Welcome to Citizen Scholar! We’re thrilled to be formally launching today and we’re excited that you’ve decided to join us for the journey. We’ve been humbled by the overwhelming support received over the last few weeks, so we thank you sincerely for making this dream possible.
Citizen Scholar has a simple mission: to bring together a community of readers who value the study and discussion of important ideas. More precisely, we’re interested in ideas that can enrich and improve our daily and civic lives. For today's topic, we'll be covering The Sun Also Rises by the author, Ernest Hemingway. The contents of the audio and text formats are identical and meant to accommodate your preferences.
“You are all a lost generation.”
-Gertrude Stein in conversation
"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... The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits.... All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again."
-Ecclesiastes
Ernest Hemingway prefaced his 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises with the above quotes. Gertrude Stein’s words, bolstered by the commercial success of The Sun Also Rises, christened Hemingway’s generation of freewheeling, postwar Paris-living writers and thinkers as the “Lost Generation”. Hemingway’s biblical reference to Ecclesiastes can be interpreted as an expression of meaninglessness or futility; we prefer to view it as an encouraging reminder that come what may – in this case the horrors of the first World War - eventually the “sun also ariseth” and the world around us regenerates. It’s implied that in the meantime, we need not take our own individual trials and tribulations too seriously or hopelessly.
Hemingway’s first novel goes on to deliver a story about the Lost Generation that generally avoids taking itself too seriously. The protagonist and narrator, Jake Barnes, is loosely based on Hemingway himself. Barnes is an American journalist living and working in Paris in the mid 1920’s, and it’s no spoiler to disclose that an injury sustained on the Italian front in World War I has left him impotent. At the start of The Sun Also Rises, we follow Jake through the summer social scene of Paris and are introduced to his crowd of fellow expats, travelers and writers. Lady Brett Ashley is a beautiful, divorced British socialite - she and Jake had fallen in love years before the story begins. While they both still claim to be in love, they’re not in a romantic relationship due to Brett’s unwillingness to accept the implications of his war wound for physical intimacy. Jake’s friend Robert Cohn is a fellow American writer who becomes obsessed with Brett after a brief fling. This leads to conflict with Jake and other characters, like her fiancé Mike Campbell and his girlfriend Frances Clyne.
The characters and events in the book are largely derived from Hemingway’s experiences in Europe during the 1920’s, which is a fascinating topic we’ll cover in a future post. Hemingway took the building blocks of real people and real travels and fused them together with other elements to serve his own storytelling agenda; in some cases, it was to further develop his ideas while in other less savory instances, it was to settle personal scores. For the purposes of this post, we’ll proceed with the characters and events as Hemingway presents them to us in The Sun Also Rises.
After we’re introduced to the characters and their experiences in Paris’s glamorous “Café society”, Jake and his fellow hard-drinking war veteran friend Bill Gorton travel through France to go fishing in the mountains of northeast Spain. They then travel to Pamplona to enjoy the annual Fiesta de San Fermin and the associated famous Running of the Bulls, where they’re joined by Robert Cohn, Mike Campbell and Lady Brett. The characters’ romantic tensions and personal trials continue to play out against the backdrop of Hemingway’s affectionate portrayal of the fiesta, but we’ll avoid spoiling the story for readers of Citizen Scholar who haven’t yet read The Sun Also Rises.
Hemingway’s famous novel is still prominent enough almost a century after publication that spilled digital ink addressing it is still plentiful online. Commentators have tended to focus on a few recurring characteristics. They’re not wrong to characterize it as a book about the Lost Generation that mixes portrayals of the glamorous lifestyle in with judgements on its perceived aimlessness and questionable morals. Neither are they wrong to identify sub-themes as various as the nature of masculinity, gender relations, [obstructed] love, the scars of war, aging, victimhood, resentment, leisurely pursuits, etc. Hemingway’s ability to say something meaningful about all of these matters in a brief novel is possible thanks to his terse, modernist style. His efficient craftsmanship with words, where the minimum of beautiful diction is used to show rather than tell the reader, is another common talking point about The Sun Also Rises. It was his second successful book and his first successful novel which made him a star in his own lifetime. The Sun Also Rises cemented his reputation as a writer whose style is still studied and emulated today.
All of these common observations are true, but we also humbly posit that they’re incomplete. We view The Sun Also Rises as a vehicle for exploring the beautiful, the ugly and the frivolous aspects of life; Hemingway scholars can dispute whether this was his purposeful intention in writing the book. We welcome all critics to chime in on why we’re so focused on how high the book’s highs are rather than where they’re weighed down by the frivolity of some characters or the difficulties they face. Most commentators looking for the beauty go to the glamor of the Parisian social scene of the time, or to the reverential portrayal of bull-fighting that Hemingway tries to seduce the reader with. We believe one can simultaneously love animals and yet covet the title of aficionado after reading this passage:
“Aficion means passion. An aficionado is one who is passionate about the bull-fights. All the good bull-fighters stayed at Montoya's hotel; that is, those with aficion stayed there. The commercial bull-fighters stayed once, perhaps, and then did not come back. The good ones came each year. In Montoya's room were their photographs. The photographs were dedicated to Juanito Montoya or to his sister. The photographs of bull-fighters Montoya had really believed in were framed. Photographs of bull-fighters who had been without aficion Montoya kept in a drawer of his desk. They often had the most flattering inscriptions. But they did not mean anything. One day Montoya took them all out and dropped them in the waste-basket. He did not want them around.
…
Montoya could forgive anything of a bull-fighter who had aficion. He could forgive attacks of nerves, panic, bad unexplainable actions, all sorts of lapses. For one who had aficion he could forgive anything. At once he forgave me all my friends. Without his ever saying anything they were simply a little something shameful between us...”
Other parts of the story are at least as much of a pleasure to read. Rather than spoiling them all for the uninitiated, we’d encourage the first-time reader to keep an eye out for the glorious trout fishing trip to the Irati River in the Spanish countryside. It’s complemented by many other simple joys in Hemingway’s portraits of travel, companionship, enjoyment of the outdoors, cultural activities, quality food and [adult] beverages that all scream “the good life” (as we see it). Hemingway allocates precious words, despite his sparse style, to vividly describe the merrymaking in Pamplona and all of the accessible but remarkable refreshments the characters enjoy in France and Spain.
On the other hand, Hemingway generally presents the ugly in the form of tragedies. The one major exception where bald ugliness is present in The Sun Also Rises is where characters express prejudice against Jews, women or other groups, or casually use slurs that civilized societies no longer tolerate. These instances seem to be there to reveal the characters’ own flaws rather than to relay a genuine belief held by Hemingway. The outbursts tend to be placed where a character, often in a drunken state, leans on a bigoted narrative due to some other grievance. We think this is meant to show the darker and unattractive elements present in some characters’ souls. It’s important to remember that The Sun Also Rises is a novel where none of the main characters are all that sympathetic to the reader; instead, Hemingway uses peripheral characters as symbols of virtues he cares about (i.e. the hotelier Montoya as the purely passionate sportsman), and compares them to the Lost Generation characters he tends to paint as broken or frivolous.
As for the tragic elements in the story, the preeminent tragedy is that Jake and Brett remain deeply in love yet suffer with the permanent consequences of Jake’s war wound. World War I casts a shadow in more subtle ways throughout the book as well, which is fitting given it was the defining event that the Lost Generation came of age with. Jake, Bill & Mike Campbell are all war veterans who repeatedly allude to coping with trauma inflicted by the war. In case the reader misses these recurring instances, Hemingway makes sure to have the characters meet the dispirited and lonely British WWI veteran Wilson-Harris, who spends a brief time with them and remarks:
Harris: "I say. You don't know what it's meant to me to have you chaps up here."
Jake: "We've had a grand time, Harris."
Harris was a little tight.
Harris: "I say. Really you don't know how much it means. I've not had much fun since the war."
The trio of male friends, Brett and other characters also display different consequences of excessive alcohol consumption. They’re constantly drinking and drinking more when faced with setbacks, and display the related characteristics of memory loss, financial trouble, bullying and brawling. Hemingway notably juxtaposes the group of key characters that travels to the Fiesta de San Fermin with the Spanish peasants who swarm the town from the surrounding countryside.
“They got their money's worth in the wine-shops. Money still had a definite value in hours worked and bushels of grain sold. Late in the fiesta it would not matter what they paid, nor where they bought.”
Over the course of several nights in Pamplona, hard-working people of modest means escalate their revelry until they’re buying drinks for others generously and dancing endlessly. Meanwhile, the “best and the brightest” expats in town from Paris display less gratitude for leisure time that’s a less dear commodity to them. Instead, they spend their time being unhappy drunks and warring with each other on the basis of three of them being in love with the same present woman, Lady Brett. Brett in turn loves the impotent one, just had an affair with his friend Robert Cohn, and is set to marry Mike Campbell, who is aware of the affair and resents it. On the same trip, she’ll become enamored with a young bullfighter, with regrettable results for all involved.
When he wrote The Sun Also Rises ninety-five years ago, the Lost Generation was the subject Hemingway was best equipped to write about for the book. This novel isn’t exactly a page-turner for events in the plot itself - while many at the time read it as gossip because its characters were known to be based on real socialites, it’s stood the test of time because of how Hemingway makes the reader feel and what he makes the reader think. Many elements of the book related to the Lost Generation also seem relevant to today’s Millennials and Zoomers. Perhaps this is because the privileges and problems of the 1920’s literary elite have become more widespread with the march of time and of higher education. Today’s generational cohorts possess identities forged in events other than World War I, but would likely recognize the importance of many key themes in the book. A rising generation being criticized by preceding generations for its aimlessness or moral degeneracy is a common motif throughout history. Love and the pain of its loss still matter, especially when presented as Hemingway does. The appreciation of beauty should always matter to civilized people. The urge to travel, to engage with the world and with companions and to experience the dramatic range of what life has to offer isn’t as universally appreciated, but if you’ve made it this far you likely know where we stand. Thank you to Mr. Hemingway for the inspiration.
All the best,
The Citizen Scholar Team
Discussion #4: The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway