Just Read “The Sun Also Rises” (Hemingway)

For some reason I’d only previously read “The Old Man and the Sea” (twice) which I never loved. I picked up a Hemingway collection (4 novels, $15!) and started on “The Sun Also Rises” because it’s relatively short, and about bullfighting, and because of Joan Didion’s writing. 

I’m not sure why Hemingway has gotten such a bad reputation recently. Well, maybe I do. His topics are very masculine. The characters struggles are often very masculine. The lifestyles are extravagant and self-aggrandizing since they’re ~related to his own experiences. The experiences are very outward in ways that we don’t need described in the age of wikipedia. The characters are awful. The dialogue is hard to follow. The prose can feel almost childishly simple. Not much happens besides gossip, drinking, and trouncing around Europe. The jokes are crude and many feel a little worse in light of a certain European event in the ensuing decades.  

But also it just still feels fresh. Compared to other books written around this time (and many written after), it reads like something written recently. The writing never gives too much or tries too hard in description. It conveys moods and emotions while never having to describe them. The writing gets out of the way without much sacrifice. Hemingway’s influence on American writing becomes quite clear when reading his work next to others written in a similar time period (far from Sinclair Lewis). 

This makes me want to read more Hemingway. I just picked up “A Movable Feast”…