The Sun Also Risese by Ernest Hemingway

[ihavebrownhaira]

When I was a junior in high school we were asked to read this novel. I did not read it because I did not enjoy reading then like I do now. So I picked it up at the library the other day. Being a huge Hemingway fan I had to read The Sun Also Rises. So I started it yesterday and finished it today and I loved it. I remember popping open the book at the library and flipping to a random page and it talks about Jake waking up and bathing and dressing and walking to the cafe and drinking and I thought this is brilliant. This is literature at its finest.

I believe Hemingway captured the fiesta perfectly throughout the novel. The drinking and the bull fights and the traveling and the swimming and the cafes and restaurants and the large amounts of money spent and the bickering and the old Princeton Jewish boxer. Its all portrayed wonderfully.

Sometimes it was a little confusing. Jake and his friends travel to Spain and there are some Spanish phrases that threw me off, but other than that the novel made sense to me.


I learned an interesting fact. The novel was originally called Fiesta, but Hemingway's publisher encouraged him to change it so they came up with The Sun Also Rises. The later title is much more powerful in my opinion.


So anyway its a great novel. I highly recommend it and I enjoyed reading and I will enjoy rereading sometime in the near future. I would like to end this review with a quote from the novel. This quote amused me very much and I believe there is a much deeper meaning behind this quote. You really have to grasp the quote and shake it by its horns to grasp the true meaning of the quote.




















"Jake," Mike called. "Tell him bulls have no balls!"


:yawnb:

[latimeri]

Hemingway was good reporter, but just a reporter. I am wondering how he could remember all those dialogues, and even empty talk, spoken in bars and restaurants.
He was - as I said - great talented reporter and he brought all those dialogues jus as they were.
Well, if the novel isn’t just a epic, then there could be find more than one level as the narration itself – there could have been the idea being conveyed by the narration, something like in the books of Jack London, they all have been provident – so speaking with multilevel views and with great intuitions.

[ihavebrownhaira]

Ha. A great reporter! Are you kidding me? He was a god of a writer. He was amazing. What Hemingway accomplished for writing is similar to what The Beatles accomplished for rock n roll. There will never be another Hemingway. There are many great novelist that I don't think highly of. I don't like Shakespeare because I don't like theater, but I will admit he was a great writer and a very intelligent creative man!

[kelby_lake]

Is this a good book? Because I like Hemingway's writing...in short doses.

[ihavebrownhaira]

This is Hemingway at his finest.

[PabloQ]

There's a real ease to Hemingway's writing that as a reader you can take for granted. The way Hemingway describes the events in simple, declarative sentences is masterful. The events come alive. The dialogue, of which there is much, gives each character his/her own personality and the personalities are distinct.
I was fascintated by Jake, the narrator. His description of events clearly demonstrates this was not his first time fishing in Spain or attending the bull-fighting fiesta in Pamplona or swimming in the ocian at San Sebastian.
Describing Hemingway as just a reporter is like calling a Picasso a cartoonist. Inaccurate and unfair and uninformed.

[mayneverhave]

This is the novel most fitting to Hemingway's writing style.

[GX4146]

i love it. i don't know why, even as if it seems to be written by a five grader i still love it. my all time favorite book. fishing, drinking, traveling and drinking and drinking.

[Wormtail]

Hemingway is great at never imposing his side of things past an occassional first impression accompanying the introduction of a new character. He lets the reader think, which I think is why many people love to read him. The freedom he gives with his writing allows for readers with different perspectives to gain something from the book that is very personal and original to them.

The only exception I see to this is his powerful descriptions and opinions of Robert Cohn, but I believe he was reproducing the scenario that Shakespeare used to describe Shylock in The Merchant of Venice with Cohn.

[mayneverhave]

Hemingway is great at never imposing his side of things past an occassional first impression accompanying the introduction of a new character. He lets the reader think, which I think is why many people love to read him. The freedom he gives with his writing allows for readers with different perspectives to gain something from the book that is very personal and original to them.

The only exception I see to this is his powerful descriptions and opinions of Robert Cohn, but I believe he was reproducing the scenario that Shakespeare used to describe Shylock in The Merchant of Venice with Cohn.

Hemingway's approach (like Shakespeare's) toward his characters is often ironic. He delights in exposing them for the prigs and hypocrites they are, all the while letting them retain some of their stoic grace.

[Emil Miller]

i love it. i don't know why, even as if it seems to be written by a five grader i still love it. my all time favorite book. fishing, drinking, traveling and drinking and drinking.

It's the drinking that spoils the novel. On the penultimate page of my copy,the protagonist drinks 6 bottles of Rioja alta at one sitting. This is plainly ridiculous, even Hemingway could not have drunk so much without collapsing and possibly dying.

[Buh4Bee]

Jeez, I was just reminiscing about this book with my husband. "Let's get tight!" The excessive drinking in the novel indicates the continual holiday atmosphere that the characters exist in. How can we not love this book? The description of fabulous hedonistic scenes must bring joy to any high school student or reader of literature.

I read the book a good time ago and don't have a copy, so anything I'm writing about is what I can remember from a feeble mind! Lady Ashley was a tragic character. Was she incapable of having a relationship with a man? I remember she was fascinated by the slaughter of the bull by the bull fighter, was this what she did to men herself?

It bothered me to read the antisemitic comments about Cohn. I know we have to place the novel contextually in time, but still.

[mayneverhave]

It's the drinking that spoils the novel. On the penultimate page of my copy,the protagonist drinks 6 bottles of Rioja alta at one sitting. This is plainly ridiculous, even Hemingway could not have drunk so much without collapsing and possibly dying.

Excerpt from the end of A Farewell to Arms:

I ate the ham and eggs and drank the beer. The ham and eggs were in a round dish-the ham underneath and the eggs on top. It was very hot and at the first mouthful I had to take a drink of beer to cool my mouth. I was hungry and I asked the waiter for another order. I drank several glasses of beer

Passages like this occur very frequently in this novel and The Sun Also Rises. Despite their stylistic simplicity, they're oddly incredibly endearing, and I've rarely questioned Hemingway on his "authenticity" when describing drinking scenes. At the end of this particular scene, the narrator describes his table: "There was quite a pile of saucers now on the table in front of me." In Hemingway, it seems all the excesses and intricacies of food and drink are given a meticulous rendition. Of course, this works to great dramatic effect in the passage I quoted above, as (if anyone has read A Farewell to Arms) the extreme focus on food juxtaposes itself with the tragic events that are being purposely thrust to the fringes of the narrator's mind.


It bothered me to read the antisemitic comments about Cohn. I know we have to place the novel contextually in time, but still.

In defence of this: it is very easy to notice the faults in someone we do not happen to like - not that being Jewish is a fault. I do not think the characters (and by extention, Hemingway) are naturally anti-semitic, but the very fact that he is Jewish, and the negative notions they derive from that fact, arise from their dislike of him. In dealing with Jacob Barnes, for example, if the characters happen to dislike him (and we were privy to their thoughts), Jacob's impotence might be a point of contention and ridicule.

If I am friends with, for example, an overweight person, their being overweight is a relatively insignificant fact. But if that person were my enemy, their being overweight would strike me as something terribly different.

[Helga]

I really loved it, Hemingway is my favourite American writer, and this is one of his best work, well I say that about all of his books...

[LitNetIsGreat]

Yes this is a great novel, one of Hemingway's best for sure.

[Virgil]

Excerpt from the end of A Farewell to Arms:

I ate the ham and eggs and drank the beer. The ham and eggs were in a round dish-the ham underneath and the eggs on top. It was very hot and at the first mouthful I had to take a drink of beer to cool my mouth. I was hungry and I asked the waiter for another order. I drank several glasses of beer

Passages like this occur very frequently in this novel and The Sun Also Rises. Despite their stylistic simplicity, they're oddly incredibly endearing, and I've rarely questioned Hemingway on his "authenticity" when describing drinking scenes. At the end of this particular scene, the narrator describes his table: "There was quite a pile of saucers now on the table in front of me." In Hemingway, it seems all the excesses and intricacies of food and drink are given a meticulous rendition. Of course, this works to great dramatic effect in the passage I quoted above, as (if anyone has read A Farewell to Arms) the extreme focus on food juxtaposes itself with the tragic events that are being purposely thrust to the fringes of the narrator's mind.


There are passages that are endearing in those works, but that passage you quote is not one for me. That's frankly kind of shoddy. It's circular, repetative, stilted, and there's not any point to it.


In defence of this: it is very easy to notice the faults in someone we do not happen to like - not that being Jewish is a fault. I do not think the characters (and by extention, Hemingway) are naturally anti-semitic, but the very fact that he is Jewish, and the negative notions they derive from that fact, arise from their dislike of him. In dealing with Jacob Barnes, for example, if the characters happen to dislike him (and we were privy to their thoughts), Jacob's impotence might be a point of contention and ridicule.
I happen to like Hemingway and I happen to like The Sun Also Rises, but I am taken aback by the anti-semitism too. I only excuse it for it's time and place. But there's nothing notably redemptive about the jewish slurs that occur in the novel. It's definitely not Hemingway's finest moment to say the least.

[Buh4Bee]

I have to remind myself of time and place. Somehow, we need to remember the context. Despite this flaw in Hemingway, he is a fabulous writer and I truly loved this story.

[mpeachhead]

It's got a great last line: "Isn't it pretty to think so?"

[Buh4Bee]

Yes, it was so enraging to me that Brett couldn't get past Jake's impotence. They should have been together, or so I wished that. Jake was such a hell of a character. He was well developed. Brett was not aa complicated, but her flaws were blatant. I cried at the end again!

[Brad Coelho]

This and Farewell to Arms are cut from the same cloth, and both innundate the reader in alcoholic bliss....you could argue the only hyperbole Hemingway uses is in terms of volume of alcohol consumed. Save for their super-human hepatic abilities, the characters are as human as can be imagined. Vulnerable, flawed hedonists...the inter-relations are full of tension and complexity....as said before, the dialogue does the majority of the work and it really pops. The stories don't culminate w/ rosy-tipped bows. The stories are visceral and unadorned, ending in uncompromising fashion...always honest, always real.