The Sun Also Rises (Ernest Hemingway)

I think the cover of this book is what made me pick it up off the shelf at Indigo last week. The dust jacket is gorgeous--elegant really.

I've been slowly sampling Hemingway over the last six months or so. I will admit, I had an aversion to his writing after reading some of his short stories in my first year English courses. I was convinced that I hated him, but then I read A Moveable Feast and I changed my mind. 

I really liked The Sun Also Rises. The story is simple, but not simplistic. An American living in Paris (I love anything set in Paris) goes to Spain with a few friends to fish and to see the bull fights. They drink plenty of wine (so much that as I read I started to wish I had a bottle), sit in cafes and, for the most part, live a life of leisure. 

The introduction notes that Hemingway had recently read, and was influenced by Scott F.Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby when he wrote The Sun Also Rises. I definitely noticed the similarities in character-types and style as I read. I was left with a similar feeling at the end of both books, although I greatly preferred this one. 

The center of the novel is Brett, a somewhat helpless party girl who flutters from the arm of one man to another. Almost every man we meet in the novel is either in love with Brett or attracted to her. She's the archetype I've seen in so many 1920s/30s detective novels and black and white movies. I've grown to hate that archetype. Never in my real life have I ever encountered that woman. For such a central character, she came across as underdeveloped.

The dialogue, which was natural and humorous more than made up for the flatness of Brett. This is definitely one of the better Hemingway works I've read.  

A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemingway)

I used to tell anyone who asked me that I hated Hemingway. Then I read A Moveable Feast this past September and it changed my mind. While I didn't love A Farewell to Arms, a novel published in 1929 and set in Italy during World War I, I'm glad I read it. 

For readers who don't know anything about Hemingway, in brief, he was an American author and Noble Prize winner who penned classics like The Old Man and the Sea (I've never read either of these) and For Whom the Bell Tolls. He also happens to be one of the most famous alcoholics in American literary history, a factor which may have contributed to his suicide in 1961. 

Many readers consider A Farewell to Arms to be Hemingway's best novel. Unfortunately, it didn't move me the same way A Moveable Feast did. In fact, I had hard time feeling emotional attachment of any kind for the characters in this book. I wanted to like this book, but it left me without much feeling at all. 

There's nothing particularly romantic about the love story involved, but perhaps that's the way Hemingway meant it to be. The characters meet and fall in love way too quickly. I don't buy it. Of course, their love is a sham at the start--a piece of acting which they both see through--but then it becomes real. Even when it is real though, I still don't buy it. Perhaps it is because Hemingway offers the reader no real glimpse into the emotional lives of the characters. All we're allowed to see are actions, dialogue, and minimal thoughts.  

I suppose Hemingway's writing style is just not my cup of tea (and I enjoy a wide-variety of teas). That doesn't mean I dislike his works, though. If anything, I would say I'm neutral. I neither love nor hate him, and I can appreciate certain pieces of his work like A Moveable Feast. 

A Moveable Feast (Ernest Hemingway)

The last time I tried to read a novel by Hemingway I was in high school. I hated it and never made it past the hundred page mark. I suppose at sixteen I was rather shocked, when trying to read, For Whom the Bell Tolls, that when entering a war zone one of the first things the protagonist did was have sex with girl he'd just met. In my first year of University I was even more confused by a short story which I had difficulty, because of Hemingway's minimalist style, understanding. I suppose it didn't help, in another class, when my Introduction to Rhetoric professor tore another of Hemingway's stories apart using a gender-studies critique. To the point now. This morning I finished reading A Moveable Feast and I loved it. I no longer hate Hemingway. Perhaps a re-read of his works that I've sampled in the past would leave me with a different flavour as well.  

In the Preface to A Moveable Feast Hemingway writes that the book is part fact and part fiction. It is generally viewed as a memoir of Hemingway's time in spent in Paris in the 1920's and is considered one of his best and most loved works. The chapters are fairly short, each relaying a separate story about his days spent conversing with other well-known writers, writing in cafés, wandering art galleries, going to races, skiing, or drinking with friends. Each chapter could almost stand on its own as a separate story in itself. 

There is no fast paced problem driving the plot, or final point to be reached (unless you consider the long-lasting impact that Paris had on Hemingway as the final point). It is a gentle, rich read which, despite it being far from fast paced,  kept my attention from the time I opened the first page to the time I closed the back cover. Perhaps that sounds corny or cliche, but that's really the way it was. 

Hemingway surely had a way with words. One of my favourite lines in this book reads, " Work could cure almost anything, I believed it then, and I believe in now." Perhaps to many readers this brings to mind the image of a workaholic, unable to confront life because he or she is too busy burying all their problems in work. That's not what I see. Instead I see something relatable and truthful. Life is so much more fulfilling and easier to handle when one does not waste time in idleness. A good task or goal can help a person move forward and keep them moving forward. As Hemingway says, Work can cure almost anything.