I’ve never been much for the writing of Ernest Hemingway. I have no explanation for that. His writing is fine, but it’s surface level, and not in the superficial sort of way. No, Hemingway’s writing is superficial in that it really doesn’t describe more than what is readily visible on the surface, all using short, simple sentences. His writing is deeper than it appears more due to what it isn’t saying than what it is. However, I do have a large scratch-off poster of “must read” novels, and I am trying to get through all of them, and Hemingway is represented there by one of his first works, The Sun Also Rises.
Will I find myself getting into whatever Hemingway is selling this time around? Many of his ideas on masculinity haven’t quite held up to the test of time, but that doesn’t mean this isn’t a good novel.
The novel follows the first person perspective of writer and World War I veteran Jake Barnes, an ex-patriate American writer living and working in Paris. An accident of some sort in the war left him impotent, a fact that isn’t spoken of much but largely implied when it is, and he spends a lot of his time drinking, hanging around with his friends, and watching out for the British Lady Brett Ashley. Brett sleeps around a lot, and while she and Jake clearly have feelings for each other, not much comes of it because Jake can’t perform in the bedroom the way Brett would like him to. Instead, she bounces around and breaks hearts.
This all comes to a head when Jake goes down to Pamplona to see the Running of the Bulls and the bull-fighting that comes with it. Along for the ride, besides Brett, is a friend of Jake’s that Brett recently had a short fling with, another man who is Brett’s fiancé for what is to be her third marriage, and another friend of Jake’s from the States. Brett’s bed-hopping and general free-love approach to life are causing some problems in the group, and even if Jake himself remains level-headed throughout the narrative, that doesn’t mean events won’t boil over and affect him as well.
Now, as I read through this, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. As I said above, Hemingway’s style is very surface-level, allowing the reader to imagine what people were feeling based entirely off some scant, often-repeated dialogue (Hemingway’s British character sure do say “I say” quite a bit). Robert Cohn, the jilted lover, is hated by the rest of the group for being mopey while Mike, Brett’s fiancé, is a bit of an obnoxious drunk. But as for the plot, not much happens. In a way, it reminded me of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, where the characters simply went places whenever the lead party guy showed up to drink, do drugs, sleep around, and not think too hard. But that’s not what Hemingway is going for with all this. His characters are deep and they face real consequences even if it is largely implied and left up to the reader’s imagination. Quite frankly, I was surprised to see someone made a movie out of this book since there isn’t much going on beyond Jake and the others traveling around, drinking, and going to bull-fights.
And then there’s the last line, in a single chapter when Jake does down to pick up Brett alone in Madrid. Cohn is gone, Mike disappointed, and Brett was left alone by another fling, unsure of what she wants to do. What the men of this story saw in her I am not sure, but that’s fine because, for me, Jake’s last line of dialogue more or less summed up what was happening and why there would be no “happy ending” for Jake and Brett. Despite what the two feel for each other, Jake is impotent perhaps in more ways than one, and that means they can’t really consummate something. I said above some of Hemingway’s ideas on masculinity are a bit outdated. I know when I took a trip to Spain a few years ago, I did see a bull-fighting arena, but it had been converted into a shopping center because, well, bull-fighting isn’t really a thing like it used to be. But for so much of what happened to hinge upon the central couple’s ability to have a sexual relationship, well, that may be a bit easier to understand even today.
Grade: A-
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