The Sun Also Rises (Ernest Hemingway)

I have read a lot of Hemingway. He is ubuiquitous in the literary world, some people think for little reason--what, with his simplistic style, betraying his "low" journalistic roots, with his party party storylines and characters. The man's personality, after all, has been captured so well in the modern mind. His drinking, manliness, ex-patriotism, adventuring, travelling, womanizing. I myself am guilty of this in calling my father's style of interior decorating very Hemingway. Well, the man has zebra-striped dining chairs for god's sake! In all that personality and the hype surrounding his works, I don't think a lot fo people take the time to sit down and read Hemingway. Just read the words and discover their worth for themselves, wiping the whiskey and zebra stripes out of their mind's eye to do it.

This, I believe, is the ideal Hemingway work to practice this theory. His first novel-length piece, it tells the story of a journalist living in Paris after World War I, a journalist with a mysterious un-named wound to which our only clue is that he can no longer, ahem, function as a man. He and his group of ex-pat friends travel to Spain to fish and watch the bull fights, as well as drink themselves silly. Easy to summarize, yet hard to truly express the essence of it. The themes are like the deep currents of a river, the river itself being simple yet the currents underneath are always playing on the sun-sparkled surface, reminding you of the chilly power underneath.

The perfect instance of this is in the main character's relationship with his lady love, a British aristocrat by the name of Brett. She's a loose and easy type, strikingly beautiful but ready to live life to the fullest now that the horror of war had shown how dear and fragile it can be. Though their conversations together are simple and appear breezy, I almost want to cring with the unfulfilled emotional undercurrent:

"Don't talk like a fool," I said. "Besides, what happened to me is supposed to be funny. I never think about it."

"Oh, no. I'll lay you don't."

"Well, let's shut up about it."

"I laughed about it too, myself, once." She wasn't looking at me. "A friend of my brother's came home that way from Mons. It seemed like a hell of a joke. Chaps never know anything, do they?"

"No," I said. "Nobody ever knows anything....

"It's very funny. And it's a lot of fun, too, to be in love."

"Do you think so?" her eyes looked flat again.

"I don't mean fun that way. In a way it's an enjoyable feeling."

"No," she said. "I think it's hell on earth."

"It's good to see each other."

"No. I don't think it is."

"Don't you want to?"

"I have to."

Excellent style, exotic storyline, and great depth. A three punch-er in my book. If you keep hearing about that Hemingway guy, that drinking author who lived in Cuba, that Kilamanjaro bloke your English teacher keeps pushing down your throat... give The Sun Also Rises a try. If it effects you similarly to me, well the, Ole! If not, you poor literature-loathing college student, it's always great as a drinking game. Simply count and take a shot every time a character says, "Let's have drink!" Looks like the first instance is on page 10.