Over 100 years since his birth and 50 years since he was the most visible writer in America, Ernest Hemingway remains a man of many masks. A larger than life figure, Papa (his nickname), meant many different things to different people. There's Albert Murray’s Hemingway - a high poet of the populace whose language “had a universal essence that was similar to blues and swing.” But then again, there’s Ralph Ellison’s Hemingway, a callow, racially insensitive nihilist “who’s marvelous technical virtuosity was won at the expense of a gross insensitivity to a fraternal values.” There’s Norman Mailer’s Hemingway, the patron saint of all things masculine and macho.
But if those characterizations seem off-base, there is Bellow, Malamud and Roth’s Hemingway, an effete and deluded cocksman whose country club vision of Jews was downright loony. Certainly there’s the Hemingway whose ironclad version of manhood haunted and angered feminist scholars for a half a century. But then what does one make of Joan Didion and Nadine Gordimer’s Hemingway - a flawed but an indispensable artist who admired a woman’s capacity for strength?
Who, out of those writers, is right? All of them are.
Hemingway is the ultimate 20th-century American artist/monster, one of the most schizophrenic of our literary masters. His biases shackle a great deal of his work to his time, but they are part of a total package intractable from the man himself. Every novel that he wrote had holes: A Farewell To Arms is brilliant but relies way too much on a surfeit of detail, To Have And Have Not is misogynistic, self-absorbed and too obsessed with celebrity, For Whom The Bell Tolls is way too long, and by the time he got to Across The River And Through The Trees, liquor and the job of living up to his own image had already took too deep a toll on his talent.
But the reason that Hemingway's works resonate with the reader is due to their collection of moments, breathtaking moments either in detail, dialogue, action or human empathy. In addition to the novels, this kind of evocation is also reflected in his métier - the short story, where, with his soaring use of plainspoken diction and speech, Hemingway, along with William Faulkner, would kick down the door that Mark Twain opened for the American demotic to come into our literature (although one has to say Faulkner did more of the kicking).
The Sun Also Rises has several of the same problems that plague his long fiction. The novel is a structurally flawed mess, a short novella stretched way beyond it’s elasticity, with a plot that goes nowhere and a tendency to fall back on dialogue and prejudices — some petty, some not so - when he runs out of ideas. But Sun has more brilliant moments in it than almost any random selection of a half a dozen mid-level 20th-century classics. I’m not saying that The Sun Also Rises is a classic, nor am I saying that it’s great or even very good. All that I am saying is that it’s a good novel that shouldn’t be totally thrown away.
Article comments
1 - Joey
Bravo. Thanks for a great Sunday morning review!
2 - Howard Dratch
"... it is a shame that we don't read him now..."
Hemingway is the ultimate 20th-century American artist/monster, one of the most schizophrenic of our literary masters. His biases shackle a great deal of his work to his time, but they are part of a total package intractable from the man himself. Every novel that he wrote had holes...Impossible! Are you saying that Hemingway is out of favor and forgotten? I am getting old and like Hemingway in Cuba, I am living in Mexico, beginning to catch up 21st c. culture through the 'net.
If he is not now read; then, as you sort of wrote, "American literature has lost something since he hasn't mattered any more." Absolutely!
You did a great article but took on all of Hemingway and most of the 20th century in tackling either The Sun Also Rises let alone the entire oevre of an American icon. Perhaps he was even heard of past the Bush wall and over the puddle.
I have to stick to Jake and Lady Brett,to The Sun Also Rises to this one work of many that are sometimes spotty, yes, but are definitely an integral part of the American landscape of words and stories. More importantly, they were the characters of my youth and models from the clay-footed hero of the mid-century.
Jake and the Lady Brett were companions of my youth and, Charles Dickens or not, struck me as strong characters worthy of becoming part of my psyche. Jake faces his impotence - or not - and pushes on, a victim of the times and the history of the century. Did he or Ernest throw around their masculinity a bit (doth he?) protesting too much. But it is, at least, masculinity. And it is the stuff of pain and loss.
Oh, but I did and did not want to be Jake roaming Europe, strong and silent with only a trace of his feminine side showing. Or perhaps I just wanted to live in Paris and meet beautiful Ladies. It was, no matter, the stuff of dreams, that taxi ride with Lady Brett, a tear and "...At the end, when Brett and Jake, back at Gay Paree, ride off into the sunset just as unsure of their relationship as they were in the beginning of the book...".
To be sure, you mention some unsuccessful parts of the novel and, surprisingly, I don't remember them so I accept that they may have let me down to slide over them.
I don't even really remember the anti-Semitism but I was escaping the South where anti-Semitism was a part of daily life from friends, foes, teachers and everyone else so I found it easier to ignore -- then. I was also just escaping adolescence which also clouds my judgement. (Time to re-read yet another book I have read more than once).
We all have holes. Few (Dickens excepted usually) made works without some holes. Perfection is a heavy load to carry.
But you made the most frightening of statements when you wrote that
Because of his flaws, I will not say that it's a shame that we don't read him now, but American literature has lost something since he hasn't mattered any more .
Perfect or not, hyper-masculine or humanly flawed; it will be a sadder America if Hemingway is not kept in the pantheon of patron (unsaintly) writers.
3 - Jesper Docter
I loved this article. I totally agree with Lashley, when he basically says that "The Sun Also Rises" is as good as it is bad. After I had read the book I was a bit disappointed by the plot and often I had to struggle to get to the next page. It was the first book by Hemingway I had ever read and that's not something you want to do if you want to stay enthousiastic about good old Ernest.
4 - Scott
Have you read this book lately? Jake "kind of" likes Brett? Jake "can't stand" Mike? Wow. As for the "crippling flaw" of anti-semitism, you need to open your mind and read the book in the context of its times. Also, the book isn't a structural mess, any more than life is, which is probably the point.
5 - bliffle
"Sun also Rises" was the first Hemingway I read in 1955 and though I groaned at the sorta corny plot, I loved the descriptions of the country and the air and the ambience. To this day, being in Spain or France reminds me of the sense of air and light that I got from Hemingway, and for that I am grateful, because it is always pleasing and thrilling.
6 - zingzing
i dunno about hemingway not being read anymore... am i missing something? maybe i misread? maybe it's a personal prejudice, but out of all the authors of his day... faulkner, joyce, steinbeck, fitzgerald are maybe more widely read (for a book or two). maybe. i'd say he's still one of the most popular mid-century american authors. i dunno.
that said, this was a very good review. i haven't read the book in some years, but it made me want to go back and check it out with a few more years of "manhood" behind me.
7 - kejti
please can anybody tell me what does the other mean with the title "the sun also rises?".I've read half of the book and to tell the truth I haven't mada any conclusion
8 - ACE
THANK YOU FOR YOUR ARTICLE! I HOPE IT WILL HELP ME WITH MY TERM PAPAER..
9 - slotz
Dude, the possessive form of "it" is "its" not "it's". FAIL.