The Sun Also Rises Genre: Modernist Travelogue; Novel Of Disillusionment
First published in 1926, this book is required reading due to all the mixed reviews and reactions it elicits. It is a love or hate kind of book; with no in-betweens. Described as ‘The quintessential novel of the Lost Generation’, The Sun Also Rises is regarded as one of Ernest Hemingway’s masterpieces that brought his spare but powerful writing style to the fore and established his illustrious career as one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers.
A poignant look at the disillusionment and angst of the post-World War I generation, the novel follows the ebb and flow in the lives of a group of primary 1920s American expatriates as they insert themselves into Paris and Spain. It introduces two of Hemingway’s most unforgettable characters: Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley.
The narration follows the extravagant Brett and the wretched Jake as they journey from the wild nightlife of 1920s Paris to the brutal bullfighting rings of Spain with a motley group of expatriates. It is an age of moral bankruptcy, spiritual dissolution, unrealized love, and vanishing illusions. Hemmingway’s Life in Europe:
In Paris, Hemingway became a key part of what Gertrude Stein would famously call “The Lost Generation.” With Stein as his mentor, Hemingway made the acquaintance of many of the great writers and artists of his generation, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, Pablo Picasso and James Joyce. In 1923, Hemingway and Hadley had a son, John Hadley Nicanor Hemingway. By this time the writer had also begun frequenting the famous Festival of San Fermin in Pamplona, Spain.
In 1925, the couple, joining a group of British and American expatriates, took a trip to the festival that would later provided the basis of Hemingway’s first novel, The Sun Also Rises. The novel is widely considered Hemingway’s greatest work, artfully examining the postwar disillusionment of his generation. Soon after the publication of The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway and Hadley divorced, due in part to his affair with a woman named Pauline Pfeiffer, who would become Hemingway’s second wife shortly after his divorce from Hadley was finalized. The author continued to work on his book of short stories, Men Without Women.
Born on July 21, 1899, in Cicero (now in Oak Park), Illinois, Ernest Hemingway served in World War I and worked in journalism before publishing his story collection In Our Time. He was renowned for novels like The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and The Old Man and the Sea, which won the 1953 Pulitzer. In 1954, Hemingway won the Nobel Prize. He committed suicide on July 2, 1961, in Ketchum, Idaho.
