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The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

This book was good but annoying.

Good, in that it reads like a pretty travel memoir, each town laid out in such sensuous detail that you easily imagine yourself there. And also good because, despite the slow pace of the story and the general unlikeability of nearly even character in it, I couldn’t put it down.

And annoying, in that the characters, almost without exception, were all truly awful people.

The story follows Jake Barnes and his friends as they travel from Paris to Spain, to watch a bull fighting festival. The group represents the notorious “Lost Generation,” a phrase coined by Gertrude Stein about the young men who had a hard time finding meaning in the world after World War I. The characters include: Jake, a reporter, who is impotent and drunk most of the time. Lady Brett Ashley, also a lush, and a slut to boot. Robert, a writer, who’s pathetically in love with Brett, and whom everyone else hates because he’s Jewish. Mike, Brett’s fiancee, who doesn’t really do much of anything other than drink and talk about his bankruptcy. And Bill, also a writer, who’s fond of stuffed dogs.

Individually and as a group, they’re selfish, immature assholes who spend all of their time drinking, sleeping, fishing, drinking some more, and making anti-Semitic cracks about Robert. It doesn’t matter that things don’t turn out all right in the end, because you don’t want good things to happen to any of them. Mostly, you just want one of them to get gored during the running of the bulls.

Oh, and that’s another thing about the book: it’s big on symbolism and likes to hammer you over the head with it, to make sure you get it. Like, Jake’s impotence, and his fascination with the virile bulls and even more virile bullfighters. And, Jake’s craving for religion set off against the Godlessness of post-war life. Stuff like that.

I’m rating it an A-. Good concept, good follow-through, thoroughly dislikable characters.

Next up: The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett.

Posted 18 February 2006 at 04:53 PM