More on Hemingway

The Sun Also Rises is presented as a type of guidebook. Everywhere the narrator takes us, he has been before. By choosing this narration style, “Hemingway is giving up one of the major tactics of the classical novel—the use, as a focus of perception of a character who is taken by surprise.” But by leaving out Jake being surprised or taken severely off guard, he’s presented as jaded, possibly from the war.

The emphasis on time/itinerary is something Jake probably gained while in the war. “Hemingway’s prose adopts this pattern; the reader is made aware of the hour of day, the day of the week, etc., the chapters often begin in the early morning as if the purpose were to set down all the details of a programmed schedule, not forgetting the essential time off for meals and refreshment.” This type of mentality-one of order, structure-is similar to one that would be enforced in the military. 

Jake also doesn’t leave himself with much time left over for idleness. Atherton states, “The catalogue of places is thus a means to exhaust, to use up by correspondence, the characters’ pool of available time, and thus create the impression that the narrative eye is truing the action steadily, unwaveringly, without letup.” In addition to this, however, Jake is not left with much idle time; time to just think. And maybe this is a purposeful decision on his part, for left to his own devices he’d probably recount the horrors of the war, etc something Hemingway himself had admitted to being extremely affected by. By filling his time and creating an itinerary for life, Jake is able to obtain the ordered mentality enforced on him while he was in the military, but he is also able to escape, or distract himself rather, from memories of a past reality. This could explain the narrator’s “obsessive aversion to the iterative.” It’s obsessive because Jake needs to be obsessed; needs to create distraction from something he doesn’t want to face; from the horrors he’s trying to escape.

Even when he discusses the war, it’s very matter-of-factly. Never extremely detailed. Jake states, “I got hurt in the war.” Hemingway’s general minimalistic style also portrays something of one who is jaded. One who is jaded from, presumably a war, has seen such horrors and blocks a lot out due to this, not delving deep into emotion for that would be a dangerous and guaranteed route to sadness, madness even. 

Jake has learned to value stability and an ordered mindset/lifestyle from the war. He finds a certain sexiness in stability describing ‘a remarkably attractive woman’ as ‘fine and straight.’

But Jake doesn’t just live in his own itinerary, for that wouldn’t be enough distraction. He  talks to his friends about their schedules too, but also watches the people of his surrounding’s itineraries stating,“I watched a good-looking girl walk past the table and watched her go up the street and lost sight of her, and watched her go up the street and lost sight of her, and watched another, and then saw the first one coming back again.”

Atherton discusses that this talk of itineraries is also, at times, used as a weapon. Atherton gives the example of Frances discussing her future voyage to England. This is hard on Cohn, as it ‘precipitates his “trip”.’ Hemingway’s lack of directly introducing or giving the reader an emotion or intention, but instead merely throwing it in, imitates how natural speech is spoken and how humans interact normally: being passive aggressive, etc. The characters in The Sun Also Rises are therefore relatable as you love to hate them. Their subtleties in language are something most readers have confronted on a daily basis and therefore understand intrinsically, without description, making this book less dense and more entertaining…at least at its surface. 

We don’t really get a sense of Jake’s past-who he was before this account. Due to this lack of background, we lose “what otherwise would have been part of a biography and thus part of the fullness of character into assigned attribute and function.” Jake simply ‘knows’ and the reader puts a false trust in him due to this presented knowledge/demeanor.

He speaks to us as a ‘guide’ describing the colors of things almost presenting everything as though we were a tourist as when he describes the ballroom. And, due to a lack of background (insight) we trust him as our guide. We have no reason not to trust him.

Jake describing his surroundings to us in this manner allows us to gain insight into his own mentality and the truth is revealed that he is, in fact a tourist too-an American, an outsider, hanging out with his American ‘buddies’ in establishments taken over by Americans, as we see when Jake goes to a restaurant recently reported to be clear of Americans, to find that Americans have now raided the place. 

This is basically what Hemingway and his crew did when they came to Paris. Hemingway was mostly socializing with other Americans who had come to Paris either to escape, get away, but nonetheless who were American. Sure he lived in Paris, but he was living in a Paris in which him and his American friends created, not a Paris true to its own culture. 

Jake tries to deny the fact that he is a tourist, speaking rather demeaningly about these people, but by presenting certain colors and places in this rather ‘tourist-broucher’-y way, we again gain insight into his own perspective, which is that he is seeing everything as though he is different; everything is new; he is a tourist. Ironically, Hemingway warns us against viewing ‘fiction as life’ through the ‘unfortunate fledging novelist’ Cohn, who himself “has “read and reread” The Purple Land as a “guidebook to what life holds.” Through this, Hemingway is essentially providing us with a guidebook through The Sun Also Rises, but warns us (through Cohn’s character) not to take it too seriously.

Jake is an expat. He is out of his homeland, but he still remains in a security net (similar to Hemingway in this way). He’s surrounding himself with Americans, speaking primarily english. Atherton points out Jake's interaction with the road. When Jake travels, the road is not ‘open,’ rather there’s always a destination in sight-an “itinerary.” Atherton states, “Jake only follows a road laid out.” This itinerary acts as a barrier between Jake being a wanderer, and Jake merely being an American abroad. 

Atherton states that, “Reciting an itinerary serves here as a form of sharing.” And the characters often do share their itineraries. It’s almost a bit showy, like ‘Look what I did! Look how integrated I’m becoming in this culture.’ Again this is similar to the expats of Hemingway’s crew. They almost seem like posers-inventing their own community within Paris and then pretending like that is Paris. This theme reoccurs throughout An Immovable Feast, The Sun Also Rises, and Stein’s writing. 

Their group stuck together, working to create new styles and improve their craft. “The resistance to metaphor that the text exhibits can also be seen as a denial of the responsibility for narrating, a desire to shift it elsewhere.” Hemingway and Stein were very focused on changing styles. This is what their community in Paris was trying to do essentially: create new style; create a new world; create a new reality.

And we see a lot of elements of Hemingway and other expats in The Sun Also Rises, such as the war, but also poverty and excess. Harvey stating, “I hadn’t eaten for five days.” Then further Hemingway mentions that Cohn, “Playing for higher stakes than he could afford in some rather steep bridge games with his New York connections, he had held cards and won several hundred dollars.” We’re presented excess, Hemingway describing characters going out and drinking/dining frequently, in an almost eerily similar manner to Bateman and his friends in American Psycho. The Count states to Bret, “You’re always drinking my dear.” Poverty, the war, and excess tied these expats together. 

“There is not an inch of the novel’s terrain that has not been previously reconnoitered, so that the narrating appears as on uninterrupted recognition of sites visited before, places reseen and refitted into some preexisting scheme of things.” This is similar to the way memory works. Hemingway’s choices and essentially style leads to a very realistic mentality. Jake states, “I suppose it is some association of ideas that makes those dead places in a journey…Perhaps I had read something about it once.” The memory works in layers, building upon itself to create a person; an individual; a Jake. Hemingway’s minimalist narrative is ultimately able to re-create reality in an extremely realistic and subtle manner.