Up until today, if pressed, I would have said that my favorite book is East of Eden. But I read that about ten years ago and since my tastes have changed with my age, I don’t think I can rightfully make that claim any longer. So I am proud to report that a new contender has taken the blue ribbon in my little library. I just finished Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and have never felt so connected to a piece of literature.It’s safe to say that its narrator, Jake Barnes, is as close an approximation to myself as I’ll ever find in the pages of a book (minus the fact that he A.) is a guy and B.) suffers from war-inflicted impotence). He is a longsuffering but eternally pleasure-seeking borderline alcoholic, an American expat savoring the remains of his youth in post-WWI France and Spain. Joining him for the ride are a colorful and equally intoxicated cast of characters. Brett, also known as Lady Ashley, is a central figure. A British beauty in her mid-thirties, it seems that every man she encounters swoons, and she systematically uses and discards them – Jake included. Jake’s friends Richard Cohn, a Princeton-educated Jewish boxer, and Mike Campbell, a bankrupt Scot, fall for her as well, as does a 19-year-old bullfighter named Romero. New Yorker Bill Gorton brings some levity to the plot, with his impeccably dry humor, and acts as Jake’s iron-livered drinking buddy.
In my estimation, there are three central themes:
1.) Alcohol.
The book in its entirety is one long, hilarious, heartbreaking, fantastic drinking scene. They don’t just drink. They DRINK. Three bottles of wine for a single man is just your average Tuesday afternoon. Four rounds of absinthe? Let’s make it happen. And the hangovers are gloriously few and far between. A friend of mine once very wisely surmised that life is all about distractions, and The Sun Also Rises is a testament to that very idea. Eat. Drink. Be merry. Life is short, and meaningless, and painful, so why the hell not?
The book in its entirety is one long, hilarious, heartbreaking, fantastic drinking scene. They don’t just drink. They DRINK. Three bottles of wine for a single man is just your average Tuesday afternoon. Four rounds of absinthe? Let’s make it happen. And the hangovers are gloriously few and far between. A friend of mine once very wisely surmised that life is all about distractions, and The Sun Also Rises is a testament to that very idea. Eat. Drink. Be merry. Life is short, and meaningless, and painful, so why the hell not?
2.) Bullfighting.
Not my favorite part of the book, but we’re all aware by now that E.H. was obsessed with bullfighting (and fishing, which offends me much less but which is featured only briefly in Sun). The bulk of the novel takes place during the running of the bulls in Pampalona - a city made famous in large part by this very book – and the subsequent fiesta and bullfights, which are described in weepingly graphic detail. Hemingway idolizes the bullfighters, and while I can’t quite wrap my head around torturing an innocent animal for sport, I do love the way he manages to convey these disturbing goings-on in detail that is at once both exhaustive and succinct.
Not my favorite part of the book, but we’re all aware by now that E.H. was obsessed with bullfighting (and fishing, which offends me much less but which is featured only briefly in Sun). The bulk of the novel takes place during the running of the bulls in Pampalona - a city made famous in large part by this very book – and the subsequent fiesta and bullfights, which are described in weepingly graphic detail. Hemingway idolizes the bullfighters, and while I can’t quite wrap my head around torturing an innocent animal for sport, I do love the way he manages to convey these disturbing goings-on in detail that is at once both exhaustive and succinct.
3.) Unrequited love.
One of the greatest things about Hemingway’s writing is that he mastered the art of implication. He says so much with his terse, unembellished sentences. Jake never explicitly expresses his infatuation with Brett, but the writing makes it clear that his below-the-belt war injury was at least partly to blame for Brett’s unwillingness to be with him. They engage in long embraces and drunken kisses, an unrealized romance of roaring ’20s proportions. But Jake never lashes out in frustration or says the wrong thing. Of course, this is easier in fiction than in real life. A writer can spend days or weeks, even years, crafting an absolutely perfect dialogue. When Jake speaks, he nearly always says exactly what should be said, and he’s silent when he ought to be silent. He watches as Brett takes on lover after lover and drinks away his feelings in an enviable sort of solitude. The final page sums it up best:
One of the greatest things about Hemingway’s writing is that he mastered the art of implication. He says so much with his terse, unembellished sentences. Jake never explicitly expresses his infatuation with Brett, but the writing makes it clear that his below-the-belt war injury was at least partly to blame for Brett’s unwillingness to be with him. They engage in long embraces and drunken kisses, an unrealized romance of roaring ’20s proportions. But Jake never lashes out in frustration or says the wrong thing. Of course, this is easier in fiction than in real life. A writer can spend days or weeks, even years, crafting an absolutely perfect dialogue. When Jake speaks, he nearly always says exactly what should be said, and he’s silent when he ought to be silent. He watches as Brett takes on lover after lover and drinks away his feelings in an enviable sort of solitude. The final page sums it up best:
“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?”
Jake Barnes, I love you.
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