The Brilliance and the Badness of "The Sun Also Rises"

"In tenth grade, I read a biography of Ernest Hemingway. I used to claim to have read a lot of books I hadn't read, and I thought that if I read Hemingway's biography I wouldn't have to actually read him. But the biography amazed me. Hemingway didn't go to an office; he travelled around all the time and did only cool things. I, too, wanted to travel around and do only cool things."

"I was a sad, nervous kid, fat, acne-wracked, living in a house where my parents were always shouting. We didn't have much money. I had a brain-damaged older brother and, when he was in the hospital, we would steal whatever we could find there. At home, my father used to wear a thin robe with the name of the hospital printed on the back."

"I had written stories before, but they had all been terrible. I believed I had written only two good lines in my life. These were from a science-fiction story I had attempted: I have seen stars swoon into darkness. I have seen cliffs of stardust a hundred billion miles high. I was so proud of these lines that I would recite them whenever I had the chance."

A teenage reader encountered Ernest Hemingway's biography and imagined a glamorous, itinerant life. The reader grew up sad, nervous, overweight, acne‑ridden, and in a household of constant shouting and limited means, with a brain‑damaged older brother and a father in a hospital robe. Writing appeared as a ticket to adventure, prompting a resolve to become a writer despite earlier poor stories and pride in only two memorable lines. The reader admired Hemingway's plain style for exposing falsity. The Sun Also Rises centers on a war‑injured, impotent American, alcoholic friends in Paris, and a trip to Pamplona for the running of the bulls. The reader sat at a small desk and read.

Read at The New Yorker