The cover and spine of the first edition is dark blue, with the type in gilt and white. This is one of Hemingway's most collectible novels, and so it is important to be able to identify when you have a true first edition on your hands.
Love does not last, fiestas do not last, generations do not last…Only the earth abides and the endless cycle of daily change.Įditor’s Note: This article was updated to italicize the name of the novel under discussion.Often called the "greatest work" of Ernest Hemingway, one of the most influential writers of the 20th century, The Sun Also Rises was published in 1926 by Charles Scribner's Sons. The Sun Also Rises is not about the sterility of modern life or the decline of love in the modern world it is about a group of characters who go off to a fiesta, who thoroughly enjoy themselves…and then have their pleasure spoiled by the inevitable change that always takes place in human affairs. After all, he was revolutionizing literature, and in every revolution, some heads must roll.” He was, it seems, utilizing his training as journalist and reporting just the facts, ma’am. According to Blume, Hemingway’s fiesta compatriots were unnerved by how realistically and unsympathetically they’d been portrayed in his book: “The portraits would haunt for the rest of their lives, but for Hemingway, his one-time friends were simply collateral damage. (One of Blume’s book’s takeaways: unlike his fictional hero, Hemingway’s war wound did not affect his virility, thank you very much.)īlume’s exploration of the real-life story behind the book shores this up. Jake Barnes, Hemingway’s version of Eliot’s protagonist, is a representative victim of this world, and his famous wound, received in the Great War, is a symbol of the general impotence of the times. It is widely held that The Sun Also Rises is a prose version of The Waste Land its theme, the sterility of life in the modern world. Her research reveals that the novel’s tale of the “Bacchanalian morass of sexual jealousy and gory spectacle” was “nothing but a report on what happened.” In other words, Ernest Hemingway’s famous, career-launching debut novel was essentially gossipy reportage.Īnd yet, subtle authorial movements (readers who know Hemingway’s book will remember how pared-down the language is, how little reflection or interpretation of events the narrator offers) shift the novel into its position as a masterpiece of “The Lost Generation.” As the critic W. Blume tracks Hemingway’s original group of friends on their pilgrimage to the Pamplona bull fights in the summer of 1925 through letters, interviews, and archives. There’s a new book out called Everybody Behaves Badly: The True Story Behind Hemingway’s Masterpiece The Sun Also Rises in this exhaustively researched tome, Lesley M.M.
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