The Sun Also Rises

I'm not sure the 1957 movie version of Hemingway's 1926 first novel, with terrific performances by Tyrone Power, Ava Gardner, and Errol Flynn, is a great movie, but when I first saw it on my old black and white TV in the early sixties, I was so deeply affected. I had to immediately read the book.

Hemingway, was, of course, himself an expatriate American in Paris in the 1920s. What I love about the book is Hemingway's ability to capture the atmosphere of the time and place, as his Lost Generation characters booze, fight, love, and perhaps try to come… show more.

If you’re over thirty you should have outgrown your infatuation with Papa by now, methinks; but still it’s nice to revisit this lark of a roman a clef.

You’ll either shudder or joy (or both) at the scenes where the roisterers on the bus are shooting wine into each others’ mouths via boda bag. Did I spell boda bag properly? It’s been a long time, mate.

I know Hemingway has fallen out of wokeness, but it's the original Lost Generation/Gen-X/Emo book about being young and partying through life (across Europe) while wondering what the hell does it all really mean? Toss a doomed love story and running with bulls in there, too and you have a classic.

What would any list of expat literature be without this classic? The plot, if it can be called that, is basically American and British expatriates traveling from Paris to Pamplona, Spain. The heart of the novel however, is the relationships between the travelers. While the running of the bulls and bullfighting provides most of the physical drama, the psychological drama is inherent throughout. Particularly in the doomed romance between the promiscuous Lady Brett Ashley and war-wounded newspaper correspondent Jake Barnes. This is the novel most associated with the term, the lost generation. It should never get lost however, among the… show more.

I’m recommending The Sun Also Rises because it was the first book to capture the essence of soldiers who struggled to return to civilian life. They used alcohol to hide their pain and drown their PTSD, their struggles with masculinity or to regain it, and inability to love. I like the way this book captures the feelings soldiers have when they leave the service, such as loss of purpose. Soldiers today returning from the wars similarly struggle with alcohol, drug abuse, and all too prevalent suicide. However, the sun will rise tomorrow. 

In a misogynist time under the pen of an author conflicted about women and his own masculinity, Lady Brett Ashley is the template for a modern, empowered woman. She trumps any man in the masculinity department without losing the feminine essence that draws all of them to her. I found this novel tragic and prophetic in the way that Ashley ends up alone and unfulfilled, like far too many women who are ahead of their time.

This brilliantly written novel is a war and love story without any war and real love scenes. Capturing the so-called lost generations mentality of trying, in a somewhat hopeless alcoholic and decadent way, to cope with the hard emotional wounds and loss of values like honor, courage, stoicism, and glory in the trenches of the First World War. Jake, the American journalist, and protagonist, with his war injury-causing impotence, is unluckily not able to realize his true love for the flamboyant, emotionally destroyed Brett, who on her side can´t fulfill her love to him. In the subtle depicting of the… show more.