The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Sun Also Rises
Book Review: An American Classic
Summary: 5 Stars
"The Sun Also Rises" is one of the classic novels in American literature that lives up to its reputation. This cynical take on the lives of American expatriates in Europe after WWI has a beautiful disconnected feel to it that anyone can relate to, and the doomed love between the protagonist and his ex-lover is palpable, and at times even heartwrenching.
But the best part about this book is the writing: Hemingway at his sparsest, most direct, and yet somehow most evocative despite himself. The barren wording is hypnotic in its subtle glory.
It's a great, quick, and easy read; there's really no reason not to pick this up.
Book Review: An Enduring Classic
Summary: 5 Stars
I made the mistake of first reading this book in seventh grade, and at that time I had no idea what the hell Hemingway was talking about. It took me until my late twenties to get back to him -- and then I was sorry about all the time I'd wasted. What a blend this book is, simultaneously spare and moving, macho and sensitive, quickly-read and long to dwell in the reader. I've returned to this book since the adult re-read, and I'll be back many more times in years to come.Book Review: An all too-telling portrait of the "lost generation" that hasn't aged well...
Summary: 2 Stars
Gallons of ink have been spilled over what Gertrude Stein labeled "the lost generation." The label was used primarily for American expatriates who flooded into Paris after World War I. Ernest Hemingway was a central figure, no doubt because he documented their lives in such books as A Moveable Feast as well as this one. The author was a literary icon of the `60's. I've been re-reading his works; still found much excellence in To Have and Have Not (Scribner Classics) but it took significant will-power to finish "The Sun Also Rises."
The story is told through the eyes of Jake Barnes, who had the most feared of war wounds, which meant he could never consummate his relationship with Lady Brett Ashley, who had been his nurse during the recovery period. Obviously it was frustrating for her, which may have been the reason she managed to bed most of the other characters in the story. There are a half dozen other principal characters, including another woman. Jake is a reporter, but there is so little factual news that the reader cannot even tell if it is the early `20's or the latter years of that decade. The novel is an account of their toing and froing; they are immensely puerile and self-absorbed. The inane conversations, ah, "the dialogue" so often resembles today's: "Eh, what's happening. Nothing, how `bout you." It was excruciatingly painful to read. And it was devoid of any sign of irony on Hemingway's part.
The novel's settings are primarily in Paris, and towards the end the "action" moves to Pamplona, in Spain, to see the bull fights. But the backdrop for the character's passions and quarrels is so one-dimensional; I thought it might be like going to Las Vegas to see the Pyramids, or the canals of Venice--a totally ersatz experience. The French and Spaniards in the story are just so many props... there is no real insight into their character. And overall, there is pitifully little to learn about these societies during the inter-war period. The main thing Hemingway seems to get right is the street names in Paris. And certainly the restaurant, the Closerie des Lilas, remains a "destination" for American tourists because of him.
Then there is the madness of bull fighting itself, which can be off-putting to more sensitive souls. I saw one, briefly, in Arles. At least in the one I saw, the horses had thick pads which protected them; in Hemingway's book, they did not, no doubt reflecting the reality of the event.
Shallow characters, insipid, whining interactions, set against poorly described "exotic" settings. I rounded up to 2-stars, and wonder if I should retry "For Whom the Bell Tolls (Scribner Classics)
Book Review: Are we still a lost generation?
Summary: 4 Stars
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 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
Book Review: At Best A Mediocre Travelogue Of A Novel
Summary: 3 Stars
I expected to like this novel. I was surprised that I did not. Perhaps I can explain why. Perhaps I cannot. Let me make an effort, though I fear it shall please no one.
I do not know if I'll open another Hemingway book anytime soon, but since this was the first novel by this writer I have read, maybe it's premature to make judgments about his entire body of work. Still, as I struggled through one flat and boring chapter after the next in the dialogue-driven The Sun Also Rises, populated as it was with single-dimensional characters I did not like, situations that disgusted me, and settings that were admittedly nicely-described, I kept having a thought that no doubt qualifies among Hemingway fans as heresy: do the masses truly like Hemingway's novels, or are they swept up in the mystique of his legend to the point that this carries into the books themselves and therein explains their power to draw so much praise?
Frankly, folks, I didn't see a lot to embrace here. Hemingway's sentences were like bare skeletons devoid of flesh above them. I expected genius and found mediocrity: mediocrity and a cast of spoiled, mildly tragic middle-aged figures who drank themselves sick, quarreled, traipsed across western Europe and left behind abandoned children and jilted spouses, all in pursuit of the excitement that eluded them. They did not even have the excuse of youth to exonerate them, these were by any definition adults. I kept thinking that, well, maybe if more than one of them actually had a job they wouldn't have had so much time on their hands to feel miserable and dissipate. As for them being a, to quote Gertrude Stein, "Lost Generation" robbed of meaning by war, it was made clear that so many of these characters began their lives of irresponsibility well before the outbreak of the First World War.
Furthermore this novel was not a story, it was a series of loosely connected situations. In my opinion, Fitzgerald, Hemingway's contemporary, wrote rings around Hemingway, as did several other writers of the period I could name. Also for a man who won the Nobel Prize, Hemingway's habit of mixing past and present tenses (I'm talking about in his prose, not character dialogue) surprised me. To all the English teachers out there who used to get on my case for committing this compositional error, I'd like to ask, if mixing tenses is bad writing, then why did this author win the Nobel Prize, and if he won the Nobel Prize mixing tenses, then why is it bad writing?
I do not wish to give the impression I loathed The Sun Also Rises, because I didn't. I did enjoy the frank exchange of views between this novel's characters on issues of race, religion, and general ethos, their use of epithets verboten today, and the politics of sexual congress, but that alone did not carry the plot to conclusion, and too much fell too limply by. Truthfully, the novel is about expatriate drunks who go on holiday to Spain to watch bulls be slaughtered by a young man after whom the central female character lusts. As for the dialogue, anyone who finds depth in the conversations the characters have is inventing that depth himself. There was simply not much here to latch onto.
Honestly, The Sun Also Rises is all right, but it isn't brilliant literature, and the only way it defined any generation is in the corrective touch of wishful hindsight.