The Sun Also Rises: A Review Essay, Research Paper

The Sun Also Rises: A Review

[I cannot express to you how glad I am that I am taking this class. I am

thoroughly enjoying Hemingway. The Sun Also Rises is one of the best books I've

read in quite a long time. For a while there, I was, for God knows what reason,

taking Physics and Chemistry and Biology. It is really an adventure to be back

with books and words and reading. I am also amazed that I never could read more

of Him when it wasn't an assignment. And how is it that when I am told to write

"a 3-5 page essay" I can only come through with two-and-a-half, but a "one-page

response" always wants to be twenty pages long?]

I finished reading SAR around ten o’clock tonight. I could have taken it all in

one big gulp when I began a week ago, but I couldn’t do that. It wanted me to

bring it out slowly, so I often found myself reading five or ten pages and

laying it aside to absorb without engulfing. A man gets used to reading Star

Wars and pulp fiction and New York Times Bestsellers and forgets what literature

is until it slaps him in the face. This book was written, not churned out or

word-processed. Again, I thoroughly enjoyed reading.

I never noticed it until it was brought up in class, maybe because it wasn’t a

point for me in In Our Time, but He doesn’t often enough credit quotations with,

“,he said,” or, “,said Brett,” or, “,Bill replied.” In SAR it stood and called

attention to itself. I wasn’t particularly bothered by His not telling me who

said what, but it was very…pointed. I first noticed around the hundredth page

or so. Then I realized I couldn’t keep track of who was speaking. By not

dwelling on it, though, sort of (hate to say this) accepting it, I managed to

assign speech to whomever I felt was speaking. Gradually I came to enjoy it, in

another plane of reading, figuring out from whom words were originating. To not

notice it, as if it were one of those annoying 3-D posters that you can’t see

until you make a concerted effort not to try and see, became simple – much like

those 3-D pictures are once you know what not to look for. (I abhor ending

sentences with prepositions…)

His not telling was heightening to the story. It made things come even more

alive. As a conversation that you’re hearing at a nearby table in a restaurant,

the exchanges flowed, with me as a more passive reader than in a story written

to be read instead of lived. It has always been troubling for me to read a book

with the knowledge that there are things I am supposed to be catching, but not

quite. The fish in the pools and the allegory and analogy and symbolism aren’t

fond of me. Trying to see that the bull-fighters and their purity or lack and

how it relates to Him as a writer surrounded by a universe of new fiction

printed for the masses, that is all fine and well. The short sentences, the lack

of qualifying, “he said”s and “she saids” and such, the tragedy of his love for

Brett, those are the things I enjoy reading. Those are the reasons I read and

the reasons a man like Him writes. There are stranger things, Horatio…or

something like that. I believe Paul Simon read Hemingway at some point in his

life.

I was surprised that more was not given to the bulls. The entire story was

leading to it, and then it was done and they were gone. Very powerful they were

but fleeting. I want to go now, of course, to Pamplona, as I’m sure everyone who

reads does after finishing. It is probably terrrrrrrible now with touristas and

Coke and Nike all around, but I bet still beautiful. A man was killed this year,

did you know?