stayed behind in Europe and indulged themselves in lives that would have provoked scandal back home. These were war wounded souls for whom life’s peacetime events seemed insignificant. Published in 1926, between the end of World War I and the beginning of the Great Depression, it captured the mood of the “Lost Generation”. It was an instant bestseller and is today considered probably “the” book of his generation. The debut novel by Ernest Hemingway is arguably the best book he ever wrote.
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