Tuesday, 15 September 2015

The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway



This is one of the first “real” books I’ve read. I was 14 and I was moving my first tentative steps as a pseudo-intellectual. I picked it pretty much because I had heard of Hemingway, felt that if he was good enough to be a myth for my parents’ generation it was going to be good enough for me.

Fast forward another fourteen years and I now wonder whether this is one of those few books that I should re-read. I liked it back then, but I now wonder whether I liked it because I felt like I had to, or because that’s how I actually felt. I find it hard to believe that I could really understand, even vaguely, the dynamics between Jake and Brett Ashley let alone having actually ever felt any of the feelings and desires they were talking about (despite the fact that, having kissed three girls in middle-school I felt like I was a great expert in the field of women).

One thing that I surely did appreciate was the travelling aspects of the novel, and I think that quite a bit of my love for Paris, and for Spain and its traditions actually come from this book.   

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