Sign in to follow this  
Sean

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

Recommended Posts

That's an interesting response, Nels. I disagree in a lot of fundamental ways I think—I think the notion of explaining why characters are flawed is a bit of an entertainment cliche that doesn't really map to how we actually experience the world most of the time. Most people don't thoroughly psychoanalyze themselves or their friends, or at least not in a way that really does justice to that person's true lived experience, and since this novel is explicitly told from the perspective of one of its (flawed) characters, that didn't seem like an omission to me.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I think Hemingway gives enough information for the reader to guess at what the characters' flaws are, but insight into their romantic entanglements -- which I assume was meant as the main emotional conflict of the story -- is severely lacking. It's fair to say that in real life we almost never truly know the inner experiences of even our closest friends, but we can usually tell through basic observation when two people are in love. Writing, good writing, should go beyond what we can easily observe in real life and give us the details that are usually inaccessible or unknowable. 

 

I don't expect Hemingway to give a beat for beat summary of Jake/Brett's courtship, but I do expect him to give some kind of insight into why they loved (love) each other. For me, the book is never fully able to do this. It's telling that my favorite scene is when Cohn confronts Brett and the bullfighter, because finally, someone is acting like an observable human and is expressing an observable emotion.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

That's an interesting response, Nels. I disagree in a lot of fundamental ways I think—I think the notion of explaining why characters are flawed is a bit of an entertainment cliche that doesn't really map to how we actually experience the world most of the time. Most people don't thoroughly psychoanalyze themselves or their friends, or at least not in a way that really does justice to that person's true lived experience, and since this novel is explicitly told from the perspective of one of its (flawed) characters, that didn't seem like an omission to me.

 

Oh sure, I didn't get hung on that explicitly. I just wanted *something* more from the characters than just them being super broken individuals. I didn't want crazy backstories or anything, I just wanted some greater context for who they are as people. Desires, motivations, anything that wasn't just about them being totally broken.
 
I get that they're flawed, but is it just because they're just kind of obnoxious, oblivious Anglophones boozing their way through continental Europe and ignoring what the post-war meant to everyone who doesn't have the luxury of ultimately returning to an undamaged homeland (I mean, Spain is hypothetically in the middle of de Rivera's military dictatorship, which was just the latest entry in a long line of tremendous instability and hardship that went back as far as the Spanish-America War if not further, and there's no hint of that at all), or are their flaws arising from something personal and sympathetic? I have no idea, and I get how could read it either way. But for me, it was hard to not just see them as basically the former and getting further way from that required a charity I felt the characters didn't earn.
 
And again, I imagine there was a social context readers in the early 20th century possessed that I totally don't, which frame this in a more complete way.
 
Can't help but put this alongside The Great Gatsby in my head, since they're obviously quite close in terms of both era and structure (and hell, Hemingway and Fitzgerald were palling around in Paris for a while too). While all the characters in Gatsby were super flawed also, some (Tom) in ways far more overtly awful than anyone in The Sun Also Rises, Gatsby's characters still felt more like tangible, comprehensible people to me.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I think Hemingway gives enough information for the reader to guess at what the characters' flaws are, but insight into their romantic entanglements -- which I assume was meant as the main emotional conflict of the story -- is severely lacking. It's fair to say that in real life we almost never truly know the inner experiences of even our closest friends, but we can usually tell through basic observation when two people are in love. Writing, good writing, should go beyond what we can easily observe in real life and give us the details that are usually inaccessible or unknowable. 

 

I don't expect Hemingway to give a beat for beat summary of Jake/Brett's courtship, but I do expect him to give some kind of insight into why they loved (love) each other. For me, the book is never fully able to do this. It's telling that my favorite scene is when Cohn confronts Brett and the bullfighter, because finally, someone is acting like an observable human and is expressing an observable emotion.

 

See, that's my point. These people don't care about each other and can't relate to each other. They pretend to, but really, they are only hanging around each other to pass the time, because they have no idea what else to do. While I agree that the war wasn't actually that damaging to the US in terms of casualties (the Spanish Flu killed more people), the psychological toll would have been the same. These are people who had just witnessed the great power of Europe go head-to-head with each other in a brutal and pointless conflict. New, unimaginable ways of killing had appeared: mustard gas, the machine gun and the creeping barrage, not to mention the more normal but no less horrific modes of death like rotting in the mud or the aforementioned flu. There's a reason that it was called The War to End All Wars: nobody imagined that anybody could ever put the world through that again.

 

That's the context for the book. The world no longer seems like it makes sense. Think of it in similar terms to the post-World War II nuclear fear. When empires can send millions of men to sit a mile across from each other for four years and watch their friends die, what's the point of relating to anything? Why bother? The people you bothered to care about are gone, so there's not too much point in making meaningful connections. Just find some people who you don't hate too much and who are hopefully somewhat interesting. Drink, fuck and party. In the minds of these characters, they're the violinists on the Titaninc (another recent shocking event): the ship is sinking, so they may as well enjoy it while it lasts.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

That's an interesting response, Nels. I disagree in a lot of fundamental ways I think—I think the notion of explaining why characters are flawed is a bit of an entertainment cliche that doesn't really map to how we actually experience the world most of the time. Most people don't thoroughly psychoanalyze themselves or their friends, or at least not in a way that really does justice to that person's true lived experience, and since this novel is explicitly told from the perspective of one of its (flawed) characters, that didn't seem like an omission to me.

But Jake does psychoanalyze people. He spends a fair amount of time talking about Cohn's various flaws. Here's an example from the start of the book: 

 

 

Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton. Do not think that I am very much impressed by that as a boxing title, but it meant a lot to Cohn. He cared nothing for boxing, in fact he disliked it, but he learned it painfully and thoroughly to counteract the feeling of inferiority and shyness he

had felt on being treated as a Jew at Princeton. There was a certain inner comfort in knowing he could knock down anybody who was snooty to him, although, being very shy and a thoroughly nice boy, he never fought except in the gym.

 

So we do get some insight into the inner lives of other characters (albeit from Jake's point of view), but not consistently.  

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

That's the context for the book. The world no longer seems like it makes sense. Think of it in similar terms to the post-World War II nuclear fear. When empires can send millions of men to sit a mile across from each other for four years and watch their friends die, what's the point of relating to anything? Why bother? The people you bothered to care about are gone, so there's not too much point in making meaningful connections. Just find some people who you don't hate too much and who are hopefully somewhat interesting. Drink, fuck and party. In the minds of these characters, they're the violinists on the Titaninc (another recent shocking event): the ship is sinking, so they may as well enjoy it while it lasts.

 

Thanks, that's an interesting way of looking at it. In that sense, The Sun also Rises is kind of existentialist, in that it is about the efforts of individuals to find meaning in a world that no longer has a clear moral order. But I'd still say that "let's drink and fuck and party" is a facile response to a crisis in values and doesn't make for very compelling reading (at least in my opinion).

 

By contrast, take something like The Plague. That book is also about characters existing in a world that is dissolving into death all around them and a world that lacks a clear moral order. But in The Plague the characters actually do attempt to find some meaning in existence. I find the struggle to find meaning interesting, but I don't find the mere fact that someone could have an existential crises to be very interesting. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

That's interesting to note because Camus' whole jam was that life's meaning was to be created and cultivated by the individual and not the universe. His philosophy assumes that a lack of universal order and meaning is not the end, but the beginning of the self's journey and realisation. An indifferent universe means that human agency is the key to a satisfactory life.

 

Where as, as you have said, Hemingway's characters are philosophically treading water. I disagree that it makes for dull reading. I like watching the struggle, because the struggle is never validated. Everyone is still miserable and unhappy because they do not have direction. It may not ask the philosophical questions that The Plague does, as 'direction' is a societal creation rather than a cosmic question, but it beautifully shows how an absence of direction and expectation does not increase freedom and opportunity, but instead creates a sense of emptiness within the self.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I bought this book while on vacation in Cape Cod with my mother's very rich extended family, with whom I feel an intense alienation. It was either the best possible or worst possible time to do so. After spending the last 8 days of my life getting very drunk, treated to outrageously priced seafood meals, and getting generally frustrated at my inability to connect with anyone, this book feels more like a diary than anything. I really adore it, as depressing as I find it.

 

I love the way that Hemingway's prose allows him to effortlessly make leaps in time. One sentence Jake and Brett are arguing in a cab, the next it's already arrived at her hotel and she's leaving. The way time speeds up and slows down in this book, and why, is really fascinating to me. Like this passage where Frances is tearing Cohn a new one:

 

"You were only going to give me a hundred pounds, weren't you Robert? But I made him give me two hundred. He's really very generous. Aren't you, Robert?"

 

I do not know how people can say such terrible things to Robert Cohn. There are people to whom you could not say insulting things. They give you the feeling that the world would be destroyed, would actually be destroyed before your very eyes, if you said certain things. But here was Cohn, taking it all. Here it was, all going on right before me, and I did not even feel an impulse to try to stop it. And this was friendly joking to what went on later.

  

"How can you say such things, Frances?" Cohn interrupted.

 

Which means that the whole interior monologue there goes on in between the last thing Frances says and Robert interrupting her. When Jake is on an alcohol- fueled auto-pilot, time passes at a pretty dependable rate. We went to the cafe, we had this to eat, we had this to drink, we bathed, then we went to this bar, had this to drink, then we took a cab to this restaurant, had this to eat this to drink, etc. But in that rare moment of intense emotions, time expands in a way I find really true to life. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Yeah, the "rich family vacation" experience definitely makes this a more impactful read. My family was always in pretty dire financial straits through most of my life due to my father's very early death. When I was 18, my mum remarried to a guy who was pretty well off. That, combined with my sister and I now being independent, led to my family suddenly having a bunch of money and going on those vacations. Despite being on my own at that point, I was generously dragged along on a few. I'm not comfortable with that life at ALL, and find it intensely wasteful and frustrating to my own values. Having to sit along with everything and try not to offend while getting drunker and drunker the entire vacation in order to not offend people at the mountain golf resort or whatever that I was staying at has definitely given this sort of novel a significance for me that they wouldn't have had otherwise.

 

...and I realize it's a privileged and shitty kind of response to complain about being taken on resort vacations. The fact is though, that those people are not my people. At that time in my life, I was spending most of my free time in punk bars. Staying at those places just made me intensely aware of how much money was there instead of doing good, and kinda grossed me out despite my participation in it to please the family.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I like watching the struggle, because the struggle is never validated. Everyone is still miserable and unhappy because they do not have direction. It may not ask the philosophical questions that The Plague does, as 'direction' is a societal creation rather than a cosmic question, but it beautifully shows how an absence of direction and expectation does not increase freedom and opportunity, but instead creates a sense of emptiness within the self.

This. This is why I like this book, and a lot of other Hemingway stuff. It's such a deadpan presentation of the realities of the time. Not deadpan in the way it's written - the prose is quite beautiful at times - but deadpan in the way the narrative itself unfolds. There's no great revelations, no boys becoming men, no sudden changes of heart, and certainly no happy endings. It feels like a look into people's lives in a far more believable (and maybe cynical) way than a lot of other stuff I've read.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

To be clear, I didn't find the prose style difficult to read, it just exacerbated the already disconnected feelings I had towards this book. And in general, I don't have a problem with flawed or questionable characters -- I actually prefer them. But nothing about this story felt substantial enough for me to get really invested in it (although now that I've spent so much time thinking about my reaction to this book, I'm seriously considering rereading it).

 

The characters had a hard enough time getting truly invested in what they were doing.  The consistent theme of the book was the ennui of the upper class, which is understandable why it could be hard to read.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Wasn't this supposed to be the August discussion? What happened there? The main page even says, 'we promise!'

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Folks who enjoyed The Sun Also Rises may like Paul Bowles' The Sheltering Sky. They deal with similar subject matter, IMO.

Paul Bowles is pretty great in general.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

All signs point to no.

The signs being the absolute silence and ignoring the forum posts and questions related to whether the podcast will continue.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

All signs point to no.

The signs being the absolute silence and ignoring the forum posts and questions related to whether the podcast will continue.

 

This is my assumption. I re-listened to the Summer Reads episode this morning because I had a bit of Idle Book Club Nostalgia.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

All signs point to no.

The signs being the absolute silence and ignoring the forum posts and questions related to whether the podcast will continue.

 

Taking a cue from Valve.

 

Could just be guilt.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

They were clever enough not to mention the year. Hopefully, the new episode will by out in June.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

They were clever enough not to mention the year. Hopefully, the new episode will by out in June.

 

Exactly right. We're recording The Sun Also Rises next week.

 

Wolf Hall is on the back-burner for a while and it's totally my fault.  I've tackled the book three times and there's just too many Thomas's -- I'm going to get through it out of stubbornness.

 

So yeah, we're doing a new episode next week and, I hope, this podcast is back for good.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Wolf Hall is on the back-burner for a while and it's totally my fault.  I've tackled the book three times and there's just too many Thomas's -- I'm going to get through it out of stubbornness.

 

Thomas Cromwell, Thomas More, Thomas Cranmer, Thomas Wolsey...? Ah, Thomas Howard, Duke Norfolk and Thomas Boleyn, Viscount Rochford, I don't even think of them as having names outside their titles.

 

You know, I didn't notice it myself when reading, but it is funny. Within the medieval aristocracy, you get a lot of repetition of reasonably unique names because there were no surnames and "family" given names were used to establish kinship, but once surnames become a thing there's this collapse in given names, usually down to ones with Biblical roots, so by the time we get to the sixteenth century, shortly before humanism dumps a bunch of alternatives back into the onomastic lexicon, everyone's named one of literally a dozen names. I suppose you just have to sink or swim.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this