Braddy Reads The Sun Also Rises

I was a total HACK of an English major. I spent three years in advanced English classes in high school, studied literature intensely all throughout college, and graduated college at 24. Yet I'd never read a single novel by Ernest Hemingway until now.

The Sun Also Rises now probably sits near the top of the "Best Books I've Ever Read" list (and it's been a fine year for those). Hemingway's terse, unadorned prose actually conveys more than enough information to get across, not just the plot, but the subtext as well. For something so seemingly simplistic, it's surprisingly elegant.

There isn't much going on in the plot. Jake Barnes is a journalist in Paris, and he is in love with Lady Brett Ashley. He was shot in the war. They go to Spain and watch the bull fights, and they all get very drunk. The end. However, Hemingway crafted a group of characters that feel more grounded in reality than just about any I've read elsewhere (the fact that they may be based on actual colleagues of his certainly helps). As a result, their problems feel more severe than melodramatic crises of other novels.

Hemingway's style of writing is sometimes referred to as the Iceberg Theory, wherein most of the substance of what he writes is not readily apparent, or "under the surface." With that in mind, reading the novel becomes something of a psychological study. All that drinking certainly becomes more worrisome...

Hemingway's writing style probably isn't for everyone, but I found it nearly revelatory. The Sun Also Rises is about the perfect novel for me: quick to read, engaging, and stylistically unique. Once I finished it, I wanted to start reading more Hemingway right away - and that's a pretty big compliment.