15 thoughts on “Lost in Spain: “The Sun Also Rises”

  1. The Sun Also Rises, the greater of the two great English novels written in and about this time and place

    I should know that one, but I’m drawing a blank.Report

    1. I was sort of riffing on something Ronald Weber wrote in his book that this group of American writers in Paris working for newspapers produced two great novels about American writers in Paris working for newspapers with the other being Tropic of Cancer. I go back and forth on Tropic of Cancer all the time and get into arguments with a writer friend about it, but on this day, I chose to agree with Weber.Report

      1. As you likely know, Orwell thought a lot of ToC too. I should reread it sometime, probably being old enough now to appreciate it as something other than a really dirty book.Report

      2. I read it when I was fairly young and remember thinking highly of it, but never getting the time to go back. I remember being impressed not so much by the sex. Although I was the right age, I figure that writers who talk about all the sex they’re having are probably lying. I was impressed more by the language and the realization that prose could actually do that! I will return to it.Report

  2. And, as I should have said the first time, this is wonderful stuff. So much of 1920s culture now seems like a giddy, drunken thumbing its nose at reality, which ended in ’29 only because the money ran out.Report

  3. Great post. Really interesting. The 20’s were such an interesting time, especially since WW1 is almost lost to history here in the US. So much of what many conservatives say they hate about the modern world started in the dust of WW1. But without knowing why so many fell away from religion, many traditional norms withered, old empires crumbled and all the various post moderny type movements started you can’t really know how we got here.Report

  4. Nicely done, Rufus. I’ve always liked Hemingway, in small doses. His short stories are pretty dang fine, and his short long pieces are too. His long stuff inescapably suffers from containing too much of hisownself, too much Hemingway.Report

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