Are you sick of novels that are way too chill with their symbolism? Do you want a novel that has no chill at all? That blasts its symbolism on pretty much every page? Then Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises (1926) may be the book for you. We talk masculinity and the phallus, the First World War, bullfighting, and whether Hemingway was for real with this thing. (Answer: yeah, probably?) Also, Megan thinks “the fishing stuff is dope.”
We read the Scribner edition. For more on American modernism and economic inequality, check out Walter Benn Michaels’s Our America.

Find us on Twitter and Instagram @betterreadpod, and email us nice things at betterreadpodcast@gmail.com. Find Tristan on Twitter @tjschweiger, Katie @katiekrywo, and Megan @tuslersaurus.