Whom reviewed Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
oof
1 star
Truly makes one wonder if Hemingway has any thoughts on anything at all.
247 pages
English language
Published March 26, 1986 by Collier Books.
Truly makes one wonder if Hemingway has any thoughts on anything at all.
2.5 stars would be ideal. I'm not at all a fan of Hemingway's sparse, minimalist writing style. I prefer something more balanced, less extreme, between his style and those with excessively flowery, purple-prose styles. Story was OK. Mildly entertaining, but not exactly a gripping tale.
You know what’s the trouble with you? You’re an expatriate. One of the worst type. Haven’t you heard that? Nobody that ever left their own country ever wrote anything worth printing. Not even in the newspapers.
I re-read this for the first time since high school. Characters are constantly drunk and belligerent, arguing over a girl who is just as annoying. There is a fiesta. Bullfights and fights occur. Jake Barnes has a lot of ruminating thoughts. Sometimes they are interesting and sometimes they aren’t. The style is laconic but still manages to bore me to tears. Last part gets a little more interesting but then abruptly ends. Oh well, I am glad to be done. I agree with my past self: this book is a dud, despite the interesting subject matter and environs described. One star for the barest sympathies of what the Lost Generation was like, and half …
You know what’s the trouble with you? You’re an expatriate. One of the worst type. Haven’t you heard that? Nobody that ever left their own country ever wrote anything worth printing. Not even in the newspapers.
I re-read this for the first time since high school. Characters are constantly drunk and belligerent, arguing over a girl who is just as annoying. There is a fiesta. Bullfights and fights occur. Jake Barnes has a lot of ruminating thoughts. Sometimes they are interesting and sometimes they aren’t. The style is laconic but still manages to bore me to tears. Last part gets a little more interesting but then abruptly ends. Oh well, I am glad to be done. I agree with my past self: this book is a dud, despite the interesting subject matter and environs described. One star for the barest sympathies of what the Lost Generation was like, and half a star for the brevity of the book. Minus a million stars for my utter boredom and desire to DNF, were it not for the book count and a book club prompt. This book may have been exciting and groundbreaking once, but that time has passed.‘Favorite’ quotes:※ ‘“Everybody behaves badly,” I said.’※ ‘There was a waiter sitting at one of the tables with his head in his hands.’※ ‘It was beginning to get dark. The fiesta was going on. I began to feel drunk but I did not feel any better.’
An early novel by Hemingway that is clumsy at times in its writing, but shows moments of his brilliance in character and analogy. At times almost like beat poetry, the story moves through Paris and north Spain, telling the story of society, brutality and relationships clearly and concisely. The bizarre loss of self during the bullfighting fiesta in north Spain is resonant as a reader, but ultimately the book falls flat in much of the dialogue and writing.
i remember some pretty sublime prose when i was reading this, but after the fact the thing that sticks in my memory is the strongly misanthropic, pessimistic tone (and the racist, sexist overtones that go with it). the plot of this story involving the actual humans was inane and depressing; the detailed depictions of bullfighting, food and setting got me through it.
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (1995)
Currently I don't even own this one because I gave my copy away. It's that good. Plus it's a classic and if you have not read it: do so.