Forum Book-Discussion The Sun Also Rises

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The Sun Also Rises

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The Sun Also Rises first appeared in 1926, and yet it's as fresh and clean and fine as it ever was, maybe finer. Hemingway's famously plain declarative sentences linger in the mind like poetry: "Brett was damned good-looking. She wore a slipover jersey sweater and a tweed skirt, and her hair was brushed back like a boy's. She started all that." His cast of thirtysomething dissolute expatriates--Brett and her drunken fianc, Mike Campbell, the unhappy Princeton Jewish boxer Robert Cohn, the sardonic novelist Bill Gorton--are as familiar as the "cool crowd" we all once knew. No wonder this quintessential lost-generation novel has inspired several generations of imitators, in style as well as lifestyle.

Jake Barnes, Hemingway's narrator with a mysterious war wound that has left him sexually incapable, is the heart and soul of the book. Brett, the beautiful, doomed English woman he adores, provides the glamour of natural chic and sexual unattainability. Alcohol and post-World War I anomie fuel the plot: weary of drinking and dancing in Paris cafs, the expatriate gang decamps for the Spanish town of Pamplona for the "wonderful nightmare" of a week-long fiesta. Brett, with fianc and ex-lover Cohn in tow, breaks hearts all around until she falls, briefly, for the handsome teenage bullfighter Pedro Romero. "My God! he's a lovely boy," she tells Jake. "And how I would love to see him get into those clothes. He must use a shoe-horn." Whereupon the party disbands.

But what's most shocking about the book is its lean, adjective-free style. The Sun Also Rises is Hemingway's masterpiece--one of them, anyway--and no matter how many times you've read it or how you feel about the manners and morals of the characters, you won't be able to resist its spell. This is a classic that really does live up to its reputation. --David Laskin


Next Week's Book- Ulysses

did it like papa hemingway...

tony nesca

I just read this book this past summer, as a "matter of fact" (pun intended). It was my first Hemingway since high school with 'The Old Man and the Sea'. If you'd like to get a quick dose of Hemingway, I'd suggest diving into his shorter fiction. It shows off his stoic, matter-of-factual style that actually comes out being more moving than anything that Nicholas Sparks fellow can write. 'The Sun Also Rises', Hemingways' first novel I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) moves along like his other works, but doesn't seem to draw anything from its initial story as his shorter work does. You can see his stylings that he becomes so famous for begin to emerge, and that's what's fun with starting earlier on rather than jumping back like I did. I can't really critique the master, since he is one of my larger influences, but I do not think that this book is for the casual reader. If you want to get involved with Hemingway, read this one first, because it is essential, but if you want to know more about his craft, find a collection of short stories.

Just finished it tonight and thought it was excellent...I never realized how staright forward Hemingway's writing was...John Fante's is very similar and both were friends with H.L. Mencken....strange.