The Sun Also Rises, published in 1926, was Ernest Hemingway’s first novel and had a significant impact on English literature. Some literature experts have said that it changed the way novels were written. This book single handedly made the Fiesta de San Fermin in Pamplona, Spain, world famous.
The Sun Also Rises is a classic novel about expats in Paris following World War I who are a “Lost Generation.” They believe that the values they were taught growing up are no longer of service to them and failed them during the war. The book starts with the characters in Paris before going to Spain. There is a lot of partying, drinking, and degeneracy. It has fights, bullfights, romantic altercations, displays of a luxurious and exciting lifestyle, and a collection of people trying to cope with the traumas they have suffered during their lives.
The narrator is Jake Barnes, a veteran of World War I who sustained a tragic injury during the war. The injury can only be inferred as it is not directly named, but it prevents him from entering into a relationship with his love interest, Lady Brett Ashley. Lady Brett Ashley has feelings for Barnes, but she laments that they cannot be together because of his injury. Some have described Lady Brett Ashley as almost modern.
The other expats are Mike Campbell, also a World War I veteran who is strongly attracted to Lady Brett Ashley but is prone to emotional outbursts, Bill Gorton who is a World War I veteran and is close friends with Barnes, and Robert Cohen who has some significant interactions with Brett Ashley but did not fight in World War I.
I had a few false starts reading this book. The first couple times I started I was bored with the excessive mentions of drinking, going to cafes, and constant dialogue with what didn’t seem to be a lot of action. Later I found that this book really requires active and engaged reading. A lot of what is important in this novel is under the surface, the way most of an iceberg is submerged underwater (Hence the “iceberg theory” of writing attributed to Hemingway that Hemingway describes in later books). For example, Barnes’ injury can be easily inferred by the engaged reader, while people who are passively reading or speed reading have been known to miss this key fact.
Once I engaged with the book much more actively and paid very close attention to what was said, and more importantly what wasn’t said, this book transformed.
Robert Cohn is a significant character in the book. His prominence has only grown as more time passes since the book was published. He is not respected by others in the group and is the target of much antisemitism that escalates over time and explodes. The anti-semitism is egregious, and like other words to describe certain demographics of people in the book, can be exceptionally difficult to read. Some say that Hemingway was anti-semitic and his anti-semitism is evident here. Others may argue Hemingway is accurately representing his time, the people, and the thoughts and things they say. Either answer is credible, and both can be true at the same time.
The story is “fiction” but is highly biographical. The legend goes that Hemingway, his wife, and friends went to Pamplona for the Fiesta de San Fermin in 1925 and the occurrences there are nearly identical to the events that happened in this book, published in 1926. Hemingway scholars say that the original draft has the names of the people on the 1925 trip, only to swap the real names out for fictitious ones in later drafts. For example, Robert Cohn was inspired by Harold Loeb, and Loeb was deeply offended and felt betrayed by Hemingway, who Loeb considered a close friend.
The book Everybody Behaves Badly: The True Story Behind Hemingway’s Masterpiece The Sun Also Rises is a biography of The Sun Also Rises. It details the biographical background of the book, the fallout after the book was published, and how the story of The Sun Also Rises is also the making of the famous Hemingway.
The last line of The Sun Also Rises remains a topic of conversation to this day. I believe it was written as part condescending and recognizing wishful, maybe delusional, thinking. Many of the passages that stand out relate to characters coping with life. Often characters describe their problems or others pointing out their shortcomings. Some examples:
“Going to another country doesn’t make any difference. I’ve tried all that. You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. There’s nothing to that.”
“Don’t you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you’re not taking advantage of it? Do you realize you’ve lived nearly half the time you have to live already?”
“I did not care what it was all about. All I wanted to know was how to live in it. Maybe if you found out how to live in it you learned from that what is was all about.”
“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 with sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. You are an expatriate, see? You hang around cafes.”
“You’re not a moron. You’re only a case of arrested development.”
Each character’s actions reveal how they try to alleviate the pain, loneliness, and emptiness they feel. Some reconnect with nature. Some will indulge in many different vices. Some allow themselves to be ruled by their emotions. Others act with little regard to how their decisions affect others, even if it makes their own life worse.
Today, The Sun Also Rises lacks the explosiveness that came with it when it was first published in 1926. However, it remains a classic for a reason and stands not only as a novel that changed the way novels were written and whose themes are very relevant to today. The book has a very strong voice with unforgettable characters and chaos that are unforgettable.
Rating: 9/10
Rating Criteria
The rating system is 0-10. A 1 is a book I barely finished and a 0 is a book that I disliked so much that I did not finish. A 2-3 is a book I really did not like and two standard deviations below the median. A 5 is dead-center average. A 4-6 sill is still in the “average” range because they are within one standard deviation of average. A 7-8 is very good and two standard deviations away and are equally as good as a 2 or 3 is bad. A 9 is exceptionally good. A 10 is one of the best books I have read.
Some books are on a curve. A book that is not advertised or held as the finest works of literature is graded differently than a genre romance novel or pulp spy novel. For example, a perfect comedy book can get the same ranking as The Great Gatsby.
