We read Earnest Hemingway’s first published novel, The Sun Also Rises, and 13 members met via Zoom to talk about the book. We had a new first in our discussion: when asked, NO ONE SAID THEY LIKED THE BOOK! Cindy V. nominated the book as one of 3 books she remembered reading in high school. We chose this one! Cindy admitted that even she didn’t like the book when she read it in high school; she mentioned that toward the end of the meeting, after we’d had a rollicking discussion, with everyone participating. Seems we all sensed the potential of this book for discussion, so we all read it. We didn’t discuss the personal fortitude it took to get through the book, but a note from my reading said, “By the trip to Spain to go fishing, I didn’t care about the characters.” I felt rewarded later for continuing, and I wrote that “The bullfight writeup was educational and descriptive. I could imagine being there, seeing it from up close, as the characters did.”
Published in 1926, the book was written and took place during the Prohibition years (1920-1933). This is not an excuse but somewhat of an explanation for the rampant alcohol abuse described throughout the story. The book is a historical vignette. Hemingway, apparently inspired by his friends and desperate to have a book accepted for publication, created the plot and the characters almost directly from real adventures with his friends. His renditions of his characters so closely resembled these people that some were offended (and rightly so).
Thinking about the real people behind the characters and the events in the story is interesting, perhaps in a prurient way. Dennis showed us a book about these people, which I had run across and would enjoy perusing: Everybody Behaves Badly: The True Story Behind Hemingway’s Masterpiece The Sun Also Rises, by Lesley M.M. Blume. The following link is to an online article from Vanity Fair. It let me read it but said it was my one and only allowed free article. The article covers in some detail the real people and events that Hemingway used for his novel, plus some of the repercussions: https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2016/05/the-true-story-of-the-booze-bullfights-and-brawls-that-inspired-ernest-hemingways-the-sun-also-rises
Cindy asked who our favorite character was, and we went around the Zoom Room responding:
Joyce M. – None or Romero the bullfighter.
Ken – Jake, because he had a middle-class background and didn’t drink much. Ken said Hemingway’s batch didn’t have a hero.
Teresa – None, maybe the Count.
Dennis – Hemingway describes all characters as vile, but none were probably as bad as he said.
Joanne – Maybe Brett, but none.
Carla – Didn’t like any of them. Carla indicated that the best character traits showed in Guy Montoya, who genuinely wanted the friends to learn to love bullfighting. He was invested in it and loved it.
Marcia – Lady Brett. She kept switching guys and had her own money. All drank too much and needed psychological therapy.
Shirley – Liked the fishing trip.
Cindy T. – All selfish and were considered the Lost Generation (today’s young adults are even more lost). Cindy considers them the purposeless generation. These characters had privileges and rights and threw it all away.
Claudia – Jake – Sensible, a helper to Brett, and seemed to be the most likely one to be modeled after Hemingway’s version of himself.
Lydia – Mike. She saw the 1967 movie (Ava Gardner, Errol Flynn), which had more emphasis on bullfighting than drinking.
Pam – Jake was a good friend to everyone. Most interesting was Robert – he was made for Brett – she would have worn the pants in the family, if they had stayed together. Robert was portrayed as a wuss. Brett was a typical female but was also a “love’em and leave’em” individualist.
Cindy asked us what we thought the meaning of the title might be. Ken immediately stopped all speculation by announcing that it was probably from Ecclesiastes 1:5: “One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever… The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to the place where he arose…”
No comments:
Post a Comment