2020 #5 The Sun Also Rises (Hemingway)

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Well, I've finally read my first Hemingway. It probably won't be my last, despite my three-star rating. I wanted to like this enough to give it five stars--it is clever in places, and I'm generally ok with the "iceberg theory" and concision in writing.

I just had a difficult time connecting to any of the characters enough to care. Paired with the fact that bullfighting interests me not a whit, there wasn't a lot here to keep me interested. People drinking, talking about drinking, having sex, not having sex, fighting, not fighting...it also bothered me that the only female character was "liberated" (by 1920s standards) yet seemed to have very little else to do other than find a man de jour (or semaine). That this novel is semi-autobiographical does not help matters.

There are moments of very wry humor that I enjoyed, although parsing it from the anti-semitism was difficult. I did some background reading on the debate over the anti-semitic characterization of Robert Cohn. Jeremy Kaye, in the Spring 2006 issue of the The Hemingway Review suggests a re-imagining and re-reading of Cohn's character. That it dialogues with Hemingway's ideas of masculinity is certain. I'm just not sure I care for Hemingway's ideas of masculinity, or femininity, while we are at it. Sure, I get that gender fluidity was not a mainstay for most authors in the 1920s, but Hemingway's characterizations seem to reinforce the binary with such starkness that I found it difficult to engage.

I'm sure there will be those that read this and disagree heartily with my review. As I said, I haven't given up on Hemingway, and I'll probably turn to Old Man and the Sea next.