Re-Reading The Sun Also Rises

It was a natural move from Fitzgerald to Hemingway, and I chose The Sun Also Rises for several reasons. I re-read For Whom the Bell Tolls, for me his best work, some time ago, so it does not qualify for my haven't-read-in-fifty-years challenge. We had to read A Farewell to Arms in my senior year in college, and inevitably books you are forced to read feel less attractive for re-reading. But the main reason was that The Sun Also Rises was an enticing and disturbing book for a seventeen-year-old, in inexplicable ways. Of course it was about love, and impossible love, which is irresistible for a young intellectual. It was also about the kind of life we tried to emulate, moving between the three available coffee shops in the multimillion Russian capital; travelling to Leningrad or Riga and feeling we were in Paris or Pamplona; claiming that life was pointless and that we were the lost generation. Playing Hemingway was our favourite game.

Once again, I did not remember much of the novel. I remembered the plotline, or rather the absence of a plotline; I remembered that Brett was married to a lord, but was getting divorced and about to marry someone else, but fell in love with a bullfighter who could be her son. I remembered that Jake was injured in war and therefore could not be with Brett (although I only guessed what exactly the injury was and why it was prohibitive), but comforted her when she was upset. A friend of mine said, with a wisdom of a seventeen-year-old: “Every woman should have her own Jake”.

I remembered that there was a large party going to Spain for bullfighting, but I did not remember that prior to that Jake and his friends go fishing, which of course is less dramatic. I did not remember the character of Robert Cohn at all, not even that Brett runs away with him for a while. And of course I didn't notice the numerous antisemitic comments about Cohn. It isn't particularly significant that Jake is a Catholic, but I definitely did not reflect on that.

And again and again, I wonder what I saw in this novel then, apart from the love plot. I probably read it quickly, skipping the long, wonderful descriptions of bus rides and fishing sessions. I probably even skipped the seemingly meaningless dialogues that do not contribute to the plot and not much to character either, and very little to the “message” if there is such a thing. We were taught that Hemingway's style was called “iceberg technique”, perfected in his short story White Elephants. It is also prominent in The Sun Also Rises: the characters talk about something irrelevant, while the reader is supposed to infer what they really think and feel. Similarly, the lengthy descriptions obviously have the function to convey obliquely the character's state of mind, but the reader must work hard to get through. Was I able to do this at seventeen? Hardly. And I am sure I could not simply enjoy the beauty of these descriptions, or the marvellous alternation of pace: sometimes a sentence that goes over three pages, sometimes three pages of sentences of three words. And I don't think I appreciated the neverending record of Paris street names that didn't say me anything.

I believe The Sun Also Rises hasn't aged very well (unlike For Whom the Bell Tolls). Precisely what fascinated us as Russian teenagers irritates me now. Young Americans in post-war Europe, with enough money and spare time to go on long vacations and get pathetically drunk. Jake at least has a job. The others are spoiled lazybones. To be fair, like so many other literary characters.

I am glad I have re-read this book, but I don't think I will read it again.