The Sun Also Rises in Boxall's 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die

Dec 17, 2008 Chloe rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, fiction, 1001-list, france, spain

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 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. ...more

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May 24, 2011 melita rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

it is fair to say that I am in love with Ernest Hemingway! I did not want this to end. There certainly wasn't any plot that was resolved; it could have gone on forever. ...more

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Jul 18, 2007 Steven rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 1001, hemmingway, time-100

Impossible for me to hear the yearly updates of the running of the bulls in Pamplona without thinking about this one. Jake and Brett have a relationship, but due to his injury in WWI, Jake can't consumate the relationship with Brett. Jake finds peace elsewhere throughout France and Spain and everybody gets pretty drunk. Themes of the loss of innocence of ex-pats abroad and disillusionment with one's generation and the world are tough to not find timeless. ...more

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