The Sun Also Rises (or) Everyone Gets Drunk and Watches a Bull Fight

Minnie and Ajax

     First of all I'd like to start this post off by apologizing (again) for not posting for months. It wasn't that I was really busy, I was just going through my typical Winter existential crisis. I also had to move, adopted two wonderful kittens, got a new job, and turned 22. My new job is something I'll be writing about one Quintus whom I wrote about a while ago, well I had to find him a new home. He was a bit of an escape artist and he ran away one night. I was heartbroken, but relieved when he came back two weeks later. I found him a new home where he gets all the love he can handle from all the playmates he could ever want. Now that you're all caught up, let us dive together into Ernest Hemingway's "Everyone Gets Drunk and Watches a Bull Fight".
     Now were you to look this book up and get the scholarly take on it, they would tell you it's an important novel of a group of expatriates during the time of the "lost generation". The lost generation (a term

Hemingway's Pals

Hemingway himself popularized) are those who were coming of age during/after WWI. This was something Hemingway knew about as he was a part of the lost generation, and he was also an expatriate who liked to hang out with a group other expatriates (made any connections yet?). Now that we've taken a brief tour of a small portion of the background information, let's dive into the story.
     The main character is Jake Barnes who is a journalist in Paris, he has a series of friends who like to pop up occasionally and talk about everything and nothing. The book is from Jake's point of view and he really doesn't seem to give a flying fart in space what is happening around him. It's all pretty mild until Lady Brett Ashley shows up. See, Jake is in love with Brett and she's pretty stoked about him but, as there always is, something isn't right between them. It takes a while in the book to get to the point, but Jake was in an accident during the war and is ,consequently, impotent. Hemingway goes all clever about it and slips in a part about the steers from the Spanish bull fights and we all clap, give our oohs and aahs and are amazed at his wit (but really it is pretty witty). Anywho, Lady Ashley simply can't get over the fact that Jake is impotent and Jake doesn't feel like a full man and blah, blah, blah. So he must watch Lady Ashley parade by him with a different man every few months or so.
     Never fear Jake's life isn't all boring, he likes bull fights! I'm sorry, he doesn't like them he LOVES them. He takes his rag-tag group of lost generationers with to Spain to watch the bull fights and he just goes crazy over it all. Jake is basically the only one who can speak Spanish and this combined with his love of bull-fighting endears him to the people of the town. Now at this point it has been well established that Jake and his friends are most excellent at getting tight (drunk) on a regular basis. Even Lady Ashley has been trashed out of her mind yelling loudly in a hotel lobby. Jake usually keeps his shit together, probably because he has to watch out for the reader so they can continue to comprehend his thoughts. After several pages of some exciting bull fighting descriptions, Lady Ashley decides(most likely drunkenly) that she must get the young bull fighter Romero for her own. Never-mind that she'd had recent relationships (probably mostly relations, because that's all that seems to matter to her) with two of the men who are with the group. For some reason no one (not even the townspeople) are too excited about Lady Ashley getting with a 19 year old, so the two run off together. Jake's left with a friend who stabbed him in the back by getting with Lady Ashley (but let's be real who hasn't), and the fiancee that she decided to leave behind.
     Only a matter of days pass when Jake receives a telegram from Lady Ashley saying she has left the young bull fighter because she didn't want to ruin his career (too late you harlot!). Jake has to come to the rescue and let Lady Brett Ashley cry upon his shoulder. In the end she decides to go back to her fiancee, a secure choice for her since Jake is impotent and all. Brett tells Jake that she believes they could have had a wonderful life together and then Jake tells her "Yet, isn't that pretty to think so?". And that's it, that's all he says to her.
     At this point you maybe thinking to yourself what in the hell is this book about, well I already told you! It's the lost generation! Nothing has to make sense as long as we've got alcohol and aren't in America but are

Ernest, at his finest

American's! Oh, and we have got to have those bullfights in there! I didn't really touch on the antisemitism that comes up with the character of Robert Cohn (the best friend of Jake's that slept with Brett), because it's deep and meaningful and exhausting. Hemingway was just writing about what was happening around him, and it makes for a good read. I would recommend it but only if you don't mind reading about everyone having a damn drink in their hand on every damn page. You'd think after a while it would just be implied that they're all drinking like fish, but Hemingway makes double sure.