Classic: The Sun Also Rises

• Author: E. Hemingway (1899 – 1961)
• Title: The Sun Also Rises
  
• Published: 1926
• Genre: novel (roman à clef )
• List Reading Challenges 2018
  
• Monthly reading planning
• #20BooksOfSummer
• Trivia: E. Hemingway was awarded Nobel Prize Literature 1954
• Trivia:  This book is nr 45 Modern Library 100 Best Novels.
• Trivia: Nobel Prize Reading Challenge
• #50BooksToReadBeforeYouDie

Introduction:

1. Hemingway was part of what is called the Lost Generation.
2. It was a group of expatriate writers
3. ….who found real meaning in nothing.
4. They spent their time reveling while living in Europe.

Title:

1. The title comes from the epigraph.
2. Despite the despair this ‘lost generation’ feels….there is hope.
3. Ecclesiastes 1:5
4. “Also, the sun rises and the sun sets;
5. And hastening to its place it rises there again.”

Publication:

1. When published in 1926, The Sun Also Rises
2. …caused a bit of a stir
3. among the Montparnasse expatriate crowd.
4. Many of its characters were based on real people.
5. Donald Ogden Stewart   (character Bill Gorton )
6. Harold Loeb   (character Robert Cohn)
7. Lady Duff Twysden   (character Lady Brett Ashley)

Alcohol:

1. This book is held together by
2. …the buying, mixing, having, spilling and pouring out drinks.
3. In O. Laing’s book The Trip to Echo Spring she mentions
4. that “Hemingway, who’d been drunk since he was fifteen
5. …had put more faith in rum than conversation.” (pg 92)
6. Hemingway used alcohol to
7. …blot out feelings that are otherwise unbearable.
8. ”A bottle of wine was good company” (pg 236)
9. Drinking reflects the characters attitude.
10. Brett drinks for psychological/physical pleasure.
11. The Count is a connoisseur.
12. Brett:  “Let’s enjoy a little more of this,”
    
13. Brett pushed her glass forward (pg 66)
14. Count: The count poured very carefully.
15. “There, my dear. Now you enjoy that slowly,
16. and then you can get drunk” (pg 66)

Hemingway code:

1. Bullfighting fascinates Hemingway.
2. He describes in great detail Pedro Romero’s
3. …killing of the bull.
4. He faces danger with understanding and dignity
5. …undaunted, grace under pressure.
6. FEELINGS fascinate Hemingway.
7. Everyone in that time had feelings, as they called them,
8. just as everyone has “feelings” now.
9. Whether Jake leaned in a cab against Georgette or
10. leaned in a cab against Brett
11. ….Hemingway was searching where his feelings lay!
12. Georgette?  Brett?

Last thoughts:

1. This book is considered a classic.
2. The book didn’t interest me as a whole.
3. Others may swear by it and Hemingway
4. …but I just like The Old Man and the Sea. :)
5. Advice: the book should be read
6. …so you can form an opinion about it.
7. It is on Modern Library’s Best 100 Novels List.
8. Perhaps they  could have selected a book written
9. later in Hemingway’s life….his writing matured.
10. I can agree with Hemingway……just once!
11. “You´re always drinking my dear.
12. Why don´t you just talk?” (pg 65)
13. The Lost Generation–living in Paris during the 1920s
14. …was lost on me.
15. Finished: 11.07.2018
16. Genre: novel
17. Rating: D
18. Conclusion:
    I think I’m done with Hemingway.
    I don’t care if he won the Nobel Prize or not!
    There are better classics waiting to be read.