The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway.
I liked this more than I expected to. What helped with this was reading Amor Towle’s introduction in the the new Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition after I read the book. I don’t think you should ever read an introduction before you read the book. Why read pages explaining a book that you haven’t read yet? Doesn’t make sense. But this one was helpful to me, especially when Towles wrote: “It is a testament to Hemingway’s skill as a storyteller that nearly a hundred years after its publication The Sun Also Rises remains deeply satisfying despite essentially being a novel of unpleasant people behaving unpleasantly.”
And that’s it. There is not one character, save maybe (maybe) Jake, that you have any hope that they might construct a meaningful and satisfying life for themselves. Everyone is broken (Jake literally, others mentally) or burned out or just so world-weary and cynical. Alcohol reigns supreme as the coping mechanism of choice. If you thought the characters drank a lot in Russian novels, well, they ain’t got nothing on Hemingway’s version of the Lost Generation.
The sad thing is that it’s not just them. It’s also us and our generation. Those so lost that the next event, the next drink, the next gamble, the next “anything but settling down to a regular life” is always on the horizon and to be chased after. While Hemingway was writing about the 1920’s, it doesn’t seem so different from the 2020’s in many ways.
And that made me sad.
Mama T's Musings 