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The Sun Also Rises

3.82 of 5 stars 3.82 · rating details · 160,291 ratings · 5,224 reviews

Published in 1926 to explosive acclaim, The Sun Also Rises stands as perhaps the most impressive first novel ever written by an American writer. A roman à clef about a group of American and English expatriates on an excursion from Paris's Left Bank to Pamplona for the July fiesta and its climactic bull fight, a journey from the center of a civilization spiritually bankrupt...more

ebook, 228 pages

Published July 25th 2002 by Scribner (first published 1924)

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Jun 28, 2011 Sandy Tjan rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011, american-lit, classics, ebook

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...more

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Apr 19, 2013 Stephanie rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013, classics, lots-of-drinking, yawn

I was sitting outside 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 absinth miss?” He asked. “No, I better not.” 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 and empty glass in front of me, t...more

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Apr 16, 2013 Amanda rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: kick-ass

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...more 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
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Nov 24, 2010 Tra-Kay rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

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 Hemingw...more

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May 06, 2010 Matt rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 f...more

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Jun 12, 2007 colbyhewitt rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Everyone

I think there is something cheesey about reviewing an old book, but I felt I had to write something, as I constructed my senior thesis in college with this book as the cornerstone, I have read it at least six times, and I consider The Sun Also Rises to be the Great American Novel. Why?
1) Hemingway was, if nothing else, a great American. A renaissance man, a soldier, a fisherman, and a sportswriter, a romantic and an argumentatively direct chauvinist, a conflicted religious agnostic who never aba...more I think there is something cheesey about reviewing an old book, but I felt I had to write something, as I constructed my senior thesis in college with this book as the cornerstone, I have read it at least six times, and I consider The Sun Also Rises to be the Great American Novel. Why?
1) Hemingway was, if nothing else, a great American. A renaissance man, a soldier, a fisherman, and a sportswriter, a romantic and an argumentatively direct chauvinist, a conflicted religious agnostic who never abandoned religion (and, it could be argued, never wrote about anything but his conflicts with religion), Hemingway was a stereotype red-blooded American like no other great writer. An argument could be made for Fitzgerald, but the crux of that argument lies in his relationship to Hemingway (and his psychotic wife. By the way, I love Fitzgerald. He is just a touch wordy).
2) The Sun Also Rises describes (among other things) disillusionment with the "American Way" and what that had come to mean (especially emphasized through the walking wounded, contrasted always with previous generations' "Dulce et decorum est pro patria more" mentality). Unlike other similarly-themed novels, however, the book does not take place in America. I postulate the Great American Novel must take place somewhere other than America, to reveal the way in which Americans can be defined as such anywhere, and to ephasize said disillusionment. I have other reasons to think thus, but suffice to say for the moment.
3) The Sun Also Rises does not end so drastically as other great works of Hemingway's, such as A Farewell to Arms (not afraid to say I shed tears at the end of that one) or For Whom the Bell Tolls. His best ending was in Old Man and the Sea, but that work (at the risk of sounding blasphemous here) was slightly too poppy to be his best.
4) The book does not begin with the narrator (the opening describing Robert Cohen). Americans exist in relationship to one another. The country has been built through a competitive spirit- fostered by democracy and that ideal we call "The American Dream". The backlash of all that is a natural inclination to "Keep up with the Jones'," as it were. Jake Barnes is an observer, separated from the Americans and from the Europeans yet constantly comparing himself, directly or by insinuation, to others.
In short, read the damn book. If you don't get it, read it again. It is arguable (perhaps, though I doubt it) that this book may not be the best ever written, but I do believe no greater has ever been penned.
You want a great trifecta? Read The Sun Also Rises, then The Great Gatsby, then Eliot's The Wasteland. Follow those up by reading Ecclesiastes 1 and the Revelations of John. Now go to a cocktail party and start a conversation. You're welcome.(less)

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Feb 01, 2011 Sparrow rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: people on vacation

Shelves: favorites, classic-or-cannonical, reviewed, good-beach-reads

Everything is still tonight, like a friend was talking and I didn’t hear her until she stopped. Like absence. Coming back from vacation has that feeling of loss because all of the friendships resolve into something real, whatever that may be. Whenever I am away from home, I crave The Sun Also Rises. I think it got into my blood from reading it again and again at impressionable ages. Since I returned home this time, a couple of weeks ago, I can’t stop thinking about my friends in this book and th...more Everything is still tonight, like a friend was talking and I didn’t hear her until she stopped. Like absence. Coming back from vacation has that feeling of loss because all of the friendships resolve into something real, whatever that may be. Whenever I am away from home, I crave The Sun Also Rises. I think it got into my blood from reading it again and again at impressionable ages. Since I returned home this time, a couple of weeks ago, I can’t stop thinking about my friends in this book and their fiesta. And I’ve been thinking about the last line of the book and how pretty we all are when we are away.

It seems vulgar to talk about substantive things in this book, compliments or criticisms, because I think it’s one of my best friends, and one of my oldest friends. I probably don’t know any of you as well as I know The Sun Also Rises, so I don’t really want to go behind its back and tell you whether it’s an angry drunk or has informed opinions about war and taxidermy. I will tell you that it’s a comfort when I’m sad or lonely. Not a gentle comfort, but a comfort nonetheless.

I love getting away for a fiesta and the bonds and prejudices that come from being with people on vacation. I hate returning. Returning from vacation makes me really angry. We were waiting for the plane in Tanzania on the way back from Zanzibar, and I had just gotten to the end of The Sun Also Rises. I was so pleased to end the book and see the fiesta disintegrate, just as my own vacation did. During my last week on the island, I was reading another book, and I couldn’t even pay attention to it because I so badly wanted to read about Jake and Bill going fishing. I had to stop and change books on my wonderful Kindle (don’t hate). But, as I was sitting in the café at the Dar es Salaam airport, eating my grilled cheese and anticipating what Jake has to tell me at the very end of this book, suddenly it ended – TWO FULL PAGES BEFORE THE ACTUAL END OF THE BOOK. That is the type of evil I’m talking about of returning from vacation. I’m still mad about it, even though, of course, I finished the book when I got home to my printed copy.

I should probably tell you about how much I love the men in this book. Aren’t men sometimes lovely? And I love the women here, too, even though I cannot imagine a woman ever seeing herself or seeing another woman the way Hemingway writes her. She is always sort of framed and hanging in the entryway of the story so that as people are coming and going they see her and comment on her beauty and tragedy. But, there is always something that reminds me of Romeo and Juliet in Hemingway’s men. I know that A Farewell to Arms is really his Romeo and Juliet (and I love that book as much, even though it is more pristine and not as good a friend). But there is something of the way the men are here that is just the way the men are in R&J. They are all in love and all fighting. And Hemingway’s love stories are made so much more beautiful by being totally incompatible with life. The love is idealized, like maybe all love is, but like the story is not. He tells you about those pockets of comfort in life, but he also tells about what is on either side of them.

I guess I am talking around what I love about the men. I had forgotten in rereading this that there is the hovering analogy of the bulls and steers throughout the book. It is so beautifully done, without being vulgar and literal. I love that all of the emotion among the men – the respect and pity and friendship and jealousy and silent understanding – is there and tangible, but no one talks down to me about it or ruins it by bragging and explaining. Anyway, I have always been partial to Benvolio, and I think Bill is a sort of Benvolio character here, even though you will maybe say he is a Mercutio because of all of his chatter and utilizing. Maybe Jake is my Benvolio. Of course, Cohn must be Romeo. I love being told about all of them.

Mostly what I’m thinking about is the men being in love, even though the story isn’t only about that. The love stories here are so much the opposite of love stories that I am thinking about calling this book an anti-romance. Maybe I am wrong, though. They are about wanting and never having, and isn’t that the flash-bang of romance? Not, obviously, in the literary sense of “romance,” but in the Hollywood sense of romance. The Valentines Day sense. In the sense that vacations are romantic – living a life outside of your own that doesn’t even really exist. For a while now, I have been looking for what I find to be truly romantic in stories. By that I mean, what I find to actually sell me on the idea of love. There are those stories in which people dig deeper than romance to the place that Hemingway’s characters get to, the alienation of actually knowing each other, and then they dig past that to something that I think is love. Maybe that exists. I don’t think Hemingway believed in it, though, and I don’t know that it would have been very interesting to read about if he did. What he writes about, though, is beautiful and interesting, and it exists to me.

I have read this book more times than any other, and even though it is different to me each time, and I see something new, it is always a friend. I don’t really want you to read it. I am happy keeping it to myself. I mostly wanted to tell you about how I love vacations and hate coming back from them, and how it is always just like in the book. I also wanted to tell you about how Chapter 12 is probably my favorite writing that exists, and how I love the rain and I love it when Hemingway writes about the rain. I think Hemingway understood a lot of things differently than I do, but he talks about them so perfectly.(less)

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Jan 28, 2011 Brad rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: faves, classic, the-best, to-read-again

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 a...more

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Feb 04, 2012 Stephen M rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Manly men.

Recommended to Stephen M by: The World at Large

Shelves: overrated

She Aches Just like a Woman

I’ll start off with something that I thought was interesting (hint: it borders on being annoying). For the first 75 pages, characters move in and out of this book with such swiftness and with no mention of physical description or notable characteristics, it mimics the effect of being at a really crowded party where you meet face after face, name after name and you have no time to process who is who, why they are significant and if you should even bother to remember the...more

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Aug 30, 2007 Lena Webb rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I gave this one star because I wasn't old enough to drink or really enjoy much of anything when I first read it, and I haven't read it again since.

I'm almost certain I'd still hate it though.

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Apr 21, 2011 Kemper rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 100, classic-lit

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 h...more 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!
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Apr 04, 2012 Jason Koivu rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The bored, the disenchanted, the wandering wondering and/or nearly thoughtless (except for where their next drink will come from) ex-pat characters, these borderline socialites fighting off ennui, of Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises do very little worth reading about and yet read you do. Blame it on the author's clean writing style or his choice of scenes, choosing to paint with poignant words almost documentary style clips of cultural happenings that still excites even in this television/internet...more

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Nov 08, 2011 AC rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novels-english-american-writers

OK - I have no business writing reviews or longish reviews about novels - I don't read criticism and know nothing anyway… -- but WTF… of all the books I've re-read from my youth of late -- this one… not only held up best, but I realize I had no frikkin' clue whatsoever what this book was about when I was 16 or 17 and when I read it with my buddy Drew X., the most tragic kid I ever knew… along with a lot of other Hemingway books and all the Scott Fitzgerald we could find -- even the The Crack-Up...more OK - I have no business writing reviews or longish reviews about novels - I don't read criticism and know nothing anyway… -- but WTF… of all the books I've re-read from my youth of late -- this one… not only held up best, but I realize I had no frikkin' clue whatsoever what this book was about when I was 16 or 17 and when I read it with my buddy Drew X., the most tragic kid I ever knew… along with a lot of other Hemingway books and all the Scott Fitzgerald we could find -- even the The Crack-Up at 17… with Mr. McCaffrey, who was all of 22 and straight out of Harvard and very cool and whose father had been one of the editors on the publisher's side of The Moveable Feast, we were told…, and Drew, who at the age of 6, looked (and still looked a decade later) EXACTLY like Opie Taylor (Ron Howard), and who had had to watch his father shoot his mother dead in the kitchen, slipping on the blood holding his teddy bear…, and then watch him (the father) shoot the older brother who survived and is now a well known or well enough known writer…. and who looked like Opie but with an awesome intensity… and this, of course… all in New York… during the days of the Revolution… at the very prep school where J.D. Salinger got kicked out of… but anyways…, I digress.

So Jake Barnes… Jake's had an accident. But apart from a somewhat ironic look in the mirror and a few crappy days and some tears on the top of his bed thinking of Brett…, seems basically OK, no…? in fact, the picture of health…, the very PICTURE of it… walking and drinking and staying up all night and hopping up and down from the tops of buses and up mountains and fishing and stripping down and bathing and floating and diving and soaking in the sun and the sand and taking off his suit and bathing and drying down and drinking and looking and being basically happy -- showing no ill effects, really -- certainly no obvious PHYSICAL wounds of any mutilation -- and even… psychologically… is more happy and clear and sober than anything else, having "paid" he says for everything and for more good than bad…

And so it appears, frankly, that the "accident" is more metaphor than bruise. And that what Jake lost in the war… were simply his illusions. And that the source and goad of those illusions… is love. Which Brett is in the grip of…. Brett, who can only love the man she can't have… but that Jake, at least… is basically free of -- free enough, at least… to allow him to see and note and breath the air….

Obviously fame and alcohol and depression and electric shocks and god-knows-what-else fucked up Papa Hemingway eventually -- but oh… what a book he wrote at the tender age of 26….!

The end.(less)

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Mar 17, 2010 bup rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001, 2009, novel

Man those people drank a lot. I got dehydrated just reading about it.

If you like Hemingway because of the way he's able to use short words over and over and they hit you like it's the first time you've ever really heard them, you'll love this book. If you like Hemingway because of manly men doing things where you're like, "I'm a man, or at least I've observed them at close range, and I don't get why the correct man reaction to ________ (insult/woman's inscrutable comment/witness of horrific acti...more

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Oct 21, 2007 Mike Mcfarland rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: anyone who loves Spain, France, or drinking heavily.

Shelves: classics

A magnificent and deceptively simple book. If you judged it solely on its plot, you probably wouldn't come away very impressed: a collection of American ex-patriots travel from Paris to Pamplona for the running of the bulls; drink too much and make fools of themselves; then return to Paris a few weeks older and not much wiser. Where Hemingway really succeeds, though, is in capturing brief flashes of life that any reader will recognize.

Again, I'm hardly qualified to propose and defend a thesis on...more A magnificent and deceptively simple book. If you judged it solely on its plot, you probably wouldn't come away very impressed: a collection of American ex-patriots travel from Paris to Pamplona for the running of the bulls; drink too much and make fools of themselves; then return to Paris a few weeks older and not much wiser. Where Hemingway really succeeds, though, is in capturing brief flashes of life that any reader will recognize.

Again, I'm hardly qualified to propose and defend a thesis on the book, so I'll write about what impressed me. To start, of course, there are all the scenes that describe the art and beauty of bullfighting. Hemingway makes it sound like a fierce and graceful competition between humanity and nature. I have to say, however, that when I actually saw a bullfight I didn't come away with that impression at all. The odds are (understandably) so stacked in favor of the bullfighter that the whole process seems more savage and brutal than anything else. Still, it was Hemingway's description that drew me to see the match in the first place, so it carries a great deal of romantic power. Beautiful to read, horrible to see.

There is also a scene where two of the characters go off to a small village to fish before the Running of the Bulls feast. The description of the guys hanging out, lazily fishing, and waiting for their bottles of wine to cool in the river really captures those moments in life where you stand back from yourself for a moment, look around, and say to yourself: "Goddamn! It's good to be alive!" Makes you want to go out there and fish yourself.

Finally, Hemingway really conveys the wild revelry of the feast itself. The writing comes in flashes, like memories of a great night out. Dancing with locals in a tavern. Sharing a wineskin while traveling between bars. Fumbling with your keys as you try to get back in your room. Trying to recover fast enough the next morning to start all over again that night. The book focuses on the consequences of this kind of lifestyle, as well, but being a half-full glass kind of guy draws me to the more enjoyable aspects of the book. An enormously fun read.(less)

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Oct 29, 2012 Lou rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: classics

This was an average feast of sorts. Continental beautiful settings, tragic and problem riddled characters this is successfully written with.
The writing was not on a whole of the quality that I expected from Hemingway, there was great paragraphs scattered around in parts of the story.
There was a few times that the story bored me, one example was not being stimulated by the bull fighting, which I feel is animal cruelty passed as a culture and entertainment, so my mind strayed to more interesting t...more

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Jul 30, 2012 Kirstine rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: classics

I was inexplicably fond of Hemingway even before I read him. Like I was predisposed to love him, which sounds ridiculous, so let's say I expected to love him.

And I did. Woop, surprise.

Hemingway is magnificent because he's honest and he's self-aware, his writing, his characters, his entire style reflects this. A moment that almost shook me to my core was 84 pages in, when I read this:

"He was the archivist, and all the archives of the town were in his office. That has nothing to do with the stor...more

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Jul 22, 2011 Alex rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Here's how the story lines eventually unravel
Three men (at least or rather three and half) and one Le Femme Fatal
From Paris to Pamplona in escape from boredom for the leisure travel
Where they all drink Pernod Absinthe until she meets the boy, who boldly fights the bull
Jake acts as liaison arranging Brett-bullfighter sex affair
Cohn beats the shit off Spanish boy, Mike keeps on drinking and pretends that he's cool and doesn't care

1. Memorable 5
2. Social Relevance 5
3. Informative 2
4. Originalit...more

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Mar 01, 2010 Ellen rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novels

One of the questions the novel raises is who is the hero?

From our perspective the disappearance of the hero is nothing new. When Hemingway wrote this book, the lack of a clear protagonist was not yet a tradition. Certainly, there was literature featuring anti-heroes, but in this novel, it is not even clear if there is a central character.

Even Hemingway did not seem entirely sure. The story of how Hemingway revised the novel is a fascinating account on its own. One point that emerges in looking a...more
One of the questions the novel raises is who is the hero?

From our perspective the disappearance of the hero is nothing new. When Hemingway wrote this book, the lack of a clear protagonist was not yet a tradition. Certainly, there was literature featuring anti-heroes, but in this novel, it is not even clear if there is a central character.

Even Hemingway did not seem entirely sure. The story of how Hemingway revised the novel is a fascinating account on its own. One point that emerges in looking at his rough drafts is Hemingway's ambiguity concerning whom he intended as the main character. Originally, the book started with two chapters on Lady Brett Ashley, beginning with the line, "This is a novel about a lady."

In another deleted section, Jake Barnes makes the following statement: "Now you see. It looked as though I were trying to get to be the hero of this story. But that is all wrong. Cohn is the hero. When I bring myself in it is only to clear up something. Or maybe Duff [Brett:] is the hero. Or Nino de la Palma [Romero:]. He never really had a chance to be the hero. Or maybe there is not any hero at all. Maybe a story is better without a hero" (Svobova 31).

In a 1926 letter to Maxwell Perkins, Hemingway proposes yet another hero: [the story:] "is a damn tragedy with the earth abiding forever as the hero" (Letters 229). Or, as Hemingway suggests in a 1926 letter to Fitzgerald, maybe it is just a story about "how people go to hell" (Letters 209).

Certainly Cohn, Brett, Jake, and Pedro Romero do not align as neatly into categories of good and bad as Philip Young's analysis of Hemingway's "code" would have us believe. Robert Cohn's grief at having been rejected by Brett is balanced by his earlier rejection of his wife and three small chilren as well as the expedient rejection of his subsequent mistress, Francis Clyne. Yet, in some ways, despite his romantic posturing, Cohn seems more alive than characters like Mike--lost in a drunken stupor--or Count Mippipopoulos with his leaden philosophy of value exchange.

Brett, though described by Cohn in glowing terms, "There's a certain quality about her, a certain fineness. She seems to be absolutely fine and straight," proves to be something less than "fine and straight." Seemingly pointless details and Brett's actions often show her to be a bit duplicitous.

Romero, for all his grace under pressure and perfect technique, has an unformed quality. He is a pretty boy, the child Brett refers to when she states she is not going to be one of those bitches who ruins children. Romero has youth, beauty, and the support of the crowd. Perhaps more heroic is the courage of Belmonte--the aging bullfighter--who works in pain and faces the contempt of a crowd expecting him to live up to a past reputation mythic in proportion. Jake, too, shows steady courage in a no-win situation. Trapped in the living hell of desire without hope of fulfillment, Jakes manages to salvage some dignity, to carve out a code of conduct as if his life had meaning.

Most of these characters lead lives of quiet desperation and aborted desires. Hemingway may have had this loneliness in mind when he considered using two lines from Andrew Marvell's poem as the novel's original epigraph:

The grave's a fine and private place
But none, I think, do there embrace

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Jun 29, 2009 Logan rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Logan by: Stacie Sather

Shelves: classics, fiction, 1001-list

Hemingway has never been a close friend of mine. We've had some dalliances, to be sure, but he's never been the sort of author that I call long distance on a rainy night just to be reassured by the sound of their voice. It's not that we don't get along. It is just that our relationship has always been more like that of friends-of-a-friend. We just hadn't had the opportunity to get falling down drunk with one another and confess the trials and tribulations of life to each other. Fortunately The S...more Hemingway has never been a close friend of mine. We've had some dalliances, to be sure, but he's never been the sort of author that I call long distance on a rainy night just to be reassured by the sound of their voice. It's not that we don't get along. It is just that our relationship has always been more like that of friends-of-a-friend. We just hadn't had the opportunity to get falling down drunk with one another and confess the trials and tribulations of life to each other. Fortunately The Sun Also Rises has more than enough libations to break down those interpersonal barriers and allow for some serious bonding.

Alternating between 1920s Paris and Pamplona, The Sun Also Rises strikes me as nothing so much as a novel suffering from extreme amounts of post-traumatic stress. For the world-weary 21st century reader, it may be difficult to wrap our minds around the sheer historic enormity of the so-called Great War that Europe was still recovering from in the 1920s. It's an understandable alienation. Since the Treaty of Versailles we have seen villainy and barbarism on a scale that would be unthinkable to the genteel soldiers of WWI: Auschwitz, Hiroshima, My Lai, the Contras, September 11, precision-guided missiles, Pearl Harbor. From WWII forward the world has been engulfed in a near-constant state of warfare, both hot and cold, beamed straight into our living rooms thanks to CNN. These are images that we are very familiar with.

To the writers of the Lost Generation, however, World War One came out of nowhere and completely altered the way in which the world could be viewed. The advances of industry had made it possible for humans to be exterminated on a scale that boggled the mind. Remember, this is only a few decades after Alfred Nobel claimed that his invention of dynamite would so shock soldiers and politicians that it would usher in an era of world peace. Oh to be so innocent! Instead we got a continent-wide conflict that threw away the gentlemanly rules of combat and revealed clearly the brute animal lurking beneath the veneer of civilization.

Is it any wonder, then, that bullfighting forms the centerpiece behind this fantastic novel of alienation? A custom steeped in tradition and history, where every movement is perfectly scripted and unalterable. A beautifully brutal balet between beast and men, violence as performance art. What could be further from the barbarity of the Great War? This conflict between codified behavior and brute force plays out very obviously in the bullfighting scenes, yet plays out a bit more subtlely in other sections of the book. Of particular interest to me were the conflicts over Lady Brett Ashley, the promiscuous paramour of nearly every male character in the short novel.

After having a brief affair with Robert Cohn, an American Jew with a crippling inferiority complex due to the rampant anti-semitism with which he is constantly confronted, Brett takes up with Pedro Romero, the young bullfighter who is the star of the fiesta. Cohn finds himself obsessed, however, unable to let go of Brett or see her with another man. His behavior becomes increasingly eratic and ends up with Cohn bursting into Romero's hotel room where he finds the object of his obsession entwined in the young matador's sheets.

The ensuing fight between Cohn and Romero very skillfully turns the bullfighting metaphor on its head as Cohn takes up the role of the matador, very capably fending off Romero's headstrong attacks and dancing around him with the same skill that the young Spaniard uses in the ring. Likewise, outside of the rules of the ring, Romero is revealed to be just as stubborn as the bulls he dispatches, taking punch after punch from Cohn yet refusing to even acknowledge his pain, let alone his defeat. I think it was in this scene where my nascent love for Hemingway was kindled.

Some readers may be thrown off by the scenes describing the bullfights (I find it strange that violence against animals often evokes more of an outcry than violence against humans (perhaps a product of an ingrained cultural misanthropy?) but that is a topic for a whole other argument) yet these are short and serve to better set the stage for the character drama that unfolds in the streets around Pamplona. Hemingway's distinctive austerity is on full display here, he never uses five words when four will do. Yet rather than distracting me, as it did in Garden of Eden, I found it compelling. Plain-speaking should never be confused with simplicity, as Hemingway very aptly demonstrates here. Now that I've finally had a chance to get to know Papa Hemingway, I can tell that we are going to get along quite well in subsequent literary adventures. Now the only question is which of his works to pick up next.(less)

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Jul 11, 2008 Jake rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Jake by: jsteinmann@gmail.com

Shelves: fiction

I always feel a little odd writing about books that are considered “great literature.” Mostly because I read either for fun, or to investigate particular subjects or authors that I find personally interesting. I’m not particularly interested in literary theory (by not particularly, I mean, not at all), and find wading through academic analysis of writing to be more of a chore than it’s usually worth. So in reviewing a classic work like the Sun Also Rises, I’m always conscious of the fact that I’...more I always feel a little odd writing about books that are considered “great literature.” Mostly because I read either for fun, or to investigate particular subjects or authors that I find personally interesting. I’m not particularly interested in literary theory (by not particularly, I mean, not at all), and find wading through academic analysis of writing to be more of a chore than it’s usually worth. So in reviewing a classic work like the Sun Also Rises, I’m always conscious of the fact that I’m reviewing something that is generally recognized to be a great work of literature, and has been analyzed to death by academics throughout the world.

But I am not, as I’ve said, interested in doing a literary analysis of this book. Those who want that sort of thing should look elsewhere.

The Sun Also Rises follows a group of British and American expatriates as they wander around post-WWI France and Spain. The main character, Jake Barnes, is pretty clearly a stand-in for Hemingway, though I can’t really comment on who the other characters are supposed to be, if anyone. Barnes is also the principle narrator, and the story is filtered primarily through his perceptions.

The first half of the book, honestly, bored me to tears. It essentially consists of Jake and his friends club-hopping through Paris, having drinks, going to cafes, and generally bullshitting with each other. Despite the amount of time spent doing things, not a lot really happens. I suppose that someone more interested in 1920s Paris might find it more enjoyable, but it just bored me to death. Yet, somehow, I plunged on.

The second half of the book picks up considerably. Jake and co. travel to Spain, where they continue to drink, go fishing, watch bullfights, and enjoy the local festivities. There’s considerably more happening here, and while there’s still a lot of random conversation and bs-ing, at least it doesn’t always occur in bars and cafes. Hemingway’s descriptions of the bullfights are excellent (and yes, I know, it’s a horrible, cruel, evil, activity, etc. Hemingway still writes it well), and he paints an excellent picture of the Spanish countryside in general. His descriptions of people are a little flatter. It didn’t really occur to me until the end of the book that I had virtually no idea what most of the main characters looked like.

Why did I read it? For a long time now I’ve had a strange fascination with Hemingway. He’s tremendously unpopular at the moment in academic circles, but my father likes him, which counts a great deal for me. He’s got a very interesting writing style. He’s a boxing fan, and has an appreciation for athletic skill that comes out well in his writing. And he’s the quintessential depressed alcoholic writer, which is an archetype I’m strangely drawn to, despite not being a huge drinker myself. Though Starla got me started on the occasional beer while paper writing, which has really got to stop before I get too obese.

Bottom line—good, but not great. I’ll probably read some more at some point, but this one was just a little too slow for my tastes. Less Paris, and more Spain, and I probably would have liked it more.(less)

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Apr 08, 2009 Joseph rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: All fans of serious literature

Recommended to Joseph by: College professors "demanded "it of me

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Mar 08, 2013 Manny rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Sometimes a text is about the things that are not there—something that Hemingway was great at doing, not writing about things (writing by omission). That last sentence was an example of what The Sun Also Rises did not have.

From the antisemitic first chapters, that give us a look into the mind of Jake Barnes, to the fishing trip in Burguete, all the way to the policeman raising his baton on his horse (a reminder to Jake of the horrors of the Great War and the ailment that haunts his current life...more

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Mar 25, 2009 Allison Harrison rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: no one

Recommended to Allison by: Nate Pritts

I honestly didn't think that this book would be as bad as it was. I was assigned to read this book for class, and the books we've read for class have hitherto been better than this.

This book has virtually no plot, and the characters are very flat. The entire book consists of a group of people, each of them disliking at least one person in their party, driving around Paris drinking. Then they decide to go to Spain and drink. So the rest of the book is about them drinking with each other, drinkin...more

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Sep 12, 2011 Helynne rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The expatriot American writers, poets, painters, musicians,etc., who hung out in Paris in the 1920s were an innovative and talented bunch. But they were a somewhat sad lot as well. Hemingway’s first novel is a semi-autobiographical look at these 30-something people’s desperate search for meaning in life through a hedonistic, booze-soaked chase from place to place in France and Spain. His story makes it easy to see why these folks were called the “lost generation.” (In his memoir, A Memorable Fe...more The expatriot American writers, poets, painters, musicians,etc., who hung out in Paris in the 1920s were an innovative and talented bunch. But they were a somewhat sad lot as well. Hemingway’s first novel is a semi-autobiographical look at these 30-something people’s desperate search for meaning in life through a hedonistic, booze-soaked chase from place to place in France and Spain. His story makes it easy to see why these folks were called the “lost generation.” (In his memoir, A Memorable Feast,, Hemingway explains how Gertrude Stein first coined that term.) Their late-Romantic-post-modern-pre-existential self-destruction is dizzying to observe. The action swirls around Jake Barnes, a journalist originally from Kansas City (as was Hemingway himself), who suffered an injury in World War I that apparently has left him impotent. (Hemingway, through first-person narrator Jake, is very discreet about the details. His only explanation is that while Jake was in the hospital in Milan, an Italian officer visited him and said, “Che mal fortuna,” and now Jake just tries not to think about it). This is hard, though, when the woman Jake has always loved, British socialite Brett Ashely, keeps reappearing in his life. Brett loves Jake as well, but she is simply too highly sexed and too high on life in general to live with someone who cannot perform. (In the course of this story, Brett goes through three lovers—her Scottish fiancé Michael, American novelist Robert Cohn, and a Pamplona bullfighter 15 years her junior). Jake’s other friends are mostly writers at various levels of success and angst. Every activity of the group is laced with stops at cafés and inns for alcohol—lots and lots of alcohol—from France with wine, beer, and liqueur, to Spain where the French Pernod turns into the real thing—absinthe. This, of course, is abused by Jake until it seriously messes with his head. The story culminates in Hemingway’s signature adventure—a festival in Pamplona, Spain, where daring fools run with the bulls turned loose in the streets. Afterwards, everyone watches the bullfights in the ring. The prose describing the bullfights is the most eloquent in Hemingway’s otherwise sparse writing style that progresses largly in clipped dialogue. I read this novel hoping for some vivid flavor of the bohemian life of Paris and other parts of France, and I was not disappointed. I would have hoped for a little more plot and a more satisfying ending, but I realize that Hemingway was less concerned here about story telling than he was about describing a certain ambiance and mind-set, and here he truly delivers.

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Dec 07, 2007 Danny rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

For a long time I was convinced that there were two sorts of people in the world: those who adore Hemingway, gush about his genius and lavish praise upon him at every opportunity, and those who despise him utterly. As it turns out, there is a third category: those who have read him and still remain wholly indifferent. I am that third category.

I found my copy of The Sun Also Rises in a thrift-store for a buck, and I figured, 'meh, what the hell?' It is supposed to be one of the fabled great Amer...more

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Feb 01, 2009 Weinz rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Hemmingway is masterful at saying something without saying it. I believe the sign of a true classic is different readers being able to find different meanings and symbolism in the same story. This story does that. What I saw in it was people putting up the front of happiness while being empty and void of any joy on the inside. Hemmingway's own inner unhappiness comes through in this text in such a revealing way. It made the pain of the protagonist all the more palpable.

Although it had many mess...more

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Jan 24, 2009 Richard Fulgham rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: people who want to escape the great boredom of living

ANOTHER PERCEPTION:

The matador is Death. He is inevitable and inescapable. Not cruel, just there -- and he has come for the bull, who will fight for his life and lose. But don't feel sorry for the bull for the bull will die fighting, a chance not given to other bulls -- who will die without dignity.
The people who enjoy watching are not yet aware that there is a matador for each of them. Not cruel. Just there. Inevitable. So what do you do? You get drunk and have a lot of sex and sleep so time wi...more

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Jun 06, 2012 Suzanne rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I was not impressed. I understand that Hemingway, himself,was a member of the lost generation. He and his expat friends drank to excess almost everyday. His first novel, The Sun Also Rises is about people like him and his friends, except that in the novel all the characters are total losers. Even though Hemingway, as a person, was morally bereft and drunk, as a writer he was very successful.
Brett, the main squeeze, was squeezed by everyone except Jake, the main character and narrator. Of course...more I was not impressed. I understand that Hemingway, himself,was a member of the lost generation. He and his expat friends drank to excess almost everyday. His first novel, The Sun Also Rises is about people like him and his friends, except that in the novel all the characters are total losers. Even though Hemingway, as a person, was morally bereft and drunk, as a writer he was very successful.
Brett, the main squeeze, was squeezed by everyone except Jake, the main character and narrator. Of course Jake does nothing to change Brett's spiralling downward fall. They are star crossed lovers who are lost to each other because they are part of this lost generation.
Cohn is an outsider to this group because he is a Jew. He is mocked as "superior" because he pays his bills. Mike is the most disgusting character because he is engaged to Brett as he watches her flit from count to Jew to bull fighter.
The only real friend these character have is the bottle.
I really don't like a lot of the prose. In this "new" writing with simple declarative sentences, I found myself drifting to sleep.(No, I don't drink) How many bottles were bought and shared by these people. How many times did I have to read that they met in a bar, drank and the went to a cafe ate and drank and then went to another bar. I think the dialogue was very dull. I guess that's due to everyone's inebriation.
I thought something else might have happened Pamplona. There were a few pages about the bull fights, but it was mostly the drinking. The bulls are massive animals not known for their intelligence. They are unloaded and run after tourists looking for a thrill. A young thoughtless, thrill seeking farmer is gored to death. His body is claimed by his wife. The "friends" verbally spar with each other and eventually cause Cohn to physically attack. Brett seduces a 19 year old bull fighter. Luckily for him, she eventually chases him away. I guess, this group of lost souls will bang into each other some day. Not during, the morning, but at night. I guess they'll sit around and have a drink... that is everyone except, Cohn , the Jew.

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Apr 22, 2011 Rebecca rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: adult-fiction

If a novel is a vehicle one rides to get to a literary destination, Victor Hugo is a highly polished cabriolet carriage with a rounded, butter yellow apron trimmed in mahogany, swept up on the sides finishing into unyielding arabesques capped with a pale blue hood, lined in ivory velvet and carried by a three-year-old dappled gray with a silvery blaze down his nose.

Ernest Hemingway is a cart. Pulled by an ass.

I understand his technique of base dialogue and understated description. I just don’t r...more

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About Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economical and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. He published seven novels, six short story collec...more Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economical and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. He published seven novels, six short story collections and two non-fiction works. Three novels, four collections of short stories and three non-fiction works were published posthumously. Many of these are considered classics of American literature.

Hemingway was raised in Oak Park, Illinois. After high school he reported for a few months for The Kansas City Star, before leaving for the Italian front to enlist with the World War I ambulance drivers. In 1918, he was seriously wounded and returned home. His wartime experiences formed the basis for his novel A Farewell to Arms. In 1922, he married Hadley Richardson, the first of his four wives. The couple moved to Paris, where he worked as a foreign correspondent, and fell under the influence of the modernist writers and artists of the 1920s "Lost Generation" expatriate community. The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway's first novel, was published in 1926.

After his 1927 divorce from Hadley Richardson, Hemingway married Pauline Pfeiffer. They divorced after he returned from Spanish Civil War where he had acted as a journalist, and after which he wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls. Martha Gellhorn became his third wife in 1940. They separated when he met Mary Welsh in London during World War II; during which he was present at the Normandy Landings and liberation of Paris.

Shortly after the publication of The Old Man and the Sea in 1952, Hemingway went on safari to Africa, where he was almost killed in two plane crashes that left him in pain or ill-health for much of the rest of his life. Hemingway had permanent residences in Key West, Florida, and Cuba during the 1930s and 1940s, but in 1959 he moved from Cuba to Ketchum, Idaho, where he committed suicide in the summer of 1961.(less)

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“Oh Jake," Brett said, "We could have had such a damned good time together."
Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly, pressing Brett against me.
Yes," I said. "Isn't it pretty to think so?” — 369 people liked it

“Isn't it pretty to think so.” — 338 people liked it

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