The Sun Also Rises

by Ernest Hemingway

Nobody that ever left their own country ever wrote anything worth printing. Not even in the newspapers.

“You’re an expatriate. You’ve lost touch with the soil. You get precious. Fake European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed by sex...

“Listen, Jake,” he said, “are you really a Catholic?” “Technically.”

aficionado

Afición means passion. An aficionado is one who is passionate

For one who had afición he could forgive anything. At once he forgave me all my friends.

they were simply a little something shameful between us, like the spilling open of the horses in bull-fighting.

They let the bulls out of the cages one at a time, and they have steers in the corral to receive them and keep them from fighting, and the bulls tear in at the steers and the steers run around like old maids trying to quiet them down.”

“Do they ever gore the steers?” “Sure. Sometimes they go right after them and kill them.” “Can’t the steers do anything?” “No. They’re trying to make friends.” “What do they have them in for?” “To quiet down the bulls and keep them from breaking their horns against the stone walls, or goring each other.” “Must be swell being a steer.

“I suppose I’ve the usual medals. But I never sent in for them. One

“My God, isn’t he beautiful?” Brett said. We were looking right down on him. “Look how he knows how to use his horns,” I said. “He’s got a left and a right just like a boxer.”

“Hah! Hah! Toro!” and waved their arms; the two steers turned sideways to take the shock, and the bull drove into one of the steers. “Don’t look,” I said to Brett. She was watching, fascinated. “Fine,” I said. “If it doesn’t buck you.” “I saw it,” she said. “I saw him shift from his left to his right horn.” “Damn good!” The steer was down

“It’s no life being a steer,” Robert Cohn said. “Don’t you think so?” Mike said. “I would have thought you’d loved 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.”

serious. Is Robert Cohn going to follow Brett around like a steer all the time?”

“Breeding be damned. Who has any breeding, anyway, except the bulls? Aren’t the bulls lovely?

What if Brett did sleep with you? She’s slept with lots of better people than you.”

Why do you follow Brett around like a poor bloody steer?

Don’t you know you’re not wanted? I know when I’m not wanted. Why don’t you know when you’re not wanted? You came down to San Sebastian where you weren’t wanted, and followed Brett around like a bloody steer. Do you think that’s right?”

“What do you follow her around for?”

“I’m not saying he’s not right, you know.”

“I’m not so damn drunk as I sounded,” he said. “I know you’re not,”

He hung around Brett and just looked at her. It made me damned well sick.” “He did behave very badly,” Brett said. “Mark you. Brett’s had affairs with men before. She tells me all about everything. She gave me this chap Cohn’s letters to read. I wouldn’t read them.”

It was like certain dinners I remember from the war. There was much wine, an ignored tension, and a feeling of things coming that you could not prevent happening. Under the wine I lost the disgusted feeling and was happy. It seemed they were all such nice people.

I was very drunk and I did not want to shut my eyes because the room would go round and round. If I kept on reading that feeling would pass. I heard Brett and Robert Cohn come up the stairs. Cohn said good night outside the door and went on up to his room. I heard Brett go into the room next door. Mike was already in bed. He had come in with me an hour before. He woke as she came in, and they talked together. I heard them laugh. I turned off the light and tried to go to sleep. It was not necessary to read any more. I could shut my eyes without getting the wheeling sensation. But

Women made such swell friends. Awfully swell.

you had to be in love with a woman to have a basis of friendship.

I had been having Brett for a friend. I had not been thinking about her side of it. I had been getting something for nothing. That only delayed the prese...

I thought I had paid for everything. Not like the woman pays and pays and pays. No idea of retribution or punishment. Just exchange of values. You gave up something and g...

Enjoying living was learning to get your money’s worth and knowing when you had it.

Handwritten

being a Roman Catholic I am spared that Protestant urge to literary production, nor to set things all out the way they happened for the good of some future generation, nor any other of the usual highly moral urges, but because I believe it is a good story.