The Sun Also Rises in Reading the Classics

Jun 29, 2012 tara bomp rated it did not like it

Shelves: fiction, american, gave-up-on

I don't understand this. At all. I did not like a single aspect of this book. It's racist, misogynist, anti-semitic crap. Some discussion of all that stuff follows.

I finally gave up when he mentioned a "[n word] drummer" who had 4 words of dialogue, all of which were written in some kind of absurd parody of African-American dialect, which, added to his racist description of Cohn (constant references to his Jewishness as a bad thing and all his bad features owing to him being a Jew) I found unbea I don't understand this. At all. I did not like a single aspect of this book. It's racist, misogynist, anti-semitic crap. Some discussion of all that stuff follows.

I finally gave up when he mentioned a "[n word] drummer" who had 4 words of dialogue, all of which were written in some kind of absurd parody of African-American dialect, which, added to his racist description of Cohn (constant references to his Jewishness as a bad thing and all his bad features owing to him being a Jew) I found unbearable. The prose is boring - nothing is described much, which I enjoy, but instead they're merely named. Things pop in and out of the background. Locations feel no more than cardboard backgrounds. When he does describe, it's the most boring things - he describes the route a taxi takes through Paris just by listing names, depriving the route of any context or meaning.

I couldn't understand the characters at all. They're less characters, more very vaguely shaped names. I realise that 80 years and a huge economic gap separates me, but nothing these people do seem real. They eat every meal at an expensive restaraunt. Money is never an issue, even though there seems to be no reason for them to have so much. They drink constantly, so much that they should all need liver transplants. They drink while waiting to drink. Nothing they say has any meaning. The most dramatic section was Cohn's wife spending a page just insulting him and the reaction from the narrator was "wow, rude" and pretty much ignoring it, so it was again meaningless. Another time a supposed "friend" who's just suddenly introduced and says nothing at all of any interest attacks Cohn in the narrator's presence - with no provocation - Cohn actually speaks up, and the narrator says he's being funny. It's incoherent and feels completely ridiculous and unbelievable. Very little characterisation is given, but each time it feels contradicted by other things they do and the effect is heavily jarring.

Hemingway also has a frustrating habit of introducing characters as if they've been introduced before, by just mentioning their name. Each time makes me go back through the book just to check that I haven't missed something. I understand this approach, but each time it happens it feels like I *need* the context that I've lost out on by not knowing who this person is. It makes a few paragraphs confusing.

Then there are tiny issues that are still annoying. What kind of a lordship is "Ashley"? Lords are named after places, or at least they should be referred to by a surname. Ashley is a first name, and this actually confused me a few times. A taxi drops our narrator off at somewhere he didn't want to be and apparently the taxis ALWAYS do that in a certain case which is described specifically in a whole sentence. Why did the taxi do that? It didn't matter at all, apparently, because the right cafe was very close by. There's a section where they're about to pour some champagne, they say "wine would be more difficult to cool otherwise we'd have had that" and then the champagne is called wine for the rest of the section. These are all tiny faults, but they serve to completely frustrate any attempt on my part to even skim the book because they're so *pointless*.

Ultimately, it just felt like a book where very little happened to characters I don't care about and who barely exist, written in prose that didn't ever hold my interest. ...more

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Sep 06, 2008 Cheryl rated it it was ok

Shelves: nobel-prize, 1001-books-you-must-read-before-you

This was not my favorite by Hemingway. I understand that it is a pure representation of The Lost Generation following WWI. Such a depressing story as how the war has really affected the lives of so many of the characters, physically and emotionally, in the story. None of the characters are endearing...rather pathetic. It is especially sad to see that Brett does not fully seek love from the one man who loves her the most...the one who cannot physically demonstrate that love to her, Jake.

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Jun 08, 2017 Hameeda rated it liked it

Shelves: book-club, fiction, france

This is a second of Ernest Hemingway that I read and both for my book club and I didn't find it a master piece. This book is thought to be his best worK which makes me wonder about his worst. I didn't get the plot and the characters. I liked the way he described the surroundings in detail. I didn't like the Farewell yo Arms much either. I preferred All Quirt on the Western Front in comparison. I don't know if I would pick up another book by him. ...more

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Mar 08, 2015 Jlawrence rated it liked it

The only other Hemingway I've read is The Old Man & The Sea which was required reading in high school. I don't know if this was a good place to start reading more of him. I know it's supposed to capture the "Lost Generation"'s post-WWI ennui -- but I feel it's a problem if a novel is mostly a rambling character study yet its study of character rarely strays from too blunt or too sparse. There's some individually lovely vignettes & its depictions of bullfighting are vivid & rightly famous, but ov ...more

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Nov 28, 2012 Chloe rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: taught

Paris. Bullfights. Some of Hemingway's best prose. I read this on the way to France on the ferry. Bought a bottle of cheap red wine and fell in love. ...more

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