Hemingway is one of my favorite authors, and when I saw that kindle has ‘The Sun Also Rises’ available as a free classic, I jumped at the opportunity to read it. I’ve read and reviewed ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ and ‘A Moveable Feast’ in the past, and read many of his short stories too, which made reading his first novel an interesting experience. Many hallmarks of his particular style were already well-established in ‘The Sun Also Rises,’ like his sparse descriptions, long dialogue sequences, and masterful use of subtext, but it felt like there was plenty of room for him to grow too, as expected of a first novel. Only, its hard to think of such a well-known author like Hemingway as ever being anything but his best. Comparing it to his later works (especially ‘A Moveable Feast,’ which has the same setting and familiar themes) was eye-opening, and at times, a little unsettling too. Since this is a classic, I don’t feel bad about spoiling it all, so if you’re like me and haven’t read it in the 99 years since it was published, well that’s kinda your fault, isn’t it?

To start, this book held my interest all the way through to the end without missing a beat. I never felt like I had to push ahead just to get it over with at an point, and that’s unusual for classics, at least for me. I often find that they can overstay their welcome with certain plot arcs, scenes, and descriptions, and that many of them are overwhelmingly slow-burn in nature. I would still call ‘The Sun Also Rises’ a slower burn by today’s standards, but thanks to Hemingway’s iceberg style, where every line is stuffed with additional information the reader has to piece together, it can easily be tackled in a day or two if you’re particularly quick, while still retaining that special something to make you stop and think hard about the reality of the situation at hand. If that sounds like a conflicting statement, it is. I think this book has a ton of self-conflict, all the way down to the prose itself, but I’ll dig into that later. I finished it in about three days, and didn’t feel like it needed any less, or any more for that matter. The story is about Jacob Barnes, an American expatriate living in Paris after the first world war. He and several friends embark on a trip to Spain to participate in the Festival of San Fermin, a week-long festival held in Pamplona that most people know for the running of the bulls and the bullfights. Hemingway based a lot of what happens in the book on his own experiences, including the settings and characters, lending it a powerful and undeniable authenticity. It’s an emotional ride with what I found to be a pervasive air of tragedy; personal, interpersonal, and generational. This book did not make me feel good, but it did kinda make me feel better about not feeling good.

It’s very romantic in the beginning. Jake is a newspaper correspondent living large in Paris during the gilded age, drinking way too much, picking up girls on the street for a night on the town with little more than eye-contact, and having what is, on the surface, a pretty great time. The holes in this facade soon become obvious, but not always because of Jake himself.

Jake’s friend, Robert Cohn, is a writer with a published book that put a chip on his shoulder. That was, until he started having trouble publishing the second book. Compounding his professional woes are his relationship troubles and the general discrimination he gets for being a Jew, which conspire to make him profoundly insecure. About the only thing keeping him afloat is the fact that he’s a good boxer, and could probably knock down anybody he really needed to. This comes into play later, and became my favorite Chekhov’s Gun ever since it plays so well into the character. The root of Cohn’s troubles becomes more and more pervasive in their friend group as the story goes on. Alongside the more subtle conflicts taking place in Jake’s inner life, Cohn’s relationship with women is the primary driving conflict. His relationship with his fiance, Frances, is terrible. She is a painfully ‘woe-is-me’ character who is just the most insufferable bitch ever put to page.

‘The lady who had him, her name was Frances, found toward the end of the second year that her looks were going, and her attitude toward Robert changed from one of careless possession and exploitation to the absolute determination that he should marry her.’

The first thing she does is kick Jake under the table at the mere suggestion that he and Robert take a trip to Strasbourg and meet a girl there who can show them the town. Honestly she doesn’t even do that much else, but she doesn’t have to. In fact, she couldn’t have. Her presence would have ruined the novel. There’s a particularly awful few pages (awful in a good way) where she goes on a huge rant right in front of Cohn that’s got to be the best depiction of that kind of person I’ve read. I’d paste it here, but it is literally pages of her monologuing about how simultaneously awful Cohn is, and how much she deserves his attention more than the other girls, and how much Cohn is breaking her trust and ruining her life, and how he owes her a wedding for the years they’ve spent together, and on and on and on. Cohn, being himself, just sits there and takes it, and Jake cannot fathom why. This creates a ton of tension, especially after a night on the town where Cohn and Jake run into Brett …

‘Brett was damned good–looking. She wore a slipover jersey sweater and a tweed skirt, and her hair was brushed back like a boy’s. She started all that. She was built with curves like the hull of a racing yacht, and you missed none of it with that wool jersey.’

Brett is a really interesting character. She’s beautiful and ‘a fun drunk’ but seriously damaged. Jake has had an on-again off-again relationship with her for years, something that never quite comes to fruition, due in part to Brett’s instability, and in part to a wound Jake sustained during the war. As an aside, Jake’s wound is never quite specified, but Hemingway conveys the nature of it via context so well that you can’t miss it. This part was really impressive because you know he’s had a serious wound that affects his love life, but since Jake doesn’t like to think about it, you only get glimpses. It did a ton of work in centering the novel in Jake’s perspective early on. As Jake puts it, it’s the kind of wound that’s rather funny to everybody else, but not at all funny to the guy who has it.

Anyway, Cohn instantly falls for Brett, and starts asking Jake about her day in and day out … Even though Brett spent the rest of that night they met driving around with Jake (only for them to go their separate ways after a kiss). Yeah. It’s weird. It’s also important to mention that Brett is in the middle of a divorce from a British noble, carries the title of ‘Lady Ashley,’ and intends to marry a guy named Mike Campbell, who shows up later on. And if you thought Cohn sounded like the kind of guy who has no chance with a woman like Brett, you’d be right. But Cohn can’t help but listen to his heart, a trait he and Brett share, and somehow they end up spending a few nights together on a trip to San-Sebastian, Spain, against all odds. Yes, she is still in the middle of a divorce. And yes, she’s planning on marrying someone else before and after. The woman is a tornado. She spends all night drinking and all morning sleeping, and swings from having the night of her life to wishing it was all over in seconds flat. I suspect she must be bipolar, although I don’t think Hemingway would have known the term.

Cohn’s affair with Brett (and his second book taking off) renews the gigantic chip on his shoulder, and he goes so far as to leave Frances, believing wholeheartedly that he and Brett were meant for each other. It’s not a good look, even if Frances is, well, Frances.

Meanwhile, Jake plans a trip with another friend, Bill, to Pamplona to see the bullfights. They decide to go down early to head up into the mountains for some fishing, which is easily the most pleasant part of the novel, but also the least eventful. Bill is a character that I’d like to investigate some other time. This post is already incredibly long, and Bill doesn’t play as big of a role in the main conflict as the other characters, at least, as far as I can tell. He’s … a bit of a weirdo? I don’t know. I can’t quite put my finger on Bill. Here was his most memorable quote from a discussion with Jake (while blind drunk):

“Listen. You’re a hell of a good guy, and I’m fonder of you than anybody on earth. I couldn’t tell you that in New York. It’d mean I was a faggot. That was what the Civil War was about. Abraham Lincoln was a faggot. He was in love with General Grant. So was Jefferson Davis. Lincoln just freed the slaves on a bet. The Dred Scott case was framed by the Anti–Saloon League. Sex explains it all. The Colonel’s Lady and Judy O’Grady are Lesbians under their skin.”

…

Who knows, maybe he’s on to something.

So anyway, after some consideration, Jake and Bill decide to invite Brett and Robert Cohn to go fishing and see the festival. Brett and Cohn end up traveling separately with Mike Campbell, Brett’s fiance, and things get awkward. They’re late (as always) and miss the fishing trip entirely. Jake and Bill spend some time with another character who seemed like a nice guy, but drops off the face of the Earth at the end of the fishing trip. By the time the whole group gets together in Pamplona, the tension between Cohn and Mike is palpable. Mike is constantly drunk, constantly bullying Cohn, and Cohn is always hanging around Brett, following her around, doing everything in his power to get in her good graces. It’s … it’s just … it’s just the worst, man. I can’t even figure out who to feel bad for. The whole situation was just so messy, but because of that, it added so much to the authenticity of the conflict, and really made all the characters pop off the page. Still painful though.

They arrive just in time for the festival, because pouring an incredible amount of alcohol and sleepless nights partying with bullfighters and crazy Spaniards on a problem will naturally solve everything. Here Hemingway actually flexes his descriptive writing, taking the time to fully describe the scenes of the festival and running with the bulls, the bulls themselves as they’re loaded and unloaded, the bullfighters and the social landscape and a ton of other juicy details. It’s like he saved all the description for Pamplona since he just figured everybody would know Paris intimately or something. Seriously, if you don’t know your way around Paris, you’ll just be lost for the first half of the novel since he relies so heavily on his memories of the real world to avoid describing much of anything. It’s one-part fun getting lost, two-parts annoying because you have no idea how long it takes to get anywhere. While the first half of the novel reminded me a lot of ‘A Moveable Feast’ thanks to the setting and the weirdly familiar characters, the latter third in Pamplona reminded me of his prose in ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls.’ In that book, Hemingway is forced to describe everything in more detail since the setting does not actually exist in the real world. Pamplona does exist though, so I think it’s just that he really enjoyed spending time there in his mind. This was easily the most exciting part of the novel, both in terms of the bullfighting and the interpersonal conflicts. When they arrive and get to fiesta-ing, it creates this air of electric calm before the storm, or as Jake puts it:

‘It was like certain dinners I remember from the war. There was much wine, an ignored tension, and a feeling of things coming that you could not prevent happening. Under the wine I lost the disgusted feeling and was happy. It seemed they were all such nice people.’

Jake is a well-known bullfighting aficionado, and therefore gets the inside scoop on an exciting young up-and-comer, Pedro Romero. He is the embodiment of a traditional bullfighter, powerful, handsome, and graceful in every respect in an age of plentiful fakes and wannabes. Jake hits it off with him immediately, and they become fast friends over the course of an afternoon’s conversation. Everyone in the city is excited to see his performance. And unfortunately for Romero, he catches Brett’s insatiable eye too …

At this point, Jake does something strange. After Romero’s initial performance during the first bullfight, wherein the bulls were a bit too weak to satisfy the crowd, Jake and Brett go out together to get some space from Cohn and Mike’s constant tension. On their walk, they can’t help but discuss Romero, and Brett admits he’s the finest thing she’s ever seen. They wander around from cafe to bar for hours until they spot him, and pounce. They sit a ways off in the cafe, and wait patiently. Romero is drawn to them inescapably. He breaks away from his group and comes over for a chat, at which point, Jake makes up an excuse to leave him alone with Brett. By the time he gets back, they’ve already gone off together, earning him some dirty looks from the other bullfighters. They’d rather not have his drama infecting their brightest member, but Jake never has any regrets about doing this even after what happens later.

As for why Jake plays wingman for a woman he not-so-secretly still has feelings for, I can’t really say for sure. I’m not even sure he understands his own motivations. He doesn’t seem broken up about it, then again, he’s had a long time to get used to it, and he’s not the kind of person to delve into his emotions. Maybe deep down he knows if he can’t have her himself, then his only recourse is to make sure she belongs to no one. I say this because Jake says several times that Brett is the kind of woman who doesn’t belong to anyone, but whether this is really the truth, or if it’s the reality he pushes her towards, is a bit unclear. It’s probably both. Or neither. I don’t know, it’s too complicated, but it is provocative, that’s for sure.

Brett’s affair with Romero amps the conflict between Cohn and Mike to new heights, and after another night of absurdly heavy drinking, the tension boils over. Mike and Cohn get into it, and Mike doesn’t stand a chance against the life-long boxer. Jake tries to stand up for Mike against Cohn, who has absolutely lost it, but also gets knocked down immediately, after which, Cohn disappears into the night to find Brett and Romero. Keep in mind, its the night before the last bullfight.

The next thing Jake knows, he’s waking up in his hotel room in the late morning with a terrible headache, and a sobbing Cohn is at his door, begging for his forgiveness. It’s really kinda pathetic. I couldn’t help but feel bad for Cohn though. All he’s doing is what he’s been taught to believe a man should do. Train hard so he can fight for a woman he loves, keep at it as long as it takes because persistence is a virtue, and if the love is true, everything will go his way, right? But reality isn’t so easy. After Jake gets Cohn to leave him alone, he finds out in the morning that he and Mike weren’t the only ones to get a beat down. Cohn found Brett and Romero together that night before returning to the hotel, and proceeded to hit Romero over and over again, as often as Romero would come at him, until realizing that no matter how many times he hit him, no matter how good he was, it wouldn’t actually solve anything. He hit the young bullfighter until he was a bloody pulp, and the guy kept coming. After a while, it was too much, and his only option left was to leave it be, but not before begging for forgiveness. Cohn’s boxing ability, his last remaining strength that has been holding up his self-worth the entire novel collapses, not because he’s not good enough, but because it doesn’t matter that he is.

Obviously, Romero was not willing to forgive Cohn, tried to attack him again, and Brett finally had to beg Cohn to leave the city. It was heartbreaking, especially because Cohn doesn’t show up again for the rest of the novel. When Bill asks where he might have gone, Jake presumes that he’s gone crawling back to Frances, and he’s probably right.

There’s a cooldown after this as the novel resolves. Romero gets his shining moment in the ring despite showing up black and blue, then he and Brett ride off together. Jake, Mike, and Bill go their separate ways after the festival has concluded, and Jake decides to spend some time alone in a quieter Spanish city, fed up with fiestas.

That is, until Brett sends him a telegram, asking him to come pick her up urgently because she’s in trouble, yet again. He can’t help but feel a little responsible (and probably a little heart-sick) so he goes to find her again. Her fickle heart has betrayed her, and she knows she and the bullfighter with so much potential wouldn’t make a good pair, so she ran.

“No. It wasn’t that. He really wanted to marry me. So I couldn’t go away from him, he said. He wanted to make it sure I could never go away from him. After I’d gotten more womanly, of course.”

“You ought to feel set up.”

“I do. I’m all right again. He’s wiped out that damned Cohn.”

“Good.”

“You know I’d have lived with him if I hadn’t seen it was bad for him. We got along damned well.”

“Outside of your personal appearance.”

“Oh, he’d have gotten used to that.”

She and Jake share a wistful night where they wonder what life might be like if they could make it work between themselves, but of course, it never would. The end.

Like I said, the book did not make me feel good, but it wasn’t supposed to. The whole friend group is a pack of amoral party animals with one damaged trait or another. Cohn is deeply, irreversibly insecure, obsessed with being a bigger man than he is, or at least, a bigger man than the people he surrounds himself with allow him to be. Mike is a bully, Bill is ungracious and petty (and antisemitic to boot), and Jake can be a real asshole. He’s secretly jealous and a bit sadistic about watching Cohn suffer while caught between Brett and Mike. Brett is the linchpin that drives them all to their worst, yet holds them together too. These are not role models, or anybody I would personally want to be friends with, but a peek into their dangerously complicated lives does make for a great book. I can see what all the hype was about, and I’m glad I finally read it. I’m not sure I’ll ever find another book with quite the same devilishly enthralling dynamic as these characters had, and I suppose, neither will Jake and Brett.

Thank you for reading,

Benjamin Hawley