The Bookworm: The Sun Also Rises

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway. 251 pages. Scribner. 1926.

We walked down the Boulevard. At the juncture of the Rue Denfert-Rochereau with the Boulevard is a statue of two men in flowing robes.
“I know who they are.” Bill eyed the monument. “Gentlemen who invented pharmacy. Don’t try and fool me on Paris.”
We went on.
“Here’s a taxidermist’s,” Bill said. “Want to buy anything? Nice stuffed dog?”
“Come on,” I said. “You’re pie-eyed.”
“Pretty nice stuffed dogs,” Bill said. “Certainly brighten up your flat.”
“Come on.”
“Just one stuffed dog. I can take ‘em or leave ’em alone. But listen, Jake. Just one stuffed dog.”
“Come on.”
“Mean everything in the world to you after you bought it. Simple exchange of values. You give them money. They give you a stuffed dog.”
“We’ll get one on the way back.”
“All right. Have it your own way. Road to hell paved with unbought stuffed dogs. Not my fault.”
We went on.

I know what you’re thinking: The Quiet Man’s on another Hemingway kick? Kind of, but not really. I’ll explain.

When I graduated from high school, a family friend gave me three Hemingway novels as a gift: The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, and For Whom the Bell Tolls. She got them at a local auction, and they were pretty old. There are no edition notices, but the books do include the year Hemingway renewed the copyrights: 1954.

Regardless of how old, and valuable, they are, they’re not copies I want to mark up with my mechanical pencil. As holiday gift ideas, I told my parents it’d be nice to have recent paperback versions so I can annotate them to my heart’s content. I unwrapped all three new editions Christmas Eve.

So that’s how I got here: one Hemingway classic down, two more to go in my reading queue. I’ll be reading a different book between each so as not to overload myself. Too much Hemingway is not a good thing.

On to The Sun Also Rises. This is the third time I’ve read it. The first time was during my freshman year of college, for personal enjoyment, and the second was during my last, super-senior year for Loren Glass’ American Novel II course. (There was, strangely, no American Novel I.)

Sun is quintessential Hemingway. The back cover description puts it best: “[a] poignant look at the disillusionment and angst of the post-World War I generation…” It’s about Jake Barnes, an American journalist living in Paris, and his misguided, morally bankrupt, and egoistic band of expatriate acquaintances. They exploit the generous exchange rates, stay drunk all the time (there are only a handful of sober moments throughout the book), and engage in sexual and emotional mini-drama. Two of Jake’s close friends have an affair that haunts the group’s visit to Pamplona for the annual San Fermín festival. Drunken and immature high jinks ensue. (Who else knew “high jinks” was two words?)

At first, I was unimpressed with Sun. Having read it twice before, there was nothing I didn’t already know regarding the plot, so I was free to read as a writer. I studied the way Hemingway introduced his characters, the plot, the tension, and the metaphors and motifs. I expected every scene and word of the book to have considerable significance, but found much of the beginning slow and inconsequential. There were long parts where Jake and company hopped from one café to another, one restaurant to another, one bar to another, one drink to another, one new companion to another. (Thinking about it now, that’s probably an oversimplification of the whole book.) It was much like reading the descriptions of meals and beverages in, fittingly, A Moveable Feast. (I now consider Sun the fictionalized version of Feast. Sun is, in fact, closely based on a real trip Hemingway took to Pamplona with friends in 1925.) But eventually the wisdom of previous readings and Big L came back to me: though a little tedious, these long descriptions of the Parisian nightlife illustrated the flamboyance, decadence, and reckless abandon characterized by The Lost Generation, people who had been deeply scarred and jaded by horrendous conflict. The symbolism is sickeningly precise and perfect.

Ugh! I fucking hate you, Hemingway!

The writing in Sun is, of course, sparse and pinpoint accurate. The brief subtleties were amazing, and added numerous layers of meaning to the story. It might sound cliché, but it’s true: Hemingway doesn’t tell, he shows. The hand of the author, pushing the reader and their understanding in a certain direction, is almost never felt, and I admire that a lot. Though sometimes dated and stilted in a British way (which is excusable, since the book is about 84 years old and there are Brits in it), the dialogue is perfect and momentous.

It is understood that, during the war, Jake was wounded in a very sensitive place: either he had his entire package blown off, or just his balls. Regardless, he’s impotent, a fact that keeps him and the novel’s lead female, Brett, from consummating their love. The thing is, Jake’s unfortunate injury is never fully disclosed in the book; Hemingway never comes out and says what’s wrong with Jake and why. It’s a little annoying — who the fuck purposely leaves a major element of a story unexplained? — but it certainly adds to the lore. I didn’t pick up on the impotence issue when I was a freshman (wonder why?), but afterward became aware of what I missed. Sometime during college, I saw an episode of Cheers where Diane gives Sam a rare, first edition copy of Sun. He takes it home and reads it while taking a bath, and accidentally drops it in the water when he reads what happened to the main character, ruining the book. Okay… Like I said, Jake’s injury is never explained, so I don’t know what the Charles brothers were thinking when they wrote that episode. But, nonetheless, I resolved to read Sun more closely for American Novel II. During that second reading, I remember finding a satisfactory reference to Jake’s injury, something that would hint at impotence, but the scene it didn’t do it for me this time.

But despite its missing element — literally and figuratively — I have to say Sun has catapulted itself into my inner circle of favorite books, just because it is so powerful and compact. It is pitch perfect, and dangerous for me to read. It only goads my respect for Hemingway, slowly turning it into outright worship.

New words I learned: Most of the words I didn’t know were just antiquated variants of words I already know, which made me feel less retarded than I usually do. But there were a few outdated slang terms I didn’t get. All descriptions courtesy of my MacBook dictionary. Bilge: informal for “nonsense; rubbish.” Pestilential: “harmful or destructive to crops or livestock”; it can also mean “annoying.” Col: “the lowest point of a ridge or saddle between two peaks, typically affording a pass from one side of a mountain range to another.” Diligence: historical term for “a public stagecoach.” Spraddle: “spread (one's legs) far.”

Here’s a good French word for you: “klaxon,” which is a car horn. One good thing about reading Sun is I got to brush a little dust off my French.