Reading the Classics discussion

For those who wish to read and discuss in January 2015.

Thank you, Janet!

Do we want to break the reading up into chapters? I'm new, here, so I do not know how many pages it is customary to read per week. I also do not know how to set up links for different chapters.

Since the Tree group started yesterday (Weds) should we do the same so we will all end and be ready to start the next book at the same time? If so, we have 3 remaining Weds left. (I'm assuming we will want start a new book in Feb). Dividing the book roughly into thirds, this could be a possible schedule:
-Weds 1/14: start discussion for chapters I through VIII
-Weds 1/21: start discussion for chapters IX through XV
-Weds 1/28: start discussion for chapters XVI through the end.

But, like I said, I am a newbie, and finding myself in Rome, will gladly do as the Romans do!

I like your plan. As I shall be listening to this one as a travelling book, not sure quite what my pace will be. Considering that I last read it as a schoolboy for my senior project, am somewhat awed by so much more time having passed since than from its original publication. When I last read Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway was a living contemporary author. Does that make me a Classic as well?

Of course, Bill! :)

I have put this on hold at the library but it seems to be popular this month and I am in a queue.

Janet wrote: "I have put this on hold at the library but it seems to be popular this month and I am in a queue."

Is it at Gutenberg.org? That would hold you until the print copy comes in at your library.

Off to a good start. The descriptions still work for me.

Unfortunately the book is not available at Gutenberg.org, maybe it's not even in the public domain yet, despite being published in 1926. I didn't find a free ebook on Amazon either, so I had to buy an edition. Maybe it's the active Hemingway household that keeps it under covers. Two descendants of his did write decent forewords though and included a lot of extra material in the new Hemingway Library/Scribner edition like the cut initial chapters of the book or alternate titles.
Here's the edition (also available on Kindle):
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

I started with the first 2 chapters and quite like the writing, spoiler:

Robert Cohn's funny ego and travel delusions and how the protagonist tries to argue against the latter quite reasonably.

I'm quite eager for my copy of the new Hemingway Library edition to arrive.

Up to chapter five so far and wondering about Brett and Jake's history... And liking Hemingway's sparse writing style.

Just had a chance to spend a little time with the new Hemingway Library ed. @ B&N. EH originally wrote a couple of earlier chapters that gave more of the backstory to the characters. If you're reading SAR for the 1st time i'd advise finishing it in the regular ed. 1st - artistically EH's choice to cut was right. But then it's fascinating to see what he left out.

I've read through chapter 7, stopping at what is marked as Book II. I haven't looked at this in years and when I started reading I wondered if it would feel terribly dated to me. But it doesn't, so far. I also find myself thinking about how critics/editors/reviewers would look at it today if it came in from an unknown. I can hear editors saying "It's too talky." Hemingway's style seems more modern and more congenial for today than what his contemporaries were writing.

Mary wrote: "Janet wrote: "I have put this on hold at the library but it seems to be popular this month and I am in a queue."

Is it at Gutenberg.org? That would hold you until the print copy comes in at your l..."

Was able to get this through Open Library. Did you start reading this yet? I am reading chapter 9 currently.

I love this ultra-compact writing style. When a simple "later" between two lines of dialogue can imply how much time must have passed in silence between the characters.
I'm around chapter 12 now, and I find that with the travel to Spain, the language changes dramatically to be quite elaborate instead of the previous short style. At least with those long landscape descriptions, which really slow down the pace. But that doesn't have to be bad, it's an interesting effect.

I love those descriptions of the landscape. They make you feel you're seeing it & fthe slow & natural pace of life in rural Spain Just wait till you get to the account of the fiesta . . .

Bill wrote: "I love those descriptions of the landscape. They make you feel you're seeing it & fthe slow & natural pace of life in rural Spain Just wait till you get to the account of the fiesta . . ."

I agree with your comment about loving the descriptions of the landscape. I have not gotten to the account of the fiesta yet and hope that it pulls me into the story more. This book just hasn't grabbed me yet.

Bill wrote: "I love those descriptions of the landscape. They make you feel you're seeing it & fthe slow & natural pace of life in rural Spain Just wait till you get to the account of the fiesta . . ."

I, too, love the landscape descriptions. I read them over again, and sometimes aloud. They're my favorite part of the book.

Some fun things to read aloud:
-describing the mountains: "(. . .) all brown and baked-looking and furrowed in strange shapes" (chapter X). I like the alliteration and also the rhythm of "strange shapes" at the end of the sentence. And the word "furrowed" is so powerful!

-"(. . .) and there was a big river off on the right shining in the sun from between the line of trees (. . .)" I love the parallel rhythms of "shining in the sun/ from between the line of trees."

-"The road was white and dusty, and the dust rose under the wheels and hung in the air behind us" (chapter XI). I love how all but two words are one syllable! A lot of his descriptive writing is comprised of monosyllabic words, giving it beauty and power.

Hemingway is known for his sparse writing style, but I do not really understand what that means. Compared to the "flowery" Victorian style of writing of the previous generation it certainly is more brief and "muscular." So I understand it from that perspective. And in terms of dialog, the characters speak in short clips, which also might explain Hemingway's reputation for brevity.

But however brief the characters' sentences may be, the characters sure do talk a lot. And they repeat themselves a great deal. For people of few words, their speeches come across to me as beating a dead horse. Moreover, no real meaningful communication seems to happen in these exchanges. The interactions seem empty. Does anyone know what all the repetition of apparently nothing is about?

Also, he uses the word "very" and "nice" frequently. Nowadays, these words are no-nos, and I can't imagine they weren't back then, also. Does anyone know what Hemingway was trying to bring about by the high-frequency use of these words?

Here's an example from chapter VII, when Jake, Brett, and the Count are talking:
"I'm not joking you," the count blew a cloud of smoke. "You got the most class of anybody I ever seen. You got it. That's all."

"Nice of you," said Brett. "Mummy would be pleased. Couldn't you write it out, and I'll send it in a letter to her."

"I'd tell her, too," said the count. "I'm not joking you. I never joke people. Joke people and you make enemies. That's what I always say."

"You're right," Brett said. "You're terribly right. I always joke people and I haven't a friend in the world. Except Jake here."

"You don't joke him."

"That's it."

"Do you, now?" asked the count. "Do you joke him?"

Brett looked at me and wrinkled up the corners of her eyes.

"No," she said. "I wouldn't joke him."

"See," said the count. "You don't joke him."

"This is a hell of a dull talk," Brett said. "How about some of that champagne?"

Also in chapter VII when Jake is talking with the concierge:
"I don't know. He was never here before. He was very large. Very, very large. She was nice. Very, very nice."

This is an extreme example, but Hemingway does it often.

I'm wondering about Hemingway's frequent use of the word "and." There are several passages in which he uses it much more than is usual. Does anyone know why he does this? I believe writers (for example, Walt Whitman) use the word to convey excitement or to increase intensity. But sometimes it seems Hemingway is not using the repetition of that word for that purpose.

An example from chapter XI, when they arrive in the stopover inn on their way to go fishing:
"There was a low, dark room with saddles and harness, and hay-forks made of white wood, and clusters of canvass rope-soled shoes and hams and slabs of bacon and white garlics and long sausages hanging from he roof."

How does the repetition of "and" achieve a different effect than the more common way a passage might read? For example, "There was a low, dark room with saddles, harness, hay-forks made of white wood, clusters of canvass rope-soled shoes, hams, slabs of bacon, white garlics, and long sausages hanging from he roof."

I think by using "and" as he does, Hemingway forces the reader to see each item in a list. Editors today warn against creating a stringy sentence by using "and" so much, but it can be used to good effect.

Hemingway's writing seems very different to me in two passages. First, in chapter 15, he describes a group of boys dancing. This passage feels like it contains a genuine feeling of delight and energy, and not the self-conscious writing for effect. Second, in chapter 17 he describes a moment earlier in his life when "everything looked new and changed." He describes how things looked then, and the first time it happened to him. The sentences seem less artificial and contrived. In both passages I felt he reached a more authentic experience than what he had crafted on the surface of each page.

I finished yesterday. I have to say, I was slightly disappointed, though the writing has undeniable quality, and quite some wonders in it. I rated it 3 stars. My favourite part is the snappy dialogue. Noone ever quite states the obvious, there's something surreal and artistic to the remarks. Also, how the writing can imply certain things almost by ignoring them, e.g. (i struggle to find an example) when a lack of response of a character is a strong response in itself. And how one or two short words like a "later" in the narration implies the passage of time without action by leaving out what we expected before the "later".

For me, the points of interest were just too sparse. There's a lot of drinking, bullshitting, semi-interesting landscapes and driving from one pub to the next, and that's very lost-generation-y, but nothing to catch the fancy.

still, i don't regret this short read, it's not lacking in substance.

I can barely remember what I thought of this book when I first read it years and years ago in college (or thereabouts). My reaction is very different now. I appreciate more the quality of the writing and the effect Hemingway's language has on the reader, but I found the story increasingly tiresome. After a while I found it impossible to sympathize with Brett, Mike, or Bill. The frame created by Jake failed to lift the conversation higher than merely recording. I felt there was too little insight throughout. The witty dialogue pales after a while.

To my surprise, I had a very visceral response to the treatment of Robert Cohn, far beyond my normal reaction to dated anti-semitic writing. I'm used to this showing up in all sorts of books by writers I like (It's a fact of pre-WW2 crime fiction, among other works), but here it seemed to run deeper.

I'm glad I read it, but I wanted more from Hemingway. Perhaps there is no more.

Wanted to wait till the end of the month & most of us would be finished before posting on The Sun Also Rises.

When I read this book as a teenager, I associated it with the Lost Generation, the First World War, Scott & Zelda & high living & lots of drinking by Americans in Paris & of course bullfighting. I’d also read Death in the Afternoon @ the same time & you have to accept (@ least imaginatively) bullfighting as both a sport & an art form where the matador & the bull are the principal actors & one of them is supposed to die. If all you can see in it is torturing some poor dumb animal it’s not the right book for you.

Reading it now after so many years I was struck by the relationships & especially their absence. Jake & Bill are actually BFFs but as men they’d never say it directly. Readers notice how much of the dialogue between the various characters doesn’t express their real thoughts & feelings, but that’s actually the point. Like in Chekov - what the characters don’t say tells us what they really think. Hemingway once was going to title a collection of stories Men without Women & maybe that expressed one aspect his world of characters who cannot form relationships. In The Sun Also Rises the characters are so scarred - in Jake’s case literally - as to be incapable of love; lovers & friends don’t even like each other. That triangle of Robert, Brett, & Mike is so perfectly "dysfunctional" as we'd now say.

That style still works for me, especially for the landscapes & accounts of the bullfighting. You feel you’re seeing it. You approve EH’s using the second person & think you’re there. And there’s all those “ands” - they’re examples of what grammarians call “polysyndeton” (no, I’m not showing off but I used to make a living doing this stuff) & they are regular feature of narrative in Biblical Hebrew prose, faithfully reproduced by the King James Bible - which is where EH may have learned it. He also gets a lot of mileage out of.seeming clichés & trite expressions. Yes, “nice” is a no-no, but when you can write like Hemingway (as opposed to being able to drink like Hemingway) you can break all the rules. I found it works kind of like “pius” in Virgil’s Aeneid - depending on the context “nice” can mean proper, decorous, attractive, well wrought, tasteful, artistic, etc. You have to figure it out because the meaning is in what the characters don’t say.

Hemingway was often accused of being incapable of creating realistic women characters. I think now that Brett was very well drawn & believable. Of course this time I knew she was based on a real person (in the drafts EH used her real name Duff) & I thought he quotes just enough of her idiom (“chaps”) to give us the flavour. By the standards of contemporary celebs (if you can trust US magazine) Brett isn’t even particularly promiscuous tho’ her attraction for the bullfighter makes her come through as a bit of a cougar.

So I think The Sun Also Rises really holds up as a classic, especially if you regard a classic as a work that alters the whole history of literature. Without it, I can scarcely imagine how authors as different as Norman Mailer, J. D. Salinger, Jack Kerouac, & even Tom Wolfe would have written. It is a privilege to have lived long enough to have seen some of its progeny.

Susan wrote, I think by using "and" as he does, Hemingway forces the reader to see each item in a list. Editors today warn against creating a stringy sentence by using "and" so much, but it can be used to good effect.

Bill wrote, all those “ands” - they’re examples of what grammarians call “polysyndeton”

Wikipedia defines polysyndeton as "the use of several conjunctions in close succession, especially where some could otherwise be omitted (as in "he ran and jumped and laughed for joy"). (. . . .) It is a stylistic scheme used to achieve a variety of effects: it can increase the rhythm of prose, speed or slow its pace, convey solemnity or even ecstasy and childlike exuberance. Another common use of polysyndeton is to create a sense of being overwhelmed, or in fact directly overwhelm the audience by using conjunctions, rather than commas, leaving little room for a reader to breathe."

Thank you, Susan and Bill. When I examine the effect it has on me, I notice that it does not create a fast pace, but rather makes me slow down and consider each noun. It does create a kind of "bustle," though, as in the passages in Spain in which the characters are loading up the cart with objects (and the passengers' personalities).

I like it, and found it pleasurable.

Susan wrote, Hemingway's writing seems very different to me in two passages. First, in chapter 15, he describes a group of boys dancing. This passage feels like it contains a genuine feeling of delight and energy, and not the self-conscious writing for effect. Second, in chapter 17 he describes a moment earlier in his life when "everything looked new and changed." He describes how things looked then, and the first time it happened to him. The sentences seem less artificial and contrived. In both passages I felt he reached a more authentic experience than what he had crafted on the surface of each page.

I agree that both passages are among those that are stellar in the book. The passage about the men dancing is vibrant, quick-paced, and colorful, very much capturing the feeling of dancing. If the second one you're referring to is the one just after Cohn beat him up, that one has a quality of numbness or detachment appropriate for the violence he just experienced. (As I write this, I wonder if the incident triggered old emotional stuff from his having been attacked in the war. It would be in keeping with Hemingway's characterization of the the strong, silent man to have him suffer from PTSD). The only really solid noun in the whole passage is the suitcase, which I took as symbolic of what we today call "baggage." As if he is just now noticing all that he is carrying.

Both powerful passages, very different, entirely appropriate for the scene. They show the versatility of Hemingway's craft.

I found some small scene descriptions at the ends of passages to be cinematographic. They did a lot for creating a feeling of emptiness. For example, in Chapter XVII after Cohn beats Jake up:

"I walked away from the café. They were sitting at the table. I looked back at them and at the empty tables. There was a waiter sitting at one of the tables with his head in his hands."

Bill wrote, Brett isn’t even particularly promiscuous tho’ her attraction for the bullfighter makes her come through as a bit of a cougar.

I'm surprised that you say this, Bill. I understood that she had an affair with Cohn and "pounced" on Romero—both while she was with Mike, with whom she was also likely having sexual relations. While she and Jake were physically unable to have a sexual relationship, it was alluded to their attempting to have one several years earlier.

It was a love pentagon!

In chapter XX as Jake leaves the cathedral after attempting to pray, what do you think is happening when he notes, ". . . the forefingers and the thumb of my right hand were still damp, and I felt them dry in the sun"?

I interpreted it as he had been crying in the cathedral. But then I got to thinking that he might have just dipped his fingers in holy water on the way out.

True, but she'd given Robert the el dumpo -tho' he refuses to 'move on' - & it's pretty obvious that the thing with Mike is 'a little over' pretty much.

Yes, a Catholic then would have dipped & crossed himself.

Bill wrote, Brett isn’t even particularly promiscuous tho’ her attraction for the bullfighter makes her come through as a bit of a cougar.

I think for the time she would be considered promiscuous. She is engaged to Mike but runs off with Robert and then with Romero, and all ostensibly because Jake was injured. But I ended thinking that Jake was tired of her too, and tired of the drifting. He stands apart throughout as the one who works, and pays attention to the outside world (Spain and its customs). His attempt to find something in his old faith is another departure from his contemporaries.

Yes, Susan, religion seems like an important theme in this book. Not only Jake's praying and some of the characters' attitudes toward Cohn's being Jewish you mention, but also that San Fermín is considered a religious festival in part.

Religion seems to be part of the larger theme of Value. It's interesting to see what the different characters value or view as fundamentally important. I'm thinking in particular of the scenes in which Jake observes that the French like you if you tip well, and the comedic scene between him and Bill around the word "Utilize."

Considering this theme casts more insight into Brett. She is highly prized by all the men in her circle for her beauty and title. But she is 34 and she has to be aware that her beauty will fade. Her self-worth might be almost exclusively based on her looks. The following dialogue that happens when she is worried about Romero's bullfight shows what she relies on:

"I wish the wind would drop, though."
"It's liable to go down by five o'clock."
"Let's hope."
"You might pray," I laughed.

Bill wrote: "Wanted to wait till the end of the month & most of us would be finished before posting on The Sun Also Rises.

Excellent review Bill. I've read The Sun Also Rises 5 times and I'm sure I will read it again sometime in this lifetime. I get something new from it each time and if nothing else it sparks my imagination and helps the creative writing process. Thanks again for such a thorough review.

You made my day