The sun also rises

Hemingway’s first book, a (the) classic of the Lost Generation/Jazz Age literary era. I’ve really begun a Hemingway rabbit hole at this point, and am really looking forward to reading the rest of his canon.

This has had mixed reactions from friends who have read it. One of the biggest points of contention is the character of Brett Ashley, who many liken to Fitzgerald’s Daisy Buchanan. I see similarities, but I would say it would be more accurate to say that Brett is almost a rough combination of Gatsby AND Daisy. Even when she isn’t in scene, she commands the book front to back. Her agency and freedom of choice also drives both the choices and physical locations of the entire book, even when many of those characters don’t know it, or won’t admit it.

This has been commented often, but I was also pretty struck by the role of alcohol in the book. It is so constant, so egregious, so present that I almost refuse to believe that Hemingway simply placed it into the book as a casual remark of salon era Paris. Drinking is, rather, a character itself in the story.

It is almost a leading or supporting role — nearly every meaningful scene takes place in some sort of setting in which the consumption of alcohol is centralized. It makes sense; one could argue that the undertone of the entire book is “unrealized” love and search for meaning amongst friends in a post WW1 western world, in which social elites constantly need a drink in order to prevent themselves from thinking “too hard.” We see this in Jake Barnes, who is a hopeless romantic arguably only when sober, becoming dismissive whenever he is around Brett (and coincidentally drunk).

And then there is bullfighting — we see here in Hemingway’s first novel a fascination with it. In so many of his other works, we see this as a theme, as an analog for human nature and (again) the human search for meaning through glory and violence at a distance. His sparse style shines best when he writes about it.

A final thing on Hemingway as I begin to scratch the surface on him: after reading Hemingway, it is hard to transition to other writers, even exceptional ones, if they aren’t minimalist. Foucault, or Durant, or others I am reading right now almost come off as sesquipedalian in nature. Hemingway does more than rebel against his particular era of largess with his writing style — it is more timeless than that. He is able to not only find the right (often short) words for the occasion, but almost weaponize the short sentence. It reminds me of the negative note in music, or the negative space in minimalist art.