Sun Also Rises AppreciationI cannot express to you how glad I am that I am taking this class.
I amthoroughly enjoying Hemingway. The Sun Also Rises is one of the best books I’veread 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 backwith books and words and reading.
I am also amazed that I never could read moreof 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 finishedreading SAR around ten o’clock tonight. I could have taken it all in one biggulp when I began a week ago, but I couldn’t do that. It wanted me to bring itout slowly, so I often found myself reading five or ten pages and laying itaside to absorb without engulfing. A man gets used to reading Star Wars and pulpfiction and New York Times Bestsellers and forgets what literature is until itslaps 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 upin class, maybe because it wasn’t a point for me in In Our Time, but He doesn’toften enough credit quotations with, “,he said,” or, “,saidBrett,” or, “,Bill replied. ” In SAR it stood and called attentionto 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. ThenI 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 towhomever I felt was speaking. Gradually I came to enjoy it, in another plane ofreading, figuring out from whom words were originating.
To not notice it, as ifit were one of those annoying 3-D posters that you can’t see until you make aconcerted effort not to try and see, became simple – much like those 3-Dpictures are once you know what not to look for. (I abhor ending sentences withprepositions. . . ) His not telling was heightening to the story. It made thingscome even more alive.
As a conversation that you’re hearing at a nearby table ina restaurant, the exchanges flowed, with me as a more passive reader than in astory written to be read instead of lived. It has always been troubling for meto read a book with the knowledge that there are things I am supposed to becatching, but not quite. The fish in the pools and the allegory and analogy andsymbolism aren’t fond of me. Trying to see that the bull-fighters and theirpurity or lack and how it relates to Him as a writer surrounded by a universe ofnew fiction printed for the masses, that is all fine and well. The shortsentences, the lack of qualifying, “he said”s and “she saids”and such, the tragedy of his love for Brett, those are the things I enjoyreading. 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 PaulSimon read Hemingway at some point in his life. It is a good book. I wassurprised that more was not given to the bulls. The entire story was leading toit, and then it was done and they were gone.
Very powerful they were butfleeting. I want to go now, of course, to Pamplona, as I’m sure everyone whoreads does after finishing. It is probably terible now with touristas and Cokeand Nike all around, but I bet still beautiful. A man was killed this year, didyou know?
