The Sun Also Rises

By Ernest Hemingway

A timeless exploration of post-World War I disillusionment and the "Lost Generation." Set in Paris and Spain, the novel follows a group of expatriates navigating love, desire, and existential uncertainty. Hemingway's spare prose captures the characters' emotional turmoil and the societal shifts of the era. A quintessential work of modernist literature, this novel delves into themes of identity, purpose, and the search for meaning in a changing world.

A masterpiece of love, loss, and resilience

Authentic portrayal of disillusionment and existential angst. Historical post-World War I fiction. A timeless classic that captures the characters' emotional turmoil and the societal shifts of the era. Explores themes such as masculinity, identity, and love. A perfect gift for literature enthusiasts.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fingerprint Publishing
• Release date: Nov 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9789358563252

Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway did more to change the style of English prose than any other writer of his time. Publication of The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms immediately established Hemingway as one of the greatest literary lights of the twentieth century. His classic novel The Old Man and the Sea won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953. Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. His life and accomplishments are explored in-depth in the PBS documentary film from Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, Hemingway. Known for his larger-than-life personality and his passions for bullfighting, fishing, and big-game hunting, he died in Ketchum, Idaho on July 2, 1961. 

Book preview

BOOK I

CHAPTER

1

Ro bert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton. Do not think that I am very much impressed by that as a boxing title, but it meant a lot to Cohn. He cared nothing for boxing, in fact he disliked it, but he learned it painfully and thoroughly to counteract the feeling of inferiority and shyness he had felt on being treated as a Jew at Princeton. There was a certain inner comfort in knowing he could knock down anybody who was snooty to him, although, being very shy and a thoroughly nice boy, he never fought except in the gym. He was Spider Kelly’s star pupil. Spider Kelly taught all his young gentlemen to box like featherweights, no matter whether they weighed one hundred and five or two hundred and five pounds. But it seemed to fit Cohn. He was really very fast. He was so good that Spider promptly overmatched him and got his nose permanently flattened. This increased Cohn’s distaste for boxing, but it gave him a certain satisfaction of some strange sort, and it certainly improved his nose. In his last year at Princeton he read too much and took to wearing spectacles. I never met any one of his class who remembered him. They did not even remember that he was middleweight boxing champion.

I mistrust all frank and simple people, especially when their stories hold together, and I always had a suspicion that perhaps Robert Cohn had never been middleweight boxing champion, and that perhaps a horse had stepped on his face, or that maybe his mother had been frightened or seen something, or that he had, maybe, bumped into something as a young child, but I finally had somebody verify the story from Spider Kelly. Spider Kelly not only remembered Cohn. He had often wondered what had become of him.

Robert Cohn was a member, through his father, of one of the richest Jewish families in New York, and through his mother of one of the oldest. At the military school where he prepped for Princeton, and played a very good end on the football team, no one had made him race-conscious. No one had ever made him feel he was a Jew, and hence any different from anybody else, until he went to Princeton. He was a nice boy, a friendly boy, and very shy, and it made him bitter. He took it out in boxing, and he came out of Princeton with painful self-consciousness and the flattened nose, and was married by the first girl who was nice to him. He was married five years, had three children, lost most of the fifty thousand dollars his father left him, the balance of the estate having gone to his mother, hardened into a rather unattractive mould under domestic unhappiness with a rich wife; and just when he had made up his mind to leave his wife she left him and went off with a miniature-painter. As he had been thinking for months about leaving his wife and had not done it because it would be too cruel to deprive her of himself, her departure was a very healthful shock.

The divorce was arranged and Robert Cohn went out to the Coast. In California he fell among literary people and, as he still had a little of the fifty thousand left, in a short time he was backing a review of the Arts. The review commenced publication in Carmel, California, and finished in Provincetown, Massachusetts. By that time Cohn, who had been regarded purely as an angel, and whose name had appeared on the editorial page merely as a member of the advisory board, had become the sole editor. It was his money and he discovered he liked the authority of editing. He was sorry when the magazine became too expensive and he had to give it up.

By that time, though, he had other things to worry about. He had been taken in hand by a lady who hoped to rise with the magazine. She was very forceful, and Cohn never had a chance of not being taken in hand. Also he was sure that he loved her. When this lady saw that the magazine was not going to rise, she became a little disgusted with Cohn and decided that she might as well get what there was to get while there was still something available, so she urged that they go to Europe, where Cohn could write. They came to Europe, where the lady had been educated, and stayed three years. During these three years, the first spent in travel, the last two in Paris, Robert Cohn had two friends, Braddocks and myself. Braddocks was his literary friend. I was his tennis friend.

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. During this time Robert’s mother had settled an allowance on him, about three hundred dollars a month. During two years and a half I do not believe that Robert Cohn looked at another woman. He was fairly happy, except that, like many people living in Europe, he would rather have been in America, and he had discovered writing. He wrote a novel, and it was not really such a bad novel as the critics later called it, although it was a very poor novel. He read many books, played bridge, played tennis, and boxed at a local gymnasium.

I first became aware of his lady’s attitude toward him one night after the three of us had dined together. We had dined at l’Avenue’s and afterward went to the Café de Versailles for coffee. We had several fines after the coffee, and I said I must be going. Cohn had been talking about the two of us going off somewhere on a weekend trip. He wanted to get out of town and get in a good walk. I suggested we fly to Strasbourg and walk up to Saint Odile, or somewhere or other in Alsace. I know a girl in Strasbourg who can show us the town, I said.

Somebody kicked me under the table. I thought it was accidental and went on: She’s been there two years and knows everything there is to know about the town. She’s a swell girl.

I was kicked again under the table and, looking, saw Frances, Robert’s lady, her chin lifting and her face hardening.

Hell, I said, why go to Strasbourg? We could go up to Bruges, or to the Ardennes.

Cohn looked relieved. I was not kicked again. I said good-night and went out. Cohn said he wanted to buy a paper and would walk to the corner with me. For God’s sake, he said, why did you say that about that girl in Strasbourg for? Didn’t you see Frances?

No, why should I? If I know an American girl that lives in Strasbourg what the hell is it to Frances?

It doesn’t make any difference. Any girl. I couldn’t go, that would be all.

Don’t be silly.

You don’t know Frances. Any girl at all. Didn’t you see the way she looked?

Oh, well, I said, let’s go to Senlis.

Don’t get sore.

I’m not sore. Senlis is a good place and we can stay at the Grand Cerf and take a hike in the woods and come home.

Good, that will be fine.

Well, I’ll see you to-morrow at the courts, I said.

Good-night, Jake, he said, and started back to the café.

You forgot to get your paper, I said.

That’s so. He walked with me up to the kiosque at the corner. You are not sore, are you, Jake? He turned with the paper in his hand.

No, why should I be?

See you at tennis, he said. I watched him walk back to the café holding his paper. I rather liked him and evidently she led him quite a life.

CHAPTER

2

That winter Robert Cohn went over to America with his novel, and it was accepted by a fairly good publisher. His going made an awful row I heard, and I think that was where Frances lost him, because several women were nice to him in New York, and when he came back he was quite changed. He was more enthusiastic about America than ever, and he was not so simple, and he was not so nice. The publishers had praised his novel pretty highly and it rather went to his head. Then several women had put themselves out to be nice to him, and his horizons had all shifted. For four years his horizon had been absolutely limited to his wife. For three years, or almost three years, he had never seen beyond Frances. I am sure he had never been in love in his life.

He had married on the rebound from the rotten time he had in college, and Frances took him on the rebound from his discovery that he had not been everything to his first wife. He was not in love yet but he realized that he was an attractive quantity to women, and that the fact of a woman caring for him and wanting to live with him was not simply a divine miracle. This changed him so that he was not so pleasant to have around. Also, playing for higher stakes than he could afford in some rather steep bridge games with his New York connections, he had held cards and won several hundred dollars. It made him rather vain of his bridge game, and he talked several times of how a man could always make a living at bridge if he were ever forced to.

Then there was another thing. He had been reading W. H. Hudson. That sounds like an innocent occupation, but Cohn had read and reread The Purple Land. The Purple Land is a very sinister book if read too late in life. It recounts splendid imaginary amorous adventures of a perfect English gentleman in an intensely romantic land, the scenery of which is very well described. For a man to take it at thirty-four as a guide-book to what life holds is about as safe as it would be for a man of the same age to enter Wall Street direct from a French convent, equipped with a complete set of the more practical Alger books. Cohn, I believe, took every word of The Purple Land as literally as though it had been an R. G. Dun report. You understand me, he made some reservations, but on the whole the book to him was sound. It was all that was needed to set him off. I did not realize the extent to which it had set him off until one day he came into my office.

Hello, Robert, I said. Did you come in to cheer me up?

Would you like to go to South America, Jake? he asked.

No.

Why not?

I don’t know. I never wanted to go. Too expensive. You can see all the South Americans you want in Paris anyway.

They’re not the real South Americans.

They look awfully real to me.

I had a boat train to catch with a week’s mail stories, and only half of them written.

Do you know any dirt? I asked.

No.

None of your exalted connections getting divorces?

No; listen, Jake. If I handled both our expenses, would you go to South America with me?

Why me?

You can talk Spanish. And it would be more fun with two of us.

No, I said, I like this town and I go to Spain in the summer-time.

All my life I’ve wanted to go on a trip like that, Cohn said. He sat down. I’ll be too old before I can ever do it.

Don’t be a fool, I said. You can go anywhere you want. You’ve got plenty of money.

I know. But I can’t get started.

Cheer up, I said. All countries look just like the moving pictures.

But I felt sorry for him. He had it badly.

I can’t stand it to think my life is going so fast and I’m not really living it.

Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bull-fighters.

I’m not interested in bull-fighters. That’s an abnormal life. I want to go back in the country in South America. We could have a great trip.

Did you ever think about going to British East Africa to shoot?

No, I wouldn’t like that.

I’d go there with you.

No; that doesn’t interest me.

That’s because you never read a book about it. Go on and read a book all full of love affairs with the beautiful shiny black princesses.

I want to go to South America.

He had a hard, Jewish, stubborn streak.

Come on down-stairs and have a drink.

Aren’t you working?

No, I said. We went down the stairs to the café on the ground floor. I had discovered that was the best way to get rid of friends. Once you had a drink all you had to say was: Well, I’ve got to get back and get off some cables, and it was done. It is very important to discover graceful exits like that in the newspaper business, where it is such an important part of the ethics that you should never seem to be working. Anyway, we went down-stairs to the bar and had a whiskey and soda. Cohn looked at the bottles in bins around the wall. This is a good place, he said.

There’s a lot of liquor, I agreed.

Listen, Jake, he leaned forward on the bar. Don’t you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you’re not taking advantage of it? Do you realize you’ve lived nearly half the time you have to live already?

Yes, every once in a while.

Do you know that in about thirty-five years more we’ll be dead?

What the hell, Robert, I said. What the hell.

I’m serious.

It’s one thing I don’t worry about, I said.

You ought to.

I’ve had plenty to worry about one time or other. I’m through worrying.

Well, I want to go to South America.

Listen, Robert, going to another country doesn’t make any difference. I’ve tried all that. You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. There’s nothing to that.

But you’ve never been to South America.

South America hell! If you went there the way you feel now it would be exactly the same. This is a good town. Why don’t you start living your life in Paris?

I’m sick of Paris, and I’m sick of the Quarter.

Stay away from the Quarter. Cruise around by yourself and see what happens to you.

Nothing happens to me. I walked alone all one night and nothing happened except a bicycle cop stopped me and asked to see my papers.

Wasn’t the town nice at night?

I don’t care for Paris.

So there you were. I was sorry for him, but it was not a thing you could do anything about, because right away you ran up against the two stubbornnesses: South America could fix it and he did not like Paris. He got the first idea out of a book, and I suppose the second came out of a book too.

Well, I said, I’ve got to go up-stairs and get off some cables.

Do you really have to go?

Yes, I’ve got to get these cables off.

Do you mind if I come up and sit around the office?

No, come on up.

He sat in the outer room and read the papers, and the Editor and Publisher and I worked hard for two hours. Then I sorted out the carbons, stamped on a by-line, put the stuff in a couple of big manila envelopes and rang for a boy to take them to the Gare St. Lazare. I went out into the other room and there was Robert Cohn asleep in the big chair. He was asleep with his head on his arms. I did not like to wake him up, but I wanted to lock the office and shove off. I put my hand on his shoulder. He shook his head. I can’t do it, he said, and put his head deeper into his arms. I can’t do it. Nothing will make me do it.

Robert, I said, and shook him by the shoulder. He looked up. He smiled and blinked.

Did I talk out loud just then?

Something. But it wasn’t clear.

God, what a rotten dream!

Did the typewriter put you to sleep?

Guess so. I didn’t sleep all last night.

What was the matter?

Talking, he said.

I could picture it. I have a rotten habit of picturing the bedroom scenes of my friends. We went out to the Café Napolitain to have an apéritif and watch the evening crowd on the Boulevard.

CHAPTER

3

It was a warm spring night and I sat at a table on the terrace of the Napolitain after Robert had gone, watching it get dark and the electric signs come on, and the red and green stop-and-go traffic-signal, and the crowd going by, and the horse-cabs clippety-clopping along at the edge of the solid taxi traffic, and the poules going by, singly and in pairs, looking for the evening meal. I watched a good-looking girl walk past the table and watched her go up the street and lost sight of her, and watched another, and then saw the first one coming back again. She went by once more and I caught her eye, and she came over and sat down at the table. The waiter came up.

Well, what will you drink? I asked.

Pernod.

That’s not good for little girls.

Little girl yourself. Dites garçon, un pernod.

A pernod for me, too.

What’s the matter? she asked. Going on a party?

Sure. Aren’t you?

I don’t know. You never know in this town.

Don’t you like Paris?

No.

Why don’t you go somewhere else?

Isn’t anywhere else.

You’re happy, all right.

Happy, hell!

Pernod is greenish imitation absinthe. When you add water it turns milky. It tastes like licorice and it has a good uplift, but it drops you just as far. We sat and drank it, and the girl looked sullen.

Well, I said, are you going to buy me a dinner?

She grinned and I saw why she made a point of not laughing. With her mouth closed she was a rather pretty girl. I paid for the saucers and we walked out to the street. I hailed a horse-cab and the driver pulled up at the curb. Settled back in the slow, smoothly rolling fiacre we moved up the Avenue de l’Opéra, passed the locked doors of the shops, their windows lighted, the Avenue broad and shiny and almost deserted. The cab passed the New York Herald bureau with the window full of clocks.

What are all the clocks for? she asked.

They show the hour all over America.

Don’t kid me.

We turned off the Avenue up the Rue des Pyramides, through the traffic of the Rue de Rivoli, and through a dark gate into the Tuileries. She cuddled against me and I put my arm around her. She looked up to be kissed. She touched me with one hand and I put her hand away.

Never mind.

What’s the matter? You sick?

Yes.

Everybody’s sick. I’m sick, too.

We came out of the Tuileries into the light and crossed the Seine and then turned up the Rue des Saints Pères.

You oughtn’t to drink pernod if you’re sick.

You neither.

It doesn’t make any difference with me. It doesn’t make any difference with a woman.

What are you called?

Georgette. How are you called?

Jacob.

That’s a Flemish name.

American too.

You’re not Flamand?

No, American.

Good, I detest Flamands.

By this time we were at the restaurant. I called to the cocher to stop. We got out and Georgette did not like the looks of the place. This is no great thing of a restaurant.

No, I said. "Maybe you

Reviews for The Sun Also Rises

[regoodrich · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

My problem with this book is the gloomy and depressing tone, with no real objective or purpose for it.

[nagasravika.bodapati · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Sun also Rises by Ernest Hemmingway #books #reviews #classics #1001books My Rating : 4/5 Nice, Nice! A group of young expatriates from America and England travel from Paris to Spain to watch bull racing and bull fighting .. they are all addicted to meaningless enjoyment through constant drinking, traveling, shallow, unrepressed sexual affairs .. their vapid and fatuous lifestyles are exposed, brought to light .. representing a "lost generation" of youngsters after world war 1.

[mykl8s · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A very grown up story, that gives us everything we need to know about the characters by what they do, without long paragraphs of explication.

[aliceanna-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I first read this book several decades ago. What appealed to me then still does appeal to me. Hemingway's use of language is so unique, so compelling. Sparse yet rich, obscure yet revelatory, his writing style is like nothing else I've ever read. If other authors had tackled this particular cast of characters, I would likely have hated the characters and the book. But Hemingway makes these losers (my characterization) sympathetic. You care what happens to them even if you would walk the other way if you met them in real life. His descriptions of a dusty road trip, a drunken fiesta, the dressing of a bullfighter, among many many other scenes just come to life. Yet he uses so few words to describe that life. So I somehow find myself enthralled with a book featuring (mostly) unlikeable characters and something like bullfighting which I find personally repellant. Only an author of remarkable talents could make that happen.

[kslade-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Pretty good novel about bullfighting, romance, etc. in Spain, etc.

[stevesbookstuff · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The debut novel by Ernest Hemingway is arguably the best book he ever wrote. It was an instant bestseller and is today considered probably “the” book of his generation. Published in 1926, between the end of World War I and the beginning of the Great Depression, it captured the mood of the “Lost Generation”. These were war wounded souls for whom life’s peacetime events seemed insignificant. Many like those in this book stayed behind in Europe and indulged themselves in lives that would have provoked scandal back home. In fact, The Sun Also Rises was considered scandalous by many when published, including Hemingway’s own mother, who reportedly wrote to the author that his was “one of the filthiest books of the year”, and that “every page fills me with sick loathing.”Back then the scandal about the book had to do with its use of swear words and its depiction of “loose morals” in the relationships between the male and female characters. More recently the book has been criticized for the antisemitism and bigotry of its characters - the derogatory language used about the Jewish character Robert Cohn, and the use of both the N word (repeatedly) and the F word - as well as its realistic depiction of bull fighting.The story is told through the eyes of Jake Barnes, an American news reporter in Paris whose war wounds have left him impotent. He is surrounded by a group of friends, American and British. The English Lady Brett Ashley proclaims her love for Jake but given his inability to have sex they both realize they’ll never be more than confidants and close friends. The main action in the book is the result of a love triangle around Brett that plays out on a trip to Pamplona, Spain where the group goes to take part in the Fiesta de San Fermin. They take part in the annual running of the bulls and are daily spectators at the bull fights. There is much drinking and partying.It's clear that Hemingway sees bullfighting as a metaphor for manliness. Jake’s love of bull fighting is in some sense a compensation for his own perceived lack of manliness given his war wounds. He is a true aficionado of bullfighting, and he takes the time to let us know that he's recognized as such by the Spaniards he has befriended in Pamplona. Bullfighting means even more than that to Hemingway, who wrote later that attending a bull fight is like watching a great tragedy - like “having a ringside seat at the war with nothing going to happen to you.” The tragedy that surrounds the bullfighting in the book mirrors the misadventure that the happy trip of Barnes and his friends becomes. Given that Brett is the epitome of the 1920s New Woman - liberated and promiscuous - it’s not unexpected that she falls for the handsome young bullfighter. This, despite being accompanied by her supposed fiance Michael on the trip to Pamplona and having just completed a dalliance with Robert Cohn. Cohn keeps hanging around though others in the group (especially the would be fiance) repeatedly urge him to just go away. Through it all, even through the fist fight at the climax of the book, Jake remains detached while still a part of events, a reflection of the detachment of his whole lost generation.It's Hemingway’s writing style that makes the book transcend its story of lost souls spending their prime in partying and dissipation. The spareness and understatedness he’s known for is at a peak in this book. It’s a real pleasure to read.When it comes to classics like this it doesn't feel right to assign them a rating (I've thrown a 3 on this LibraryThing review as a "neutral" response hoping not to throw off the average too much). What I will say is that I thoroughly enjoyed re-reading this book and would recommend it highly to anyone who has not yet read it.

[jorgeousjotts · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

It makes me want to travel. =)

[completely_melanie · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I understand that this is a classic and to some may be a big deal, but to me this book had no point whatsoever and I found it to be a complete waist of time reading it.

[jbreedlove_6 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Hemingways first published novel was well written with descriptive sense of place and occassional insights, esp. to bullfighting, but I had no sense of lostness of a lost generation, just some drunkards and self-pitying fools who don't appeared to have grown up. Good description of the running of the bulls though. Stited dialogue. The second time I've read it.

[carmenere_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It seems to me readers either love Hemingway or hate him. I tend to be in the love camp and now, after reading The Sun Also Rises, never more so.A group of expatriates, residing in Paris, take a summer vacation in Pamplona to watch Running of the Bulls and enjoy it's 7 days of fiesta. Central to the story are Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley. They love each other but because of medical reasons their future together, is just not feasible. So what's there to do but drink and party with your friends. In fact, many of the party members seem confused, unfulfilled and depressed. The result is a bunch of 30 year old adults on spring break, looking for relief in booze and sex. The thing is, this book was written in 1926 and women were thought of very differently so perhaps that's why Hemingway is not a favorite but I appreciate this book for the snapshot in time it provides. He writes of a post WWI world and a generation still coming to terms with the affects of the war. To leverage that he puts Jake and his friend, Bill, on a train and Hemingway's description of the French and Spanish countryside reads like a travelogue. Their sojourn in a small fishing town sounds idyllic and acts as a sharp contrast to the description he provides of the brutal bullfights, they will shortly witness. I enjoyed being a part of this crowd for a short spell but also glad to leave them in their sullen lives.

[occassionalread · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

You don't always have to like a novel's protagonists in order to like the novel. It's not that Jake, Brett, Mike, Robert, and Bill are terrible people. But they spend much of their time hurting each other, even while partying together and drinking incessantly. They are flawed and human. All are based on real people Hemingway knew. The novel's action - plot is too structured a word for the action that takes place - is also based on true events. The Sun Also Rises is deservedly heralded as a great modernist novel. Hemingway's short, muscular sentences on display here influenced countless subsequent writers and the writing holds up extremely well, though at times the way people spoke in the 20s reminded me of a black and white James Cagney gangster film, "hey yous guys." I was impressed by some internal dialogue as well, especially a few pages written to reflect Jake's drunken thoughts racing from topic to topic that stood out from most of the other matter of fact descriptions. Even though not entirely likeable, I definitely encourage people to pick up this book and travel to Paris, Bayone, Pamplona, San Sabastian, Burguete with this crew. They're good company. In their 30s they are old enough to have experienced war, jobs, divorce, love, heartbreak, friendship and betrayal. But they are young enough to party hard, and experience life to its fullest, with all the humor and pain and irony and impossiblity that it has to offer.

[gittel_7 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Yeah, Hemingway, so I'm sure its great. I didn't get it.
I feel dumb for not getting it, but I didn't get it.
These characters were a brat pack of annoying spoileds getting drunk and roaming Europe. Read it anyway, because I'm a literary snob and Hemingway was on my literary bucket list. Someone please explain it to me.

[sandrabrower · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

So, I guess with reading this book I am not understanding the genius that they call Ernest Hemingway!

I love his short stories, his poetry and his history which is intriguing in and of itself, but this one... Don't get it. It read to me like a travel blog with a ton of drinking! Disappointed ... I guess I better pick up a copy of The Old Man and the Sea quick!

[amerynth · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I admit I have rather romantic notions of what it would be like to head to 1920's Paris and hobnob with fellow ex-pats (all of whom would be at some stage of writing their book) over Pernod and tiny cafes. Oh, the conversations I envision. Sadly, Hemingway in "The Sun Also Rises" has convinced me I might as well head to a sports bar in Decatur because most of the conversation is pretty dull. I don't typically care for Hemingway (as I find his attitudes toward women, people of color and now Jewish people to be troubling at best) and this book really wasn't an exception -- it was mainly troubling and dull. The book picked up a bit of a spark when it moved to Pamplona and the bar talk revolved around bulls, but at that point, it was really too late to save it.

[bookconcierge · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

One of Hemingway’s earliest novels, this was first published in 1926, and has never been out of print since that time. It is loosely based on the author’s own experiences with a circle of friends frequently known as “The Lost Generation.” The novel follows Jake Barnes, an American journalist, and Lady Brett Ashley, a twice-divorced Englishwoman who seems unable to function without a man fawning over her. Together with a group of friends, including Brett’s fiancé, the Scot, Mike Campbell they travel from Paris to Pamplona for the Festival of San Fermin, and the running of the bulls. Along the way more than one man is convinced he loves Brett and can win her affections. The first Hemingway work I read was his The Old Man and the Sea, which was assigned reading when I was in 8th grade. I loved it and have been a fan of Hemingway’s ever since. Still, some of his works fail to resonate with me. And this was one of them.The ennui with which these people live their lives just doesn’t interest me. I am as bored as they seem to be by their own lives. I don’t understand the attraction to Brett, who seems unable to form any lasting relationship but lives for the conquest. Yes, she beautiful and apparently has some money, but men are literally coming to blows over her affections. And Jake? I get that he’s been wounded in WW1, and that has resulted in impotence. I can understand his resultant reserve and reliance on alcohol to dull his emotions. But I just didn’t get the relationship between he and Brett. Or for that matter, his relationship with the other characters. What drew them together? And what kept them connected?I may have liked (or at least appreciated) the novel more had I read rather than listened. I absolutely hated William Hurt’s delivery on the audio. He is a wonderful actor, but in this case he sounded so bored and uninterested. I felt that the pace dragged. He even managed to make the bullfight sound boring. 1* for his performance of the audio.NOTE: The book was published in Britain under the title Fiesta

[dramman_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Powerful, vivid book read in 1969, just after living in Spain - Hemmingway's description of Spain and bullfighting resonated strongly.

[toddsherman · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

“It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing.”I was looking for something with lots of light—burning sun, baking sand. I was looking for something with a fight in it. I got it with this book, even if I had to wait nearly 130 pages before I got to Spain and longer still, waiting out the seemingly interminable festival week, to witness a bullfight, blood, and thumping fists.The opening is artful misdirection. I thought this would be about Cohn, that he would somehow become a matador, or find his bloody-toothed victory in the sands of the arena. Not so. He does fight. But the moment where he merely takes off his glasses in preparation for a potential punch-up is the most stirring moment of the novel. Hell, the fistfight ?? cool, though, when it happens.The dashing yet respectful bullfighter is a gentleman with a sword, with words, and with his swinging arms. However, just because you can down a maddened bull with a perfectly placed sword thrust doesn’t mean you’ve got the chops to outswing a boxing champion. Different skills, the same passions, a variety of human struggle caught up in the rocket’s confetti. And Cohn, simmering slugger that he is, is no match for a more urbane human—or inconstancy—or a confession of weakness cloaked in drunken braggadocio across the barroom table.I got the sun. I got the fight. All that will undoubtedly work its way into my next novella: ???? ???? ?????. The fact that the inspiration that I gleaned and will most likely pilfer wasn’t exactly what I expected is one of the best gifts that a reader can be granted. I hope to put that same pupil-constricting illumination into my own work.Paris would be cool. But, goddamnit, I want to see the sun in the north of Spain.“I do not know how people could say such terrible things to Robert Cohn. There are people to whom you could not say insulting things. They give you a feeling that the world would be destroyed, would actually be destroyed before your eyes, if you said certain things. But here was Cohn taking it all. Here it was, all going on right before me, and I did not even feel an impulse to try and stop it. And this was friendly joking to what went on later.”

[foof2you · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Interesting story, like most of the so called great books it was so-so. I guess this is the story where the running of the bulls became a thing for Americans to go to. A lot of the prose is unfamiliar in today's world. I found that keeping a dictionary close by was helpful.

[trile1000 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Such a sad and moving tale. Ernest Hemingway's style of writing is so simple and leaves its mark.

[stahl2ricco · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Well, if the sticker on the front cover can be believed, I bought this book in 1988 for some college course I took. Cost me $4.95. Since I don't remember most of college, I certainly don't remember the class, nor this book. Thankfully, I am a packrat, and look what I found to read in the garage in 2018! I'm glad I did!I really enjoyed this book, and feel like it's the kin to one of my favorites, "On The Road" by Jack Kerouac. Maybe it's the grandfather to it? Anyway, this story features a lost soul in the person of Jake, who we find in Paris, then Spain, then back to Paris again. Along the way we meet Brett, Mike, Bill, and the creepy Robert Cohn. We also learn a lot about food, drink, bullfighting, fishing, France, Spain, and life in general back then. Despite all the moving about, nothing really happens except for life, and I found it totally interesting! I didn't enjoy how mean many of the characters were, nor how strongly the anti-Semitism rang out. But I enjoyed the meandering about, the vivid descriptions of everything, and the general ennui of the characters. A very fine book. Thanks to whatever professor of whatever course I took who required us to read this! It took 30 years, but it hit it's mark!

[ebt1002 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I went back and forth on my rating of this novel several times. It's so easy to see how Hemingway was said to alter the novel, to take the form into new territory. At first, I was underwhelmed: short, choppy sentences and unconvincing dialogue. But as Jake Barnes, Lady Brett Ashley and their companions in Paris and Pamplona developed, as the tensions of fear, loathing, and longing entwined them in adolescent but also sympathetic tenor, I fell under their spell and enjoyed the narrative ride. That Jake and Brett are in love, and that fate has contrived to keep them apart (that is all I'm saying about that so as to avoid spoilers), serve as the primary thematic vehicle for exploring a time and place and a generation devastated by WWI. Racist language and anti-Semitic themes are part of why I struggled with my rating; can I excuse those by pointing to the 1926 publication date? In today's world, I find it harder to make that call. And it hardly feels adequate to "knock off a star" for such. So, I rated the novel for its literary merits as I perceive them without reference to the undertone of bias and discrimination. It's a great novel. And its author and characters are profoundly flawed. That is both the figure and the ground.

[madepercy-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

As Hemingway's first novel, it is certainly beyond my comprehension how he could ever understand so much at the age of 27. I am reluctant to disclose too much for fear of spoilers, but the conclusion to the story is very real. The bullfighting is described in ways that make me want to see one, yet simultaneously I am appalled at the thought. Hemingway seems to have felt the same way. He also describes concussion in a way that can only be described by someone who has suffered several concussions. There are no lies in this work. I am becoming accustomed to the meandering first three-quarters of the typical Hemingway plot. It isn't hard work but it isn't gripping either. He seems to lull you into a comfortable sense of normalcy which doesn't end but the last quarter builds and builds to a climax in the last sentence that unfolds the final emotion. With the conclusion to "A Farewell to Arms" I burst into tears. With this novel I exclaimed, "That fucking sucks!" Hemingway's work is seriously brilliant while incredibly timeless. I am not sure whether it is simply cultural alignment or not, but the connection between the pedestrian and the nostalgic intertwined with the exotic European setting connects one's past to Hemingway's past to the power of two. He takes you to the place he has been and then where he is in the story. I am convinced this is the result of his technique of writing as the protagonist in the first person while excising, completely, the presence of the narrator. Brilliant stuff!

[browner56 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Ernest Hemingway led a legendary life, becoming well known for his many passions including game hunting, fishing, serving in wars, producing fiction, womanizing, drinking, traveling, and even his suicide. However, he also began his writing career working as a newspaper reporter. That is an important detail when considering his first novel, The Sun Also Rises, because above all else that book is a roman à clef relating a fictionalized account of real events that happened to actual people. Of course, Hemingway himself was one of those people, which is where his reporting skills came in handy when turning the account into a full-length story.The tale is set in the mid-1920s and follows an aimless group of expatriates as they travel from Paris to Spain for the Fiesta of San Fermín in Pamplona. These people represent the so-called Lost Generation, those men and women who came of age in the aftermath of World War I and had been so scarred by the experience to have lost all hope and sense of purpose in life. So, they spend their days in drunken and frequently mean-spirited debauchery, trying desperately to outrun their pain. That they never manage to achieve that goal is perhaps the most poignant moral of the book.It is also worth noting the stylistic achievement that Hemingway introduced with this novel. The story is written in what one reviewer of the day called “lean, hard, athletic narrative prose that puts more literary English to shame”. Indeed, the descriptions are simple and terse and the dialogue seldom exceeds a single sentence spoken at a time. But, through that spare prose, the symbolism and meaning are crystal clear and quite affecting. These are not pleasant people that Hemingway writes about—including himself, if truth be told—but they become unforgettable characters, if only for the suffering they cause and the lack of purpose they experience.I should say that The Sun Also Rises is not my favorite Hemingway book. In fact, it is not even my favorite early work of the author; I found stories such as “Big Two-Hearted River” and “The End of Something” from In Our Time to be simply stunning and far more satisfying to read. Still, this novel remains standing on its own merit almost a century after its publication. Beyond that, though, it also serves as a remarkable road map to the people who lived in a time and place that truly is becoming lost to a modern generation of readers.

[buffalogr · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Classic novel -- emasculated WWI veteran finds himself in Paris with others of the lost generation. I kept drawing parallels to the children of the 60s, similar, I thought. Characters well developed as always. Papa did good in this novel. My first Hemingway novel in this decade, I'll read some more.

[gayla.bassham · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I still love the way Hemingway writes, but I'm docking this a star because the portrayal of Brett Ashley feels so dated. Yes, I recognize this book was written 90 years ago. But I found Brett grating enough that it spoiled the reading experience.

[dottieph · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Although Hemingway has great talent in writing conversational prose, I found this novel very boring. How many drinks can one have in one story? Bet this novel has the record!

[jennysbookbag.com · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I'm just not a Hemingway fan. I must be in the minority because I see that a lot of people love his work.

[alphawoman_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Ok but not crazy about it. Too much foolishness over a "bad" girl. But I guess she was the first of her kind leaving broken hearts and broken bottles of liquor in her path. I suppose the lost generation after WWI was a lot of people who experienced a world so different from the United states that they would never truly find their way home.

[debnance_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Good grief. How did I get to be almost-sixty without reading this book? It's a brilliant story of a group of lost souls drifting, drifting, drifting, and it's told with the simplest of words (I'd love to see what comes up if you ran this whole book through Wordle or another word cloud generator...I can almost imagine it...I'm pretty sure "good" would be the size of the Eiffel Tower on the page.) and thousands of tiny conversations and lots of fishing and bull fighting and, of course, drinking and drinking and drinking.

[memccauley6 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I think this is my fourth or fifth time to read this novel, and each time I read it I had an entirely different impression. In high school, the group of expatriates visiting Spain seemed glamorous and tragic, the dialog hard to follow.

Now I see the book more as having historical significance. Hemingway captured “The Lost Generation” in these pages. His use of terse, journalistic prose was revolutionary. However, with age, the characters drunken escapades seem pathetic and juvenile rather that funny and glamorous. I feel certain this will be my last time to read it…. I’m too old for this crap.