The Sun Also Rises

Stephanie *Eff your feelings*

Rating: really liked it
I was sitting on the patio of a bar in Key West Florida. It was August, it was hot. The bar was on the beach where there was lots of sand and water. In the water I saw dolphins and waves. The dolphins jumped and the waves waved.

My glass was empty. The waiter walked up to my table. “More absinthe miss?” He asked. “No, I better not. *burp*” I put my hand over my glass “I read somewhere that it can cause hallucinations and nightmares. Just some ice water please.” I said. He put an empty glass in front of me, tipped his picture of water over my glass until it was full, at that time he stopped pouring.

A man I did not know walked up to my table and said to the waiter “No one in Key West is to stop drinking alcohol while they are conscious, you know the rules Manuel! Don’t make me repeat myself; did you hear me? Don’t make me repeat myself, it’s annoying.” Manuel rolled his eyes.

“I’ll drink to that.” I said and held up my glass of ice water to the stranger, then put it to my lips and drank. It was cold. I set it back down on the table. “I just finished a book where everyone repeated themselves……drove me to drink!”

“Sorry Mr. Hemingway” said Manuel “she said she wanted ice water, so that’s what I gave her”. A cat ran by, it was fast. “Meow” it said. It was orange. “But you know the rules Manuel, you know the rules.” Repeated Mr. Hemingway “I know the rules Mr. Hemingway, how could I not? You tend to repeat yourself constantly, it must be all the absinthe…..” muttered Manuel.

“What did you say Manuel?” Asked Mr. Hemingway “Nothing” said Manuel. “Bring the lady some Champagne right away!” said Mr. Hemingway. Manuel walked away towards the kitchen.

“Who are you?” I asked the man I did not know. “Hemingway, you wouldn't happen to be related to the writer would you? His book The Sun Also Rises was the book I was just referring to; I don’t remember ever being quite so bored. On the bright side, I think it did wonders for my blood pressure.” I said.

Dressed in worn khaki shorts and a Hawaiian shirt with one too many colors, he stood there at my table and squinted at me, sweat rolling down the sides of his red face and into his gray beard. It was hot. He set his drink down on the table, hard, and pulled out a chair and sat down. “May I sit?” he asked as he put his dirty bare feet up on the table and tipped the chair back. “Sure, you’re already in the chair. Besides I don’t think it will be long before you fall on your ass.” I said, I drank some water, it was cold. “Language! I’m Ernest Hemingway the guy who wrote that boring book” he put his feet on the ground and the chair dropped down with a bang. He put his right hand out to shake mine. I stared at it for a while then took it.

“Stephanie. Hey, I don’t want to come across as insensitive but aren't you dead?” I asked “Really? I don’t feel dead….at least I don’t think I am.” Said the not dead Ernest “Damn! Absinthe lives up to it's reputation." I said and smacked the left side of my head with my left hand. My head was hard.

“Manuel!! Where’s that champagne?" I shouted in a panic. “So” Ernest picked up his drink and drank the whole thing in one gulp. “I am one of the greatest American writers, if not the greatest, everybody says so. And you…..” he paused and pointed his finger at me using the same hand that still held the glass, the melting ice clinked “you didn't like the Sun Also Rises?” he asked and set his glass down.

“I know, I heard the same thing, that you were one of the greatest American writers, so imagine my surprise when I didn't love it like the rest of the human race. In fact, I really didn't like it AT ALL! Please don’t hurt me.”

Manuel walked back to the table caring the bottle of Champagne and two glasses. He sat the glasses in front of us and went about the task of opening the bottle. “Thank god your back Manuel, I think I’m hallucinating. I hope champagne helps things normalize.” I said, the bottle said “pop.” “It won’t help because you are not hallucinating.” He said and poured the Champagne, he turned and walked off. I picked up the glass and drank. It was bubbly and cold.

“What else didn't you like about my book?” Asked Ernest “I’m really not comfortable telling you to your face, but, alright” I said “I found all the characters to be aimless, unlikable, drunkards that didn't have any idea what to with their lives but travel about the world constantly drunk….which doesn't sound all that bad on the surface, but it was not interesting.” I said “They were excruciatingly boring that I couldn't care enough about them to remember who was who.” I said “It felt like it would never end, but when it did end the only thing that I liked about it was the fact that it was finally over. No big payoff to make the boring book worth my time.” I sighed and finished off my Champagne, I poured myself and Ernest another glass.

“Wow. Sorry you hated it. I suppose you can’t please everyone.” He said. “I’ll buy you dinner to repay you for putting you through that.”

“That’s not necessary, but I could eat. I must bathe first.” I said. “Well sure, it is hot after all.” He said “Yes, I must bathe you understand? One cannot dine without bathing first, as you know, so you will have to wait until I bathe.”

“I must bathe. I must bathe. I. must. Bathe.” I said.

“Now you’re just making fun of me.” he said.

“Yup……I will make you suffer the way you made me suffer.” I smiled.

“Great. I’m looking forward to it.” Said not dead Ernest. We swayed to our feet, Ernest took my arm, we steadied ourselves and stumbled off into the sunset.

Also reviewed on shelfinflicted

Grace Tjan

Rating: really liked it
What I learned from this book (in no particular order):

1. Jews are stubborn.

2. Being a Jew in Princeton sucks.

3. Being impotent sucks, especially if you are in love with a beautiful woman.

4. A beautiful woman is built with curves like the hull of a racing boat. Women make swell friends.

5. If you suffer from domestic abuse, the best way to work it out is by going through as many men as possible in the shortest time, and then discard them like wet tissues once you’re done --- if you happen to be pretty enough to attract scores of them, that is.

6. The best way to work out existential angst is to drink your way through France and Spain.

7. The Left Bank sucks. Being an expat sucks.

8. Spain sucks, except for the bullfighting. Bullfights are swell.

9. Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bullfighters. Bulls have no balls.

10. People who run with the bulls are suckers.


Other Random Observations

No. of times the word “swell” is used: 13

No. of alcohol units consumed by the protagonist: Dunno. Too tight to count. Hic.


Hemingway might have perfectly captured the Lost Generation’s times, but he also succeeded in inducing a profound ennui in me, especially during the long stretches in which the characters (none who is terribly interesting to begin with) do nothing except drink (“I’m a little tight you know. Amazing, isn’t it? Did you see my nose?”) and flirt with each other. These passages are tediously repetitive, and the effect is like being trapped in a Left Bank café with a bunch of casual acquaintances who insist on regaling you with boring anecdotes from their boozy Spain road trip. After a while, your eyes start to glaze and your attention wanders: you begin to take in the Belle Epogue interior, the cute waiter, the way the afternoon sun casts interesting patterns on the white tablecloth --- anything that is more interesting than the dull main narrative. I just didn’t care for any of them, and that Brett woman is a biatch. Why is everyone so desperately in love with her? They told me that her former husband slept with a gun under his pillow, but who is she really? And I wish that everyone would stop whining and being glib for a while so that they can tell me more about that wonderful Basque country. But no, they always return to these tedious, unaffecting love triangles.

You guys are the Lost Generation indeed.

Matt

Rating: really liked it
Oh, to have been Ernest Hemingway. Except for the whole shotgun thing.

He was a man, back when that meant something. Whatever that means. He had it all: a haunted past; functional alcoholism; a way with words; a way with women; and one hell of a beard. I mean, this was the guy who could measure F. Scott Fitzgerald's penis without anyone batting an eye. He was just that cool.

I love Hemingway. You might have guessed that, but let's make it clear off the bat. For Whom the Bell Tolls is in my top five all-time fave books (there's nothing better than a literary novel about blowing up a bridge). The Old Man and the Sea is a fever dream. A Farewell Arms is one of the most exquisitively depressing things I've ever read.

Despite my high expectations, The Sun Also Rises does not "rise" (get it?) to the level of those books. Or maybe I'm an idiot. It's possible. This book is supposedly one of his masterpieces - if not his magnum opus. I thought it was - gulp - kinda boring.

Generally, I attempt to avoid using the word "boring" in a review. It's a broad, vague, and diluted descriptor; a subjective one-off that doesn't tell you anything. Its use is better suited for a bitter 10th grader's five-paragraph theme, turned in on the last day of school after that tenth grader skimmed twenty pages, read the Cliffs Notes version, and stayed up all night typing with two fingers. I try to hold my Goodreads reviews to a slightly higher standard (the standard of an 11th grader who is taking summer school classes to get a jump on senior year).

Really, though, that was my impression: boring. Of course, I didn't read this while lapping sangria in Madrid, which I've heard will heighten this novel's overall effect.

The Sun Also Rises tells the story of Jake Barnes, an ex-patriate living in Paris. He was wounded in World War I and is now impotent. He is in love with Ashley, who is a... What did they call sluts in the early 20th Century? Because that's sort of what she is, though she has a tender place in her heart for Jake, to whom she keeps returning. Jake is a journalist, apparently haunted by the war, and he spends his time drinking in Paris. There's also a guy named Robert Cohn, a former boxer, who's also in love with Ashley. Bill and Mike also hang around; Mike was originally in a relationship with Ashley, before he lost her to Cohn, who in turn loses her to a Spanish bullfighter.

The plot, as it is, involves a bunch of drinking in Paris. Jake drinks a lot, stumbles home, then drinks some more before falling asleep. (The drinking and stumbling home reminds me of my own life, which is worth at least one star). Jake eventually takes the train to Spain to do some fishing. Hemingway describes the scene in excruciating detail and you really get a feel for the place:

Then the road came over the crest, flattened out, and went into a forest. It was a forest of cork oaks, and the sun came through the trees in patches, and there were cattle grazing back in the trees. We went through the forest and the road came out and turned along a rise of land, and out ahead of us was a rolling green plain, with dark mountains beyond it. These were not like the brown, heat-baked mountains we had left behind. These were wooded and there were clouds coming down from them. The green plain stretched off. It was cut by fences and the white of the road showed through the trunks of a double line of trees that crossed the plain towards the north.

The book goes on in this manner, for some time. It's as though Hemingway has turned into an eloquent Garmin device. Step by step. The walk to the creek. The heat of the sun. The taste of the wine. It is all very vivid, and beautifully written, but really, it didn't go anywhere. It seemed like filler. Something to break up the constant drinking (while the drinking breaks up the Spanish travelogue).

The lack of a plot normally wouldn't bother me much, but the book as a whole just wasn't working for me. I didn't care for the characters, who are mostly drunken, indolent, well-off whiners. Also, I was intensely jealous of the characters, who are mostly drunken, indolent, well-off whiners. In other words, aspirational figures.

Really, though, I just wanted more out of this book. Hemingway's other works have burrowed deep into my consciousness, so that I find myself referring back to them time and again.

The Sun Also Rises did not achieve this feat.

Eventually, Jake's merry band of drunkards go to Pamplona to watch the bullfights. There is drinking. Fighting. Drinking. Bullfighting. Drinking. Drinking. Passing out. Drinking. I actually got a contact drunk from reading this book.

I imagine that sex also occurred, somewhere in the midst of the drinking and the bulls and the overflowing testosterone, but Hemingway is discrete.

There are some good things, here. As I mentioned earlier, Hemingway is a master of description. His prose is deceptively simple; his declarations actually do a great deal to put you there, into the scene, with immediacy. The book also features one of Hemingway's most famous quotes: "Nobody lives life all the way up, except bullfighters." For some reason, that line has taken on a kind of profundity, though I have to admit, I almost missed it in context.

The best part of the book is the last lines, uttered by Jake Barnes: "Isn't it pretty to think so." I'll leave it to you to determine its meaning. As for me, I am anxiously awaiting the moment when, after a night of hard drinking, I can use this line on someone who has just uttered an inane comment.

Alas, I'm still waiting for that moment. And that gives me all the excuse I need to keep sidling up to the bar, ordering a whiskey straight with a whiskey back, and chatting up the people around me in the hopes that one of the drunks I meet will also be a Hemingway fan.

Alex

Rating: really liked it
THIS BOOK IS ABOUT A MAN IN SPAIN HE GETS FRIENDZONED.

Tra-Kay

Rating: really liked it
If I were Hemingway's English teacher (or anyone's any kind of teacher) I'd say, "This reads more like a screenplay than a novel. Where are your descriptions, where is the emotion??"
And he would say something like, "The lack of complex descriptions helps focus on the complexities and emptiness of the characters' lives, and the emotion is there, it's only just beneath the surface, struggling to be free!"
And I'd say, "OK, I'll move ya from a C to C+."

Basically The Sun Also Rises shows that Hemingway liked bullfights a lot more than most of the people reading his books, and that he was vain but also hated himself. While the characters are wittily funny from time to time, the whole thing doesn't hold a candle to, I don't know, Seinfeld. Without being told, "Ah yes, this is about the true character of America!" you'd think it was just a drab romance novel with more subtleties than most.

Speaking of, how was this about America? It was more about America's elite. Most Americans in 1926 weren't hanging out in France and Spain, moaning about their lives. They were hanging out in America, trying to make it. You know, without dying.

Pretentious, with poor descriptions and transparent characters (I can give a character a subtle injury too and have it pain him, does that make me amazing?), The Sun Also Rises is one of the most overrated books I've ever read. I'd rather read a 1926 newspaper.

Amanda

Rating: really liked it
This may be my favorite book of all time. At any rate, it's definitely on the top ten list and by far my favorite Hemingway (and I do love some Hemingway). The first time I read this, I loved Lady Brett Ashley. Is she a bitch? Sure, but I don't think she ever intentionally sets out to hurt anyone. And it might be argued that she has reason to be one: her first true love dies in the war from dysentery (not exactly the most noble of deaths) and she's physically threatened by Lord Ashley, forced to sleep on the floor beside him and his loaded gun (and let's clarify that,no, that's not a euphemism, just in case you're a perv). Then we have the one man who might make her happy, Jake Barnes. Poor, poor Jake, who doesn't have a gun, let alone a loaded one (yup, that's a euphemism--snicker away). I think Brett is one of the most tragic figures in American literature. Disillusioned by the war and how it irrevocably changed her life, she tries to fill the void with alcohol and sex--and destroys herself in the process.

However, upon rereading the novel, I realized how eclipsed Jake had been by Brett during my first reading. I also realized how I had misinterpreted him during my first reading. I thought Jake was as lost as the rest of the "Lost Generation," but I now believe that he is the only one who is not lost (with the exception of Bill Gorton, whose line "The road to hell paved with unbought stuffed dogs" may be my favorite in the book). If there's anyone with reason to give up on life, it's Jake. Does he pine for Brett? Yes. Does he come to hate Cohn for his affair with Brett? Affirmative. Does he get over Brett and realize that, even if properly equipped for a sexual relationship, a relationship with her would end as tragically as all of her other conquests? Abso-damn-lutely. After all, Brett is Circe, according to Cohn, and anyone lured into her bed will lose their manhood. The success of the relationship between Brett and Jake hinges on the fact that Jake literally has nothing to lose in this respect.

Cross posted at This Insignificant Cinder

William2

Rating: really liked it
“Funny,” Brett said. “How one doesn’t mind the blood.” (p. 211)

Fifth or sixth reading. IMO, this is one of the essential books of life. It never fails. It possesses—for the right reader—an enormity of narrative pleasure and it grips from the very first line. Its storytelling is so exhilarating that one gets goosebumps.

Jake Barnes, our narrator, fought in The Great War for Italy (1914-18) when he was injured. Recuperating in the hospital he meets and falls in love with Lady Brett, a nurse. Later on, in Paris, where he works as a journalist, he runs into Brett again. Their relationship is now pure torture. Their chemistry is thermonuclear — she says Jake’s touch turns her to jelly and his love for her is beyond question — but sexual intimacy is impossible. Jake’s particular agony now, which he suffers in silence, is to standby while Brett sleeps with other men.

The passage at the Paris nightclub with the gay boys doesn’t bother me as it used to. Jake knows he’s being unreasonable. The queers, with whom Brett arrives at the club, have working penises and choose not to use them on her. To a man made impotent by war, a young man in love with her, their preference must seem like a kind of madness. Moreover, there may be a fear on his part that he’s becoming like them. That is, indifferent to female sexuality. He’s not, of course, not emotionally.

Now we’ve left Paris, taking the train to Bayonne. Then in an open car up the dusty roads to the plateau and Pamplona. From here Jake and Bill go to Burguete to do some fly fishing while Robert Cohn returns to San Sebastián to await Brett and fiancé, Mike. The trip on the bus to Burguete—through the stark countryside while Jake and Bill drink wine with the Basques—dazzles, lifts one’s spirits. The fishing sequences on the Irati River are beautifully spartan. Then after five days the fishermen are back in Pamplona. Mike and Brett and Cohn are about to complete the five-some.

So now we’ve got three men together in Pamplona who love Brett, two of whom have slept with her: Jake, Mike and Robert Cohn. Jake sadly can have nothing more to do with her, though they remain close. Cohn is like a child, always staring at her, and the bankrupt fiance, Mike, doesn’t like it. They all go to watch the bulls arrive at the ring. Steers are brought in to “calm” the bulls. This usually ends with a steer or two being gored. That’s when Mike refers to Cohn as a steer for the mute worshiping manner in which he follows Brett around.

“I would’ve thought you’d love being a steer, Robert."

“What do you mean, Mike?”

“They lead such a quiet life. They never say anything and they’re always hanging about so.”

We were embarrassed. Bill laughed. Robert Cohn was angry. Mike went on talking.

“I should think you’d love it. You’d never have to say a word. Come on, Robert. Do say something. Don’t just sit there.”

“I said something, Mike. Don’t you remember? About the steers.”

“Oh, say something more. Say something funny. Can’t you see we’re all having a good time here?”

“Come off it, Michael. You’re drunk,” Brett said.

“I’m not drunk. I’m quite serious. Is Robert Cohn going to follow Brett around like a steer all the time?”

“Shut up, Michael. Try and show a little breeding.”

“Breeding be damned. Who has any breeding, anyway, except the bulls? Aren’t the bulls lovely? . . . Why don’t you say something, Robert? Don’t just sit there like a bloody funeral. What if Brett did sleep with you? She’s slept with lots of better people than you.“

“Shut up,” Cohn said. He stood up. “Shut up, Mike.”

“Oh, don’t stand up and act as though you were going to hit me. That won’t make any difference to me. Tell me, Robert. Why do you follow Brett around like a poor bloody steer? Don’t you know you’re not wanted?” (p. 141-142)

It occurs to the reader just how painful this exchange must be for Jake, even though he doesn’t mention it. Hemingway was a master of omission, of not talking about the elephant in the room. I’ve read and reread this passage and every time it surprises me anew. In some ways Jake is like a steer, too, but he doesn’t moon and fawn. Instead he’s very stoic, tortured, yes, but good at not seeming so, good at joining in the party.

Then the fiesta “explodes” with two rockets over the main square and the peasants, who until then have been drinking quietly in the outer town, come rushing into the main square. They’re singing riau riau music and dancing. “The square solid with people, those in the centre all dancing.” (p. 159) The peasants dance about Brett as if she were some kind of Madonna. Everyone is ushered into a wine shop; some peasant women are wearing necklaces of garlic and one is hung about Brett’s neck. These are among the most moving moments in the book for the author captures the wonderful local manners with their astonishing air of friendliness and formality. The description is spare yet rich in detail.

The end is a knockout. Jake is held in odium because he has allowed the bullfight to be compromised. Whereas before, Jake and the hotel owner, Montoya, saw each other as fellow aficionados, now Jake is seen not just as a disappointment, but as a corrupter of the bullfight. There is much I’m not touching on here. Please read it.

J.L. Sutton

Rating: really liked it
My feelings haven't changed since my last re-read of The Sun Also Rises (my earlier review is below). I'm still amazed at how fully the characters come alive on the page! I don't think The Sun Also Rises is for everyone; however, nearly from beginning to end, I'm engaged in the story.

Just finished a re-read of The Sun Also Rises (my favorite Hemingway book-last read in 2014). I didn’t provide a review at the time so I thought I would (try to) explain why this book speaks to me. First, it is deceptively easy to fall into with its short sentences and simple language. Nothing is forced. However, it is the mood Hemingway creates in this novel which really engages me. Perhaps that says as much about me as it does about the novel. The appeal is not so much about the story; it is how the characters move through the scenes with a sense that nothing can touch them (while conversely, they can’t really touch or be important to anyone else).

This exemplifies that lack of hope in the so-called ‘lost generation,’ that feeling that nothing you do will make a difference. The Sun Also Rises is not a feel-good book, but it allows you to re-evaluate people as social animals who constantly struggle and fail (and maybe once in a while succeed) in forging meaningful relationships. In some ways, the carefree expat life of the characters seems idyllic; however, Hemingway also makes you feel that slipping into this existence (even with its charms) might make you want to spit at the world. The Sun Also Rises captures a historical moment, perhaps not just of the lost generation, but also of future generations uncertain of their place in the world.

Ahmad Sharabiani

Rating: really liked it
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway

The Sun Also Rises is a 1926 novel written by American author Ernest Hemingway about a group of American and British expatriates who travel from Paris to the Festival of San Fermín in Pamplona to watch the running of the bulls and the bullfights. An early and enduring modernist novel.

The Sun Also Rises, the brilliant novel, which established Ernest as a great, and stylish writer, and one of the most prominent novelists of his time.

The pleasant and sad story of a few Americans, and a young Englishman, displaced from their homeland, living in Paris, and going on a tour of "Pamplona" in Spain, this novel is also have been a fateful one in the formation of Hemingway's unique style.

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز بیستم ماه اکتبر سال 2012میلادی

عنوان: خورشید همچنان می‌دمد؛ نویسنده: ارنست همینگوی؛ مترجم همایون مقدم؛ 1333، در242ص؛ چاپ دیگر تهران، سازمان کتابهای جیبی، 1340؛ در263ص؛ موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده 20م

مترجم: عرفان قانعی فرد؛ تهران، نگاه سبز، 1379؛ در 243ص؛

مترجم: احسان لامع؛ تهران، نگاه، 1389؛ در 308ص؛ شابک: 9789643515683؛

خورشید همچنان می‌دمد، نخستین رمان درخشان، از نگاره های «ارنست همینگوی» بوده که ایشان را، در جایگاه نویسنده‌ ای بزرگوار، دارای سبک، و از برجسته‌ ترین رمان‌نویسان روزگار خود، استوار کرده است؛ سرگذشت خوشایند، و اندوهبار چند «آمریکایی»، و «انگیسی» جوان، آواره از میهن خویش است، که در «پاریس» زندگی می‌کنند، و برای گشت‌ و گذار به «پامپلونا»ی «اسپانیا»، می‌روند، این رمان بلندای سرنوشت‌ سازی در شکلگیری سبک یگانه ی «همینگوی» نیز بوده است

رمان، بازگو کننده‌ ی رابطه‌ ی تلخ و ژرف و پیچیده‌ ی «لیدی برت اشلی» ثروتمند و پر زرق‌ و برق، و «جیک بارنز» زخم‌ خورده از جنگ است؛ در کشاکش ورشکستگی اخلاقی، فروپاشی معنوی، عشق‌های ناکام، و انگارهای ویرانگر، که روشنگر آن سال‌‌های پر تب‌ و تاب بوده، با توانایی و زیبایی خیره‌ کننده‌ ای، سرگذشت «نسل گمشده» را، روایت می‌کند؛ در بیشتر نظرسنجی‌هایی که در سال‌های بگذشته در جهان «انگلیسی‌» زبان، انجام شده، کتاب «خورشید هم‌چنان می‌دمد»، به عنوان یکی از پنجاه، یا صد رمان برجسته‌ ی سده ی بیستم میلادی برگزیده شده است؛

نقل از متن: («رابرت کوهن» زمانی قهرمان میان وزن مشت‌زنی بود؛ خیال نکنید این عنوان روی من، تاثیر زیادی گذاشته است؛ ولی از نظر «کوهن» خیلی اهمیت داشت؛ او به هیچ‌چیز مشت‌زنی نمی‌بالید، و راستش از آن بدش هم می‌آمد؛ اما آن را با دقت و مشقت فراوان یاد گرفته بود، تا در برابر حس حقارت، و شرمندگی، نسبت به رفتاری که، با او در مقام «یهودی» می‌شد، مقابله کند؛ او وقتی می‌دانست، می‌تواند هر کسی را که در برابرش قد علم می‌کند، با ضربه‌ ای کارش را تمام کند، به آرامش درونی می‌رسید؛ و چون پسری بسیار نازنین، و خجالتی بود، به جز باشگاه در هیچ جا با کسی مبارزه نمی‌کرد؛ او شاگرد ارشد «اسپایدر کلی» بود؛ «اسپایدر کلی» به همگی شاگردان جوان خود یاد داده بود تا مثل سبک وزن‌ها مبارزه کنند؛ مهم نبود که صدوپنج پوند باشند، یا دویست و پنج پوند؛ اما به نظر می‌رسید که او «کوهن» را برای هر موقعیتی آماده می‌کرد؛ او خیلی فرز بود؛ کارش چنان خوب بود که «اسپایدر»، فوراً او را به مسابقه‌ های زیادی فرستاد؛ همیشه خدا هم دماغش را روی صورتش صاف می‌کردند؛ اینکار باعث شد تا بی‌رغبتی «کوهن» به مشت‌زنی بیش‌تر شود؛ ولی به نوعی غریب، در درونش ارضاء می‌شد، و این امر به یقین زخم دماغش را بهبود می‌بخشید؛ آخرین سالی که «در پرینستون» بود، به مطالعه زیاد روی آورد و عینکی شد؛ تا آنجا که من یادم می‌آید هرگز کسی از هم دوره‌ های او را ندیده‌ ام که او را یادشان باشد؛ آن‌ها حتا یادشان نمی‌آمد که او قهرمان میان وزن مشت‌زنی است

من به آدم‌های ساده و رک، به خصوص وقتی که داستان‌هایشان عین هم باشد، اعتمادی ندارم و همواره بدگمان بودم که «رابرت کوهن» حتا قهرمان میان وزن مشت زنی بوده باشد؛ شاید اسبی دماغ او را له کرده، یا مادرش از چیزی ترسیده بود؛ ممکن است وقتی تازه پا می‌گرفته، به جایی خورده؛ ولی آخر سر کسی را پیدا کردم، که از زبان «اسپایدر کلی» صحت موضوع را تایید کرد؛ «اسپایدر کلی» نه تنها «کوهن» را فراموش نکرده بود، اغلب جویا بود که چه اتفاقی برایش افتاده است)؛ پایان نقل

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 16/10/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 22/07/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

Brad

Rating: really liked it
I've read this book every year since 1991, and it is never the same book. Like so many things in this world, The Sun Also Rises improves with age and attention.

Some readings I find myself in love with Lady Brett Ashley. Then I am firmly in Jake Barnes' camp, feeling his pain and wondering how he stays sane with all that happens around him. Another time I can't help but feel that Robert Cohn is getting a shitty deal and find his behavior not only understandable but restrained. Or I am with Mike and Bill and Romero on the periphery where the hurricane made by Brett and Jake and Robert destroys spirits or fun or nothing (which is decidedly something).

And then I am against them all as though they were my sworn enemies or my family. No matter what I feel while reading The Sun Also Rises, it is Hemingway's richest novel for me.

I feel it was written for me. And sometimes feel it was written by me (I surely wish it was).

Hemingway's language, his characterizations, his love for all the people he writes about (no matter how unsavory they may be), his love of women and men, his empathy with the pain people feel in life and love, his touch with locale, his integration of sport as metaphor and setting, his getting everything just right with nothing out of place and nothing superfluous, all of this makes The Sun Also Rises his most important novel.

It is the Hemingway short story writ large. It is the book he should be remembered for but isn't. I often wonder why that is, and the conclusion I come to is this: The Sun Also Rises is too real, too true, too painful for the average reader to stomach. And many who can are predisposed to hate Hemingway.

A terrible shame that so many miss something so achingly beautiful.

Vit Babenco

Rating: really liked it
The Sun Also Rises has about it an aura of the time long gone – lost days of the lost generation. It seems to be more a chronicle or a diary than a novel – mostly about what the personages ate and drank... And a wee bit about life…

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

If one turns one’s life into a movable feast there’s no time to stop and think.

Leonard Gaya

Rating: really liked it
To put it bluntly, The Sun Also Rises (aka Fiesta) is probably the most overrated little novel in the history of 20th-century American literature. It reads like an alcoholic’s travelogue set in France and Spain, jazzed up with some shallow ménage à trois plotline. But — it is not as bad as it sounds. Let me explain.

About the first half of the book is set in mid-1920s Paris. Jake Barnes, the narrator, goes from one bar to the next restaurant to the next café, eats and drinks heavily with a group of Anglo-American bohemians, provides all sorts of insignificant details about what they’ve gulped down and how much was on the bill, and then catches yet another taxi and goes on boozing away into the night. All the while doing some silly Parisian place-name dropping, to the extent that it sometimes feels as though you are reading a Paris tour pamphlet. And you could almost — as I’m sure some readers have — trace back all the places Jake & Co have been to in this book.

The second half of the novel, thankfully, goes somewhat uphill. The merry bunch of drunkards travel south to the Basque region, first to a short fishing trip in the Pyrenees — it all ends up with a few bottles of wine and a nap on the turf... and, later, at the Fiesta de San Fermín in Pamplona. Just as he does for Paris, Hemingway describes the places and local habits in the manner of a tour guide. I suspect he significantly contributed to the international renown of the Pamplona festival too. To this day, people from all over the world come running (literally) to feel the adrenaline burst, when some half-a-ton black bull charges down a narrow street into the hysterical crowd.

The high point of the novel is, doubtless, the description of the bullfight toward the end. Of course, it is not very different from what a sports commentator would do regarding a football match. But in this occasion, Hemingway’s terse, crisp, lean, hard-boiled, journalistic style does wonders to convey the atmosphere on the plaza de toros, the brutality and sometimes the beauty of the matador’s performance. So much so that, when he describes Pedro Romero’s movements when fighting the bull, it is as though Hemingways is talking about an art form — perhaps implicitly, his own craft as a writer: “Romero’s bullfighting gave real emotion, because he kept the absolute purity of line in his movements and always quietly and calmly let the horns pass him close each time.” In this case, I have to take my hat off and declare that both J.K. Rowling and David Foster Wallace can eat their heart out with their games of Quidditch and Eschaton!

The little plot regarding the group of men orbiting one beautiful woman (Brett Ashley), who ultimately is eager to sleep with all of them, is possibly autobiographical, but quite frankly vapid — Fitzgerald does a much better job at describing similar interactions. The only aspect that is quite remarkable is that these characters are all WWI veterans and, in a way, still suffer from the wounds and traumas of war. Hence, we suppose, their decadent, numbing and self-destructive behaviour with booze, sex, fistfighting and intoxicating forms of entertainment. In a way, underneath all their tough machismo, Hemingway’s characters are quite vulnerable, wretched, and even a bit pathetic.

Since Hemingway’s time, the afición for Spanish traditions and bullfighting in particular — which he shared with Bizet, Ravel, Picasso, Eisenstein, John Huston and many others — has dwindled considerably. To the point where most people now take a dim view of the corridas de toros, and on the whole, have turned to football or other sports instead. Still, the influence of Hemingway’s style has become so prevalent in our time that it has become something of a cliché. For instance, in the SF genre alone, the laddish attitude in Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land; the detailed and stripped-down descriptions in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road; the constant wine drinking in G.R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones... all these are tropes stolen from Hemingway.

Fergus

Rating: really liked it
That summer of 1969, the experience of reading this book on my friend Doug’s recommendation was a peaceful hiatus from collegiate life.

Doug worked at a nearby swimming pool as a lifeguard, and I was immersed in reading up extensively for my Eng Lit degree.

Larry, across the street from Doug, would share his Yamaha motorbike seat with me in the evenings for long rides, while Doug zipped around closer to home on his Honda 50 scooter.

It was a sun-filled summer, perfect for a Hemingway novel in the same vein.

I loved it and could relate.

Its hero, Jake, was a lot like me. Uncompromisingly straight in orientation, we both fell victim to a private Daemon.

And Jake drinks.

Drinks to forget the war injury that has driven a wedge between him and his ladylove Brett. So they usually end up the evenings getting a little happy.

Oh, so you say the sun also rises? Dang, missed it again.

The real problem with Jake - and his great creator Hemingway - is that it’s impossible for him to forget.

But you gotta deal with it!

And balancing homophobia with the blurred lines of vision afforded by drink always backfires.

If you blur those lines they’re gonna bite you back. Happened to me, too, the year after I read this. Always keep one eye open.

Hemingway didn’t even believe in precautions.

When he died in the JFK Era there was new hope in the air.

But Hemingway didn’t feel it.

All he felt were his demons.

Folks, never make a habit of drowning your demons. For your self pity will then give them strength.

DEAL with them now -

BEFORE they roar back, seeking revenge.

karen

Rating: really liked it
fulfilling book riot's 2018 read harder challenge task #24: An assigned book you hated (or never finished)

the three-star rating is from my first go-round - from my memory of reading it in high school, and seems higher than the truth. let's see how karen enjoys this tale of a busted-peen, weary expatriates and bullfighting as an adult.

**********************************************

obviously this was going to be the read harder task i saved for last. i can hold a book-grudge as well as anyone, and i don’t need to be wasting any of my precious reading-time on a book that has already displeased me once. but i approached the task in good faith - of all the books i have ever been assigned in my life, there were only two i could remember disliking* - this (AP english junior year) and The Red Pony (honors english 8th grade). since i have loved every other steinbeck i have read but as far as hemingway goes, i've only read this (and maybe a short story here or there), it seemed more magnanimous to give papa a shot with an older, wiser karen.

older, wiser karen didn’t love it, either. older wiser karen has read The Alexandria Quartet and so has very little patience for any tale of the romantic or platonic entanglements of a buncha boozy and worldweary expats that is not as beautifully written as Justine.

however, you can play a fun drinking game with this one using the endless repetition of words like ‘swell’ and ‘chap’ and ‘tight’ or a game of millennial outrage bingo for all the occurrences of ‘nigger’ and ‘faggot’ and the baked-in misogyny and anti-semitic flavor. although it’s possible that it’s not anti-semitic so much as it is characters disliking one particular jewish character who, it must be said, is pretty irritating - smug, clingy, thirsty.

on that last point, everyone in this whole damn book is thirsty in the non-slang sense. there is some truly heroic drinking going on in this book - one imagines a row of rotting livers wincing at the excess…

“This is a good place," he said.
"There's a lot of liquor," I agreed.” 

why this was/is assigned at a high school level is bewildering (unless as a cautionary tale to teen drinking). assigning books like this is what makes teens think they hate reading. there’s nothing in this that speaks to a teen audience. sure, teens can read it, understand the words, identify the themes, but that’s the work part of it without the pleasure. there just isn’t anything here to relate to, for that age. kids full to the brim with sexual sap aren’t going to appreciate the incel woes of a man with a war-wounded peen resignedly drowning his feels for a vigorous lusty woman. obsessive love, yes, but the quiet sputtering disappointment of said obsessive love? bitch, please. you give those kids what they want - you feed their need for drama and trauma - you give them Wuthering Heights, you give them The Great Gatsby, you give them everybody’s dead and ruined and glamorously broken by the end, not just some dusty guy drifting from place to place watching a woman burn (figuratively).

this book is exhausting. it is about exhaustion - emotional, moral, physical, romantic, spiritual, intellectual exhaustion. the one thing i wasn’t when i was 16 was exhausted. and while i am exhausted now, as weary and brokendown as many of the grinning-through-it characters in this book, it didn’t leave any particular impression on me this time, either. is this a book report yet? probably not, but it’s what you’re getting.

three stars because why not?


*and also Moby-Dick or, The Whale, but i already gave that asshole his second chance.

come to my blog!

Kemper

Rating: really liked it
There’s a very nice restaurant that my wife and I frequent that has become our go-to spot for special occasions like birthdays or anniversaries. When we first started going here, I saw that they were serving absinthe. I’d been curious about the drink since first reading Hemingway’s descriptions of it in The Sun Also Rises back in high school.

Banned for most of the twentieth century in the U.S. for wildly exaggerated claims of it’s hallucinogenic qualities, it was made available to be imported here again in 2007. When I saw it on the menu, my mind immediately conjured images of Hemingway and his fellow expatriates sipping it in Paris with ironic detachment. (The restaurant even features a Hemingway inspired version mixed with champagne that’s called Death in the Afternoon.) I wanted to try some, but it’s $12 a glass, which seemed a bit pricey for the sake of literary cocktail experimentation. And I gotta admit that I was slightly nervous about having some kind of absinthe-based freak-out.

However, I’ve been on a Jazz Age book kick lately, and a few weeks back when we were having dinner at this place, I finally said to hell with it and ordered a glass. The waiter asked if I’d tried it before and must have had some bad experiences with newbies drinking it. I promised him I was indulging for purely experimental purposes and would not hold him responsible.

So he brought the absinthe out and did the whole bit with the special spoon and the sugar cube. I would have been lost there except I’d seen Johnny Depp do this routine in From Hell.

Finally, I tried my first sip.

It tasted like a combination of black licorice and what I can only assume is the flavor of rotting corpses. And I hate black licorice so much that I almost would have preferred just the rotting corpse taste.

However, when you pay $12 for a drink, you choke that mother down. So I drank it, cursing Hemingway the entire time and wishing I could dig his body up and reanimate him so I could give him another shotgun blast to the face for ever putting the idea of drinking that vile stuff into my head in the first place.

Oh, and that night, I had some of the most fucked up nightmares I’ve had in years so maybe the hallucinogenic qualities weren’t exaggerated all that much.

So when I was re-reading The Sun Also Rises and Jake gets completely hammered on absinthe, I almost tossed my cookies as the memory of that black licorice flavored corpse came back to me. Repeated exposure to that drink would also explain why Jake would put up with Brett’s routine. Your junk doesn’t work but you keep hanging out with the woman who claims to love you but demands your help in hooking up with other men? I would have been on a boat to Antarctica to get away from her man-eating ass, but he was deranged from drinking that shit.

This book is still pretty damn good, but I’m deducting a star just because it tricked me into trying absinthe. Take that, Hemingway!