The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (first color ebook reader TXT) 📕
Description
The Sun Also Rises was Ernest Hemingway’s first published novel, and the novel that introduced the term “Lost Generation” to describe the generation that came to adulthood during World War I.
The novel follows Jake Barnes, an American expat living in the Parisian café society of the roaring 20s. A wound sustained during the war has left him unable to have sex, and that drives a wedge between him and the woman he loves: Brett Ashley, a twice-divorcée who has embraced the sexual freedom and independence of the age. As they drift through their lives in postwar Paris, they find themselves on a trip with some friends to Spain to witness the Festival of San Fermin, a week-long bacchanal whose highlight is bullfighting.
Hemingway explores the aimless, heavy drinking, and dramatic lives of Jake, Brett, and their friends as a means to reflect the Lost Generation as a whole. Jake is a character of troubled masculinity: his war wound has fundamentally changed him as a man, and his behavior is often tentative, unsure, and placating. On the other hand, Brett is an enigmatic New Woman: free to drink and carouse with the men, she is seductive, but aching for the reassurance and love of a real relationship, and not just sex. The satellites of friends that orbit around them are equally troubled, drinking to excess and fighting with themselves and with others.
These complex characters are now mere spectators for the bullfight, a microcosm of war and death whose masters, the matadors, are the powerful and elegant emblems of masculinity that the Lost Generation finds it impossible to compete against.
Though initially met with mixed reviews, modern critics consider it to be Hemingway’s best novel. The characters and events are largely based on real-life people in Hemingway’s social circle and his time spent in Paris and Spain. Thus, the book sold very well in its first print run, as the expatriate community was eager to read about the coded scandals of their peers. Today it is recognized as a foundational work of the modernist style, and an American classic.
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- Author: Ernest Hemingway
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Anyhow, we were sitting on the terrace of the Café Select, and Harvey Stone had just crossed the street.
“Come on up to the Lilas,” I said.
“I have a date.”
“What time?”
“Frances is coming here at seven-fifteen.”
“There she is.”
Frances Clyne was coming toward us from across the street. She was a very tall girl who walked with a great deal of movement. She waved and smiled. We watched her cross the street.
“Hello,” she said, “I’m so glad you’re here, Jake. I’ve been wanting to talk to you.”
“Hello, Frances,” said Cohn. He smiled.
“Why, hello, Robert. Are you here?” She went on, talking rapidly. “I’ve had the darndest time. This one”—shaking her head at Cohn—“didn’t come home for lunch.”
“I wasn’t supposed to.”
“Oh, I know. But you didn’t say anything about it to the cook. Then I had a date myself, and Paula wasn’t at her office. I went to the Ritz and waited for her, and she never came, and of course I didn’t have enough money to lunch at the Ritz—”
“What did you do?”
“Oh, went out, of course.” She spoke in a sort of imitation joyful manner. “I always keep my appointments. No one keeps theirs, nowadays. I ought to know better. How are you, Jake, anyway?”
“Fine.”
“That was a fine girl you had at the dance, and then went off with that Brett one.”
“Don’t you like her?” Cohn asked.
“I think she’s perfectly charming. Don’t you?”
Cohn said nothing.
“Look, Jake. I want to talk with you. Would you come over with me to the Dome? You’ll stay here, won’t you, Robert? Come on, Jake.”
We crossed the Boulevard Montparnasse and sat down at a table. A boy came up with the Paris Times, and I bought one and opened it.
“What’s the matter, Frances?”
“Oh, nothing,” she said, “except that he wants to leave me.”
“How do you mean?”
“Oh, he told everyone that we were going to be married, and I told my mother and everyone, and now he doesn’t want to do it.”
“What’s the matter?”
“He’s decided he hasn’t lived enough. I knew it would happen when he went to New York.”
She looked up, very bright-eyed and trying to talk inconsequentially.
“I wouldn’t marry him if he doesn’t want to. Of course I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t marry him now for anything. But it does seem to me to be a little late now, after we’ve waited three years, and I’ve just gotten my divorce.”
I said nothing.
“We were going to celebrate so, and instead we’ve just had scenes. It’s so childish. We have dreadful scenes, and he cries and begs me to be reasonable, but he says he just can’t do it.”
“It’s rotten luck.”
“I should say it is rotten luck. I’ve wasted two years and a half on him now. And I don’t know now if any man will ever want to marry me. Two years ago I could have married anybody I wanted, down at Cannes. All the old ones that wanted to marry somebody chic and settle down were crazy about me. Now I don’t think I could get anybody.”
“Sure, you could marry anybody.”
“No, I don’t believe it. And I’m fond of him, too. And I’d like to have children. I always thought we’d have children.”
She looked at me very brightly. “I never liked children much, but I don’t want to think I’ll never have them. I always thought I’d have them and then like them.”
“He’s got children.”
“Oh, yes. He’s got children, and he’s got money, and he’s got a rich mother, and he’s written a book, and nobody will publish my stuff; nobody at all. It isn’t bad, either. And I haven’t got any money at all. I could have had alimony, but I got the divorce the quickest way.”
She looked at me again very brightly.
“It isn’t right. It’s my own fault and it’s not, too. I ought to have known better. And when I tell him he just cries and says he can’t marry. Why can’t he marry? I’d be a good wife. I’m easy to get along with. I leave him alone. It doesn’t do any good.”
“It’s a rotten shame.”
“Yes, it is a rotten shame. But there’s no use talking about it, is there? Come on, let’s go back to the café.”
“And of course there isn’t anything I can do.”
“No. Just don’t let him know I talked to you. I know what he wants.” Now for the first time she dropped her bright, terribly cheerful manner. “He wants to go back to New York alone, and be there when his book comes out so when a lot of little chickens like it. That’s what he wants.”
“Maybe they won’t like it. I don’t think he’s that way. Really.”
“You don’t know him like I do, Jake. That’s what he wants to do. I know it. I know it. That’s why he doesn’t want to marry. He wants to have a big triumph this fall all by himself.”
“Want to go back to the café?”
“Yes. Come on.”
We got up from the table—they had never brought us a drink—and started across the street toward the Select, where Cohn sat smiling at us from behind the marble-topped table.
“Well, what are you smiling at?” Frances asked him. “Feel pretty happy?”
“I was smiling at you and Jake with your secrets.”
“Oh, what I’ve told Jake isn’t any secret. Everybody will know it soon enough. I only wanted to give Jake a decent version.”
“What was it? About your going to England?”
“Yes, about my going to England. Oh, Jake! I forgot to tell you. I’m going to England.”
“Isn’t that fine!”
“Yes, that’s the way it’s done in the very best families. Robert’s sending me. He’s going to give me two hundred pounds and then I’m going to visit friends. Won’t it be lovely? The friends don’t know about it, yet.”
She turned to Cohn and smiled at him. He was not smiling now.
“You were only going to give me a hundred pounds, weren’t you, Robert? But I made him give me two hundred. He’s really very
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