The Sun Also Rises

Rating:
Summary: wonderful book...just great
Review: i must say when i started reading this book...it seemed dull at first and to some people it just may be that DULL..but really as you get further into the book you notice all the drifting of scenery and characters and moods...my god Hemingway threw all that in there and it just mixed and while reading it my imagination really felt a lil drunk with all the wine and so dizzy with all the travelling...ITS HOW GOOD HIS DESCRIPTIONS ARE that it literally takes you in...this is great work done right here...gotta luv this book the most...

Rating:
Summary: The bull and the myth and more bull
Review: This is the work that made Hemingway known to the world. It is his best piece of longer fiction. His best work is his stories. When he goes on too much he gets to the bull, and the bull is often too much bull for what he really has to say.
This is too the quintessential Hemingway. Jake Barnes is the wounded Hemingway hero who must act with the silence and dignity and not show his feelings'.He must not be like the Jewish Robert Cohn middleweight boxing champion of Princeton(Hemingway here displays the polite Anti- Semitism so common to his class in that time. Fitzgerald does the same in Meyer Wolfsheim world series scene in 'Gatsby') who cries and is sentimental, and thus violates the Hemingway code. "Grace under pressure" means admiring the bullighter who under pressure acts with the grace of minimum motion .It means for the code hero Barnes living his life with the same kind of emotional economy that the model bullfighter, sports hero , simple man of action does.
The whole Hemingway myth of heroism is in this work including the beautiful aristocratic rich bitch Brett Ashley whose impossible love with Barnes is the ' romantic story heart ' of the work.
My generation was raised to think of the Hemingway-twenties expatriate people as heroic forebearers. They seem to me now in the distance of time spoiled party-goers redeemed only by the masterful prose and perception of their creator. Hemingway read the Bible and out of it made a simple style of conjunctions. He made out of it a way of seeing and describing all his own. In doing this he did what most writers hope to do, and only a few can.
Hem could really write, and he could really describe with a kind of poetic intensity the details of the world he was perceiving. Despite my great admiration for the Nick Adams' stories, and my sympathy for the ' wounded Hemingway hero ' and my love of a number of other great Hemingway stories I simply find the ' myth ' and the Hemingway hero , an artificial construction contradicted not only by the author's famous boasting and bragging within the work and without, but by the much more complex world of living real characters American expatriate, or not.

Rating:
Summary: The perfect, most welcoming, introduction to Hemingway.
Review: Sun Also Rises

The sort of book where the characters move from one place to another, in an endless party - which perfectly characterises the left bank of Paris in the 20's, where the novel opens, and the endless party of the Fiesta in Spain, where the characters make their way to.

Its undercurrent of lost and unrealised love has immense appeal. The relationship between the inimitable Lady Ashley (a character with as much appeal as Holly Golightly - Hemingway hated Capote, so would turn in his grave at this comparison) and the narrator, Jake Barnes is surely one of the most interesting in all literature.

The pure beauty of this novel can be put very simply: instead of almost every other book, where the reader is told what they should feel about every little moment, the reader is how put in the position of a film viewer: they are permitted to look at scenes and think: "ooh, what's he thinking now" or "she won't like that" or "does he love her?"

Put simply, The Sun Also Rises is so much fun to read because there is so much more for the reader to do, because Hemingway invented the art of not saying those things - and was good enough that, in this book, they all come across vibrantly.

Rating:
Summary: A Must-Read Classic!
Review: Just like the way he wrote his more accomplished novels like A Farewell To Arms or For Whom The Bell Tolls, Hemingway's gift of writing has already been established right from the start. The Sun Also Rises being his first published novel, Hemingway wrote in laconic, yet crisp prose and his dialogue never ceases to generate tension and anxiety between his characters, making this short-length novel a fully pledged work of art.

One of the most significant aspects of this novel is maybe the part which is mostly overlooked, which is the part where Jake and Bill goes fishing before they proceed to Pamplona, where the Fiesta de San Fermin is to take place. That part, where Jake goes fishing, somewhat signifies the contentment that Jake has long been yearning for, which shall serve as the catalyst that soon make Jake a different person altogether after the fiesta. With the feeling he experienced during that brief period of time in the midst of a fast-paced novel, he shall soon grow to accept that "he shall never possess the woman he loves" and that universal acceptance is the way where he shall finally be able to attain peace and contentment. By the end of the novel, Lady Ashley learns that too, when she "made him [Pedro] go" and decided not to ruin the young man's life. She said she shall go back to Michael Campbell, to whom she says her "sort of thing", and Jake learns to deal with it. And although he once again tried to lean on alcoholism, Lady Ashley prevented him from doing so and soon in the final scene, they were able to overcome their struggles and live a more normal life.

Even though the book focuses merely on the expatriate community in Paris, its moral convictions could adapt to the lives of numerous people, even "normal" people like us. By way of accepting the truth and trying to move on, we are able to break free of the past and in turn be able to adapt to the present world. The Sun Also Rises tells us that everything has a beginning and so is an end, but the earth shall stay forever across generations and that we are but "actors on stages" in this great pattern, and that life is but an unalterable destiny that we should learn to live with. This a great book. Another quick novel recommendation -- a book that surprised me -- is The Losers Club by Richard Perez




Rating:
Summary: The Most Over-Rated Classic in History
Review:
I know I don't share the general opinion on this novel. But the fact is that I not only read the book, I also studied it in a university class, so my opinion is not based solely on a shallow reading, but also with deepened analysis and studies. This of course does not make me omniscient on it, but here's my opinion: this book is as interesting to read as reading touristic handouts. It is deeply boring and it really is about nothing (call it Lost Generation if you wish). I honestly don't understand why this novel should be so praised. Not much happens and what happens happens in a boring way.

Now, the bashing being done I want to say that there are other Hemingway books that are much worthier to read. I'd recommend "For Whom the Bell Tolls" any time rather than "The Sun Also Rises". I was fairly disappointed by "TSAR", even with knowledge of the iceberg theory and all the other things related to Ernest Hemingway; in my opinion this does not save the novel at all, barely makes it worthy of scholar interest. Now maybe I am wrong about this novel, but I'm only giving you my impressions of it.

Definitely not the classic it is said to be.