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The Sun Also Rises
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Manufacturer: Scribner
Author: Ernest Hemingway
Publisher: Scribner
Average Customer Rating:
Our Price: $10.20
You Save: $ 4.80 ( 32% )
Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Scribner
Author: Ernest Hemingway
Publisher: Scribner
Average Customer Rating:
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The Sun Also Rises Description
Binding: Paperback
EAN: 9780743297332
ISBN: 0743297334
Label: Scribner
Manufacturer: Scribner
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 256
Publication Date: 2006-10-17
Publisher: Scribner
Studio: Scribner
EAN: 9780743297332
ISBN: 0743297334
Label: Scribner
Manufacturer: Scribner
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 256
Publication Date: 2006-10-17
Publisher: Scribner
Studio: Scribner
Editorial Review of The Sun Also Rises
The Sun Also Rises first appeared in 1926, and yet it's as fresh and clean and fine as it ever was, maybe finer. Hemingway's famously plain declarative sentences linger in the mind like poetry: "Brett was damned good-looking. She wore a slipover jersey sweater and a tweed skirt, and her hair was brushed back like a boy's. She started all that." His cast of thirtysomething dissolute expatriates--Brett and her drunken fiancé, Mike Campbell, the unhappy Princeton Jewish boxer Robert Cohn, the sardonic novelist Bill Gorton--are as familiar as the "cool crowd" we all once knew. No wonder this quintessential lost-generation novel has inspired several generations of imitators, in style as well as lifestyle.
Jake Barnes, Hemingway's narrator with a mysterious war wound that has left him sexually incapable, is the heart and soul of the book. Brett, the beautiful, doomed English woman he adores, provides the glamour of natural chic and sexual unattainability. Alcohol and post-World War I anomie fuel the plot: weary of drinking and dancing in Paris cafés, the expatriate gang decamps for the Spanish town of Pamplona for the "wonderful nightmare" of a week-long fiesta. Brett, with fiancé and ex-lover Cohn in tow, breaks hearts all around until she falls, briefly, for the handsome teenage bullfighter Pedro Romero. "My God! he's a lovely boy," she tells Jake. "And how I would love to see him get into those clothes. He must use a shoe-horn." Whereupon the party disbands.
But what's most shocking about the book is its lean, adjective-free style. The Sun Also Rises is Hemingway's masterpiece--one of them, anyway--and no matter how many times you've read it or how you feel about the manners and morals of the characters, you won't be able to resist its spell. This is a classic that really does live up to its reputation. --David Laskin
Customer Reviews of The Sun Also Rises
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Classic Hemingway
Review: I bought this book for my daughter who has evinced an interest in Hemingway. The backstory of this novel is interesting. The people in the novel, except for Jake, are all real people and friends of Hemingway. The story of the trip to the bullfights in Spain was true and one of many that Hemingway and his friends made in 1920s Spain. It takes place in a few days and this was the first big novel that made him famous. Prior to this, he was known as a short story writer. One character, Robert Cohn, was a friend who was quite angry at his role in the fictionalized version of the trip. He thought Hemingway had made him look like a fool and he threatened to kill Hemingway, a famous brawler among his friends. There was a small bar in Paris, across the street from the Cafe de la Paix, where they all used to hang out. It is no longer there but was on my first trip to Paris. Hemingway spent several days waiting for this disgruntled friend to come in the bar so he could try to defuse the anger before something serious happened. Finally, after about a week, the friend walked in and Earnest jumped up, ran over to him and shook his hand, greeting him as an old friend. The ploy worked and the feud was over. This is a classic and the first of his novels.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: At Best A Mediocre Travelogue Of A Novel
Review: I expected to like this novel. I was surprised that I did not. Perhaps I can explain why. Perhaps I cannot. Let me make an effort, though I fear it shall please no one.
I do not know if I'll open another Hemingway book anytime soon, but since this was the first novel by this writer I have read, maybe it's premature to make judgments about his entire body of work. Still, as I struggled through one flat and boring chapter after the next in the dialogue-driven The Sun Also Rises, populated as it was with single-dimensional characters I did not like, situations that disgusted me, and settings that were admittedly nicely-described, I kept having a thought that no doubt qualifies among Hemingway fans as heresy: do the masses truly like Hemingway's novels, or are they swept up in the mystique of his legend to the point that this carries into the books themselves and therein explains their power to draw so much praise?
Frankly, folks, I didn't see a lot to embrace here. Hemingway's sentences were like bare skeletons devoid of flesh above them. I expected genius and found mediocrity: mediocrity and a cast of spoiled, mildly tragic middle-aged figures who drank themselves sick, quarreled, traipsed across western Europe and left behind abandoned children and jilted spouses, all in pursuit of the excitement that eluded them. They did not even have the excuse of youth to exonerate them, these were by any definition adults. I kept thinking that, well, maybe if more than one of them actually had a job they wouldn't have had so much time on their hands to feel miserable and dissipate. As for them being a, to quote Gertrude Stein, "Lost Generation" robbed of meaning by war, it was made clear that so many of these characters began their lives of irresponsibility well before the outbreak of the First World War.
Furthermore this novel was not a story, it was a series of loosely connected situations. In my opinion, Fitzgerald, Hemingway's contemporary, wrote rings around Hemingway, as did several other writers of the period I could name. Also for a man who won the Nobel Prize, Hemingway's habit of mixing past and present tenses (I'm talking about in his prose, not character dialogue) surprised me. To all the English teachers out there who used to get on my case for committing this compositional error, I'd like to ask, if mixing tenses is bad writing, then why did this author win the Nobel Prize, and if he won the Nobel Prize mixing tenses, then why is it bad writing?
I do not wish to give the impression I loathed The Sun Also Rises, because I didn't. I did enjoy the frank exchange of views between this novel's characters on issues of race, religion, and general ethos, their use of epithets verboten today, and the politics of sexual congress, but that alone did not carry the plot to conclusion, and too much fell too limply by. Truthfully, the novel is about expatriate drunks who go on holiday to Spain to watch bulls be slaughtered by a young man after whom the central female character lusts. As for the dialogue, anyone who finds depth in the conversations the characters have is inventing that depth himself. There was simply not much here to latch onto.
Honestly, The Sun Also Rises is all right, but it isn't brilliant literature, and the only way it defined any generation is in the corrective touch of wishful hindsight.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Less is more
Review: Written in sparse, simple language, you might be tempted to dismiss the work as banal. But Hemingway, like his friend Picasso, knows the value of pruning so that less is more.
The story is set in Paris between the two great wars. There we find a group of attractive, young, well-educated ex-patriots. Our narrator, Jake, is in love with the beautiful Brett. But Jake's war wound makes him unable to satisfy Brett sexually. Their unhappy predicament spawns an unusual love affair. Jake, in effect, becomes Brett's pimp. Just as fish can be lured more successfully with artificial flies than real worms, the lovers use Brett's exotic looks to lure men for "artificial" love affairs. While never overtly stated, Jake and Brett play their game under strict rules. Brett never falls for any of her "lovers." Jake never denies her choices. Jake is always there for her when she needs him. Like Picasso, Hemingway is a master of the double entender. At the Bullfights, we learn that steers are used to calm the wild bulls; it's a steer that leads the bulls to slaughter; bulls get slaughtered, but the steers get to live another day; a great bullfight is one where, at the climax, the bull and matador are one. At the bullfight, like two Greek gods, Brett and a handsome young matador are inevitably attracted to each other. Jake arranges a meeting and then leaves them. After a brief tryst, the young Adonis leaves Brett because Brett won't marry him. Penniless and alone, Brett calls Jake to her rescue. It's not your typical love story, but it makes a swell book.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Brilliant man that Ernest, brilliant man...
Review: Look at this passage:
"We walked on and circled the island. The river was dark and a bateau mouche went by, all bright with lights, going fast and quiet up and out of sight under the bridge. Down the river was Notre Dame squatting against the night sky. We crossed to the left bank of Seine by the wooden foot-bridge from the Quai de Bethune, and stopped on the bridge and looked down the river at Notre Dame. Standing on the bridge the island looked dark, the houses were high against the sky, and the trees were shadows.
"It's pretty grand," Bill said. "God, I love to get back."
This sound like a music to my ears. Bravo Ernest, you're a genius.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: He's the Man!
Review: Nobody through history writes like Hemingway. Why? Because he was there. Any author who tries to write about things they don't know should stick to flipping burgers. For instance, how can one write about the military without having been there? With this book, he plants you right into the action and has you drinking with him every step of the way. I could feel my liver failing as I read the book.
Review Summary: Classic Hemingway
Review: I bought this book for my daughter who has evinced an interest in Hemingway. The backstory of this novel is interesting. The people in the novel, except for Jake, are all real people and friends of Hemingway. The story of the trip to the bullfights in Spain was true and one of many that Hemingway and his friends made in 1920s Spain. It takes place in a few days and this was the first big novel that made him famous. Prior to this, he was known as a short story writer. One character, Robert Cohn, was a friend who was quite angry at his role in the fictionalized version of the trip. He thought Hemingway had made him look like a fool and he threatened to kill Hemingway, a famous brawler among his friends. There was a small bar in Paris, across the street from the Cafe de la Paix, where they all used to hang out. It is no longer there but was on my first trip to Paris. Hemingway spent several days waiting for this disgruntled friend to come in the bar so he could try to defuse the anger before something serious happened. Finally, after about a week, the friend walked in and Earnest jumped up, ran over to him and shook his hand, greeting him as an old friend. The ploy worked and the feud was over. This is a classic and the first of his novels.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: At Best A Mediocre Travelogue Of A Novel
Review: I expected to like this novel. I was surprised that I did not. Perhaps I can explain why. Perhaps I cannot. Let me make an effort, though I fear it shall please no one.
I do not know if I'll open another Hemingway book anytime soon, but since this was the first novel by this writer I have read, maybe it's premature to make judgments about his entire body of work. Still, as I struggled through one flat and boring chapter after the next in the dialogue-driven The Sun Also Rises, populated as it was with single-dimensional characters I did not like, situations that disgusted me, and settings that were admittedly nicely-described, I kept having a thought that no doubt qualifies among Hemingway fans as heresy: do the masses truly like Hemingway's novels, or are they swept up in the mystique of his legend to the point that this carries into the books themselves and therein explains their power to draw so much praise?
Frankly, folks, I didn't see a lot to embrace here. Hemingway's sentences were like bare skeletons devoid of flesh above them. I expected genius and found mediocrity: mediocrity and a cast of spoiled, mildly tragic middle-aged figures who drank themselves sick, quarreled, traipsed across western Europe and left behind abandoned children and jilted spouses, all in pursuit of the excitement that eluded them. They did not even have the excuse of youth to exonerate them, these were by any definition adults. I kept thinking that, well, maybe if more than one of them actually had a job they wouldn't have had so much time on their hands to feel miserable and dissipate. As for them being a, to quote Gertrude Stein, "Lost Generation" robbed of meaning by war, it was made clear that so many of these characters began their lives of irresponsibility well before the outbreak of the First World War.
Furthermore this novel was not a story, it was a series of loosely connected situations. In my opinion, Fitzgerald, Hemingway's contemporary, wrote rings around Hemingway, as did several other writers of the period I could name. Also for a man who won the Nobel Prize, Hemingway's habit of mixing past and present tenses (I'm talking about in his prose, not character dialogue) surprised me. To all the English teachers out there who used to get on my case for committing this compositional error, I'd like to ask, if mixing tenses is bad writing, then why did this author win the Nobel Prize, and if he won the Nobel Prize mixing tenses, then why is it bad writing?
I do not wish to give the impression I loathed The Sun Also Rises, because I didn't. I did enjoy the frank exchange of views between this novel's characters on issues of race, religion, and general ethos, their use of epithets verboten today, and the politics of sexual congress, but that alone did not carry the plot to conclusion, and too much fell too limply by. Truthfully, the novel is about expatriate drunks who go on holiday to Spain to watch bulls be slaughtered by a young man after whom the central female character lusts. As for the dialogue, anyone who finds depth in the conversations the characters have is inventing that depth himself. There was simply not much here to latch onto.
Honestly, The Sun Also Rises is all right, but it isn't brilliant literature, and the only way it defined any generation is in the corrective touch of wishful hindsight.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Less is more
Review: Written in sparse, simple language, you might be tempted to dismiss the work as banal. But Hemingway, like his friend Picasso, knows the value of pruning so that less is more.
The story is set in Paris between the two great wars. There we find a group of attractive, young, well-educated ex-patriots. Our narrator, Jake, is in love with the beautiful Brett. But Jake's war wound makes him unable to satisfy Brett sexually. Their unhappy predicament spawns an unusual love affair. Jake, in effect, becomes Brett's pimp. Just as fish can be lured more successfully with artificial flies than real worms, the lovers use Brett's exotic looks to lure men for "artificial" love affairs. While never overtly stated, Jake and Brett play their game under strict rules. Brett never falls for any of her "lovers." Jake never denies her choices. Jake is always there for her when she needs him. Like Picasso, Hemingway is a master of the double entender. At the Bullfights, we learn that steers are used to calm the wild bulls; it's a steer that leads the bulls to slaughter; bulls get slaughtered, but the steers get to live another day; a great bullfight is one where, at the climax, the bull and matador are one. At the bullfight, like two Greek gods, Brett and a handsome young matador are inevitably attracted to each other. Jake arranges a meeting and then leaves them. After a brief tryst, the young Adonis leaves Brett because Brett won't marry him. Penniless and alone, Brett calls Jake to her rescue. It's not your typical love story, but it makes a swell book.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Brilliant man that Ernest, brilliant man...
Review: Look at this passage:
"We walked on and circled the island. The river was dark and a bateau mouche went by, all bright with lights, going fast and quiet up and out of sight under the bridge. Down the river was Notre Dame squatting against the night sky. We crossed to the left bank of Seine by the wooden foot-bridge from the Quai de Bethune, and stopped on the bridge and looked down the river at Notre Dame. Standing on the bridge the island looked dark, the houses were high against the sky, and the trees were shadows.
"It's pretty grand," Bill said. "God, I love to get back."
This sound like a music to my ears. Bravo Ernest, you're a genius.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: He's the Man!
Review: Nobody through history writes like Hemingway. Why? Because he was there. Any author who tries to write about things they don't know should stick to flipping burgers. For instance, how can one write about the military without having been there? With this book, he plants you right into the action and has you drinking with him every step of the way. I could feel my liver failing as I read the book.