The Sun Also Rises
/By Ernest Hemmingway
Published 1926
GoodReads rating: 3.82 out of 5
GL rating: 7 out of 10 stars
(Originally posted on FB April 8, 2017)
I've been saying for as long as I can remember that The Sun Also Rises is tied for first place on my list of favorite novels (with Moby Dick). Partially because I wanted to enjoy it again, and to a lesser extent to verify that it doesn't suck, since I hadn't read it since I was in my early 20s, I have picked it up again. I'm 30 pages in, and, aside from some flat dialog between Jake and Ashley, it is as good as I remembered it being. I feel like that fucker opened up some kind of hole in the fabric of space-time with that book. Even more of a shock that he wrote it in his mid 20s.
(Originally posted April 19, 2017)
I know, you're *dying* to hear my thoughts on The Sun Also Rises. I think the last time I'd read it I was in my early 20s, loved it, considered it tied for first with Moby Dick for best novel in the English language. I was wondering if it would hold up 20 years later.
I'm about half way into it, and I don't think I'd rank it first or even second or twentieth in the English language. I remember the Spain part of it being the best, and I'm not there yet so maybe it will knock me on my can over the next few days. But, after a very strong start, the second quarter of the book drags a little. There's a lot of dialog that feels inconsequential. There are scenes that feel like asides.
I'm still really digging it, and I'll probably read it periodically for the rest of my life, but it's not the flawless gem that I half-remembered.
(Originally posted April 25, 2017)
Finished The Sun Also Rises last night. It still does pack quite a wallop. The whole time I was reading it I was curious about how it came to be, and what it came to mean in America, so I'm going to have to snap up Everyone Behaves Badly by Lesley M. M. Blume today after work, and read the shit out of that book. This New Yorker piece was a nice snack; I did not know that Fitzgerald had a hand in the revisions, it sounds like his advice made it a better book.