That crippling flaw casts a considerable shadow over what’s good about Barnes - and there is a considerable amount. At his best, Barnes is a witty and smart and a confidant to Brett, a loyal friend to Bill, and a character who captures a certain clearheaded and sensible American feeling that is healthy in the right dose. I know that many a male writer has lost his soul gazing too longingly and lovingly into the specter of Jake Barnes (Hellooo, Norman Mailer), but dammit, too many writers haven’t developed one in looking away.
I am tired of whiny, pathetic literary emo boys whose worlds have ended because they got their heart broken in the tenth grade (even though they’re 29), and write like they haven’t read a single damm book other than The Catcher in The Rye. (And I swear to god, if Salinger knew how many bad books were going to be penned in his name, he would have written like Dreiser.) At his best, Barnes’ lust for life, play and friendship, and propensity for courage, self-reflection — Hemingway’s most underrated trait — and self-deprecation is a tonic. Reading Barnes and how Hemingway can create such a high literary figure out of what seems to be an average guy, one can see how he became a beloved figure, especially at the time.
But halfway through, any magic and momentum that Hemingway builds ups starts to run aground with the novel’s structural faltering. The boozy scenes, contrarian dialogue, and witty interpersonal conflicts begin to run together, the cafés become more generic and Hemingway’s Paris begins to lose its luster. The character dynamics are dishy and fun, but when not tied together, they seem episodic. And when Jake and Bill, on a train to Spain after deciding to go on a fishing trip and later to go to a fiesta, turn on their ugly American, the book becomes unbearable for a while. Both men, when left to their own devices, unleash a torrent of prejudices, and the novel briefly degenerates to the level of the worst works of Henry Miller and D.H. Lawrence, two of the few dead white male novelists who, to be brutally honest, should really stay that way.
But just as you gets to the point where you’re ready to throw the novel in the garbage, the action moves to Spain, Papa’s inner noble traveler shows up, his gorgeous eye for detail reappears, and the novel starts to come back to life again. The last third of the book is Hemingway in fine form, describing the fiesta in Pamplona, with its bulls, its breathless country, and the romantic entanglements of his circle of friends coming to a hedge. Mike fights with Cohn because Cohn wants his woman. Brett can’t stand Cohn because Cohn stalks her, and hates Mike more every day. Bill hates Mike for being a broke bastard, and Cohn just gets tired of everybody hating him.
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.