Hemingway, Ernest. The Sun Also Rises. Scribner’s New York 1926. F; 4/25.

This is the first time I’ve read this but I remember the bulls in Pamplona in the 1957 movie with Tyrone Power and Ava Gardner, which I saw a long time ago. It’s Hemingway’s first novel. Some critics say it’s his best. I think it’s terrific.

When I reviewed Hemingway’s short stories I was in a sententious frame of mind and said they were “monstrously moral and ambiguous”. Whether this novel is all of that or actually more, its matter-of-fact narration by the partially autobiographical Jake Barnes points to something more subtle and powerful than the hard facts of life, death, bullfighting and alcohol that carry the plot. Bogart, Sam Shepard, and Clint Eastwood also picture deceptively simple masculinity as representing something a lot more interesting.

Jake Barnes, impotent after an injury in World War I, is still platonically in love with beautiful Lady Brett Ashley. They socialize with a group of American ex-pats in Paris after the war. Eventually Jake and friends Bill Gorton and Robert Cohn plan a trip to Spain for fishing and watching bullfights. There they join Brett and her husband-to-be Mike Campbell. Brett has also spent some time alone with Robert.

The action builds as the characters drink and watch the famous bull run and bullfights in Pamplona. A man is gored to death by the bulls running through the streets. There is excitement around the bullfights, particularly about a young bullfighter Pedro Romero (Jake says “(Romero) turned to me. He was the best– looking boy I ha(d) ever seen.”) who is serious about the sport and its risks and who attracts Brett: “My God! he’s a lovely boy,” Brett said. “And how I would love to see him get into those clothes. He must use a shoe–horn.”

Brett leaves with the boy Pedro. Jake returns to France, quietly enjoys the country and towns and then gets a telegram from Brett who has left Pedro, calling him to help her. The story ends with them wishing they could have continued being lovers.

There’s a tone to all this combining the aftermath of the war and its harm, Jake and Brett’s previous romance that devolves into protective friendship, the deadly but magnificent bullfights:

…Romero profiled in front of the bull, drew the sword out from the folds of the muleta, rose on his toes, and sighted along the blade. The bull charged as Romero charged. Romero’s left hand dropped the muleta over the bull’s muzzle to blind him, his left shoulder went forward between the horns as the sword went in, and for just an instant he and the bull were one, Romero way out over the bull, the right arm extended high up to where the hilt of the sword had gone in between the bull’s shoulder. Then the figure was broken. There was a little jolt as Romero came clear, and then he was standing, one hand up, facing the bull, his shirt ripped out from under his sleeve, the white blowing in the wind, and the bull, the red sword hilt tight between his shoulders, his head going down and his legs settling.

…and Jake’s cool flat observation:

(As his good friend he might never see again leaves) He went in through the gate to the train. The porter went ahead with the bags. I watched the train pull out. Bill was at one of the windows. The window passed, the rest of the train passed, and the tracks were empty. I went outside to the car.

Here are a couple of thoughts that might explain my impression of Hemingway’s transparent writing’s indirect impact.

From my review of the short stories:

(I)t’s a very capable storyteller’s struggle with a moral and violent world not making sense …Yes, we say, I have at least in imagination been out fishing and captivated by that wilderness, in that bullring afraid or foolishly overconfident, at that society party watching my girlfriend trying to attract another man, in that wartime Spanish bar with imposters risking their lives. I’ve experienced “misunderstood gaiety coming into contact with deadly seriousness”, and reading this story I experience it again.

… and this from Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon:

If a writer of prose knows enough of what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.

I read a comment about Wallace’s Infinite Jest  suggesting something similar: when you write in a certain way the reader can be drawn to understand things you understand but aren’t saying. But my experience of Wallace and Hemingway makes me think that when you write in a certain way the reader can also experience things you don’t know and haven’t experienced.

At serious risk of making the mistake called apophenia* I’m inclined to conclude there is a pathway to experience in art that although it’s insubstantial is real. Some people I know might call that proof of metaphysical idealism.

Draw your own conclusions. But I can’t imagine you won’t be moved by this powerful story.

9.4/9.2

* The human tendency to perceive meaningful connections or patterns in random or meaningless data, objects, or events.