The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (first color ebook reader TXT) đź“•
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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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Bill was tired after the bullfight. So was I. We both took a bullfight very hard. We sat and ate the eggs and I watched Belmonte and the people at his table. The men with him were tough-looking and businesslike.
“Come on over to the café,” Bill said. “I want an absinthe.”
It was the last day of the fiesta. Outside it was beginning to be cloudy again. The square was full of people and the fireworks experts were making up their set pieces for the night and covering them over with beech branches. Boys were watching. We passed stands of rockets with long bamboo stems. Outside the café there was a great crowd. The music and the dancing were going on. The giants and the dwarfs were passing.
“Where’s Edna?” I asked Bill.
“I don’t know.”
We watched the beginning of the evening of the last night of the fiesta. The absinthe made everything seem better. I drank it without sugar in the dripping glass, and it was pleasantly bitter.
“I feel sorry about Cohn,” Bill said. “He had an awful time.”
“Oh, to hell with Cohn,” I said.
“Where do you suppose he went?”
“Up to Paris.”
“What do you suppose he’ll do?”
“Oh, to hell with him.”
“What do you suppose he’ll do?”
“Pick up with his old girl, probably.”
“Who was his old girl?”
“Somebody named Frances.”
We had another absinthe.
“When do you go back?” I asked.
“Tomorrow.”
After a little while Bill said: “Well, it was a swell fiesta.”
“Yes,” I said; “something doing all the time.”
“You wouldn’t believe it. It’s like a wonderful nightmare.”
“Sure,” I said. “I’d believe anything. Including nightmares.”
“What’s the matter? Feel low?”
“Low as hell.”
“Have another absinthe. Here, waiter! Another absinthe for this señor.”
“I feel like hell,” I said.
“Drink that,” said Bill. “Drink it slow.”
It was beginning to get dark. The fiesta was going on. I began to feel drunk but I did not feel any better.
“How do you feel?”
“I feel like hell.”
“Have another?”
“It won’t do any good.”
“Try it. You can’t tell; maybe this is the one that gets it. Hey, waiter! Another absinthe for this señor!”
I poured the water directly into it and stirred it instead of letting it drip. Bill put in a lump of ice. I stirred the ice around with a spoon in the brownish, cloudy mixture.
“How is it?”
“Fine.”
“Don’t drink it fast that way. It will make you sick.”
I set down the glass. I had not meant to drink it fast.
“I feel tight.”
“You ought to.”
“That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it?”
“Sure. Get tight. Get over your damn depression.”
“Well, I’m tight. Is that what you want?”
“Sit down.”
“I won’t sit down,” I said. “I’m going over to the hotel.”
I was very drunk. I was drunker than I ever remembered having been. At the hotel I went upstairs. Brett’s door was open. I put my head in the room. Mike was sitting on the bed. He waved a bottle.
“Jake,” he said. “Come in, Jake.”
I went in and sat down. The room was unstable unless I looked at some fixed point.
“Brett, you know. She’s gone off with the bullfighter chap.”
“No.”
“Yes. She looked for you to say goodbye. They went on the seven o’clock train.”
“Did they?”
“Bad thing to do,” Mike said. “She shouldn’t have done it.”
“No.”
“Have a drink? Wait while I ring for some beer.”
“I’m drunk,” I said. “I’m going in and lie down.”
“Are you blind? I was blind myself.”
“Yes,” I said, “I’m blind.”
“Well, bung-o,” Mike said. “Get some sleep, old Jake.”
I went out the door and into my own room and lay on the bed. The bed went sailing off and I sat up in bed and looked at the wall to make it stop. Outside in the square the fiesta was going on. It did not mean anything. Later Bill and Mike came in to get me to go down and eat with them. I pretended to be asleep.
“He’s asleep. Better let him alone.”
“He’s blind as a tick,” Mike said. They went out.
I got up and went to the balcony and looked out at the dancing in the square. The world was not wheeling any more. It was just very clear and bright, and inclined to blur at the edges. I washed, brushed my hair. I looked strange to myself in the glass, and went downstairs to the dining-room.
“Here he is!” said Bill. “Good old Jake! I knew you wouldn’t pass out.”
“Hello, you old drunk,” Mike said.
“I got hungry and woke up.”
“Eat some soup,” Bill said.
The three of us sat at the table, and it seemed as though about six people were missing.
Book III XIXIn the morning it was all over. The fiesta was finished. I woke about nine o’clock, had a bath, dressed, and went downstairs. The square was empty and there were no people on the streets. A few children were picking up rocket-sticks in the square. The cafés were just opening and the waiters were carrying out the comfortable white wicker chairs and arranging them around the marble-topped tables in the shade of the arcade. They were sweeping the streets and sprinkling them with a hose.
I sat in one of the wicker chairs and leaned back comfortably. The waiter was in no hurry to come. The white-paper announcements of the unloading of the bulls and the big schedules of special trains were still up on the pillars of the arcade. A waiter wearing a blue apron came out with a bucket of water and a cloth, and commenced to tear down the notices, pulling the paper off in strips and washing and rubbing away the paper that stuck to the stone. The fiesta was over.
I drank a coffee and after a
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