I like to go into a novel cold so that I form my own impressions of it. This week, I finally read Hemingway’s debut novel, The Sun Also Rises. But I decided to follow it up with this slim volume that bills itself as a “Students’ Companion” since it had found its way onto my shelves a few years ago. It was an interesting exercise. I found some of my first impressions confirmed; Reynolds cast other things I had noticed into a new light. And he pointed out many things I missed. That’s ok; I don’t expect to read a novel like an English professor would the first time through.
I nearly lost patience with it at the outset, though. Before getting to the novel itself, Reynolds offers three short chapters on the historical context, the importance of the work, and its critical reception that managed to be both superficial and wordy.
The following six chapters examine various aspects of the book, and I found them helpful. The first of them (chapter four in all) discusses the narrator, Jake Barnes. One insight stood out: Jake is, among the friends he has shepherded to Pamplona, like the steer in the ring among the bulls. How did I miss that? Well, in my defense, Hemingway put in a misdirect: Mike (one of those boorish, insufferable drunks) maintains that Cohn was a steer. He wasn’t, of course. How could he have spent a week frolicking in San Sebastian with Mike’s fiancée, Brett, if he had no “horns.”
In chapter five, on structural unity, Reynolds asserts that Hemingway’s inexperience as a novelist made Sun a poorly planned novel (yet in chapter eight, on Signs, Motifs, and Themes, he defends Hemingway from the charge that inconsistent time markers point to a similar lack of control over his material; the effect is to show that time is out of joint). Yet, chapter five shows how Hemingway achieves a satisfying unity through stylistic elements (repetition, for instance) and symbols (water, for one). In addition, the chapter includes a reference to Hemingway’s use of the adjective “nice.” I had noticed its frequent appearance when I read Sun but totally missed the tone of irony in its use that Reynolds demonstrates.
The next chapter, on Geography and History, deals with an aspect of the book I had noticed in my own reading: Hemingway’s detailed and accurate notation of streets, restaurants, and cafes. One could use Sun as a travel guide and find one’s way. In this, as well as with the dispassionate (hard-boiled) dialogues, Hemingway influenced generations of spy and detective novelists.
Chapter seven deals with virtues. Reynolds points out that Jake and his friends have no faith in traditional moral values due to the recent war. His friends are promiscuous, bibulous, and financially irresponsible. Unlike them, Jake is punctual, works for a living, and spends less than he earns. To Reynolds, these are not moral virtues but social. Jake’s responsible yet generous approach to money demonstrates that this is the only value left in a world that no longer holds any others. Jake is clear-eyed about it; he only hopes to get value for his money.
Reynolds returns to this in the next chapter, Signs, Motifs, and Themes. He writes: “If money has become the only operative value for this postwar generation, then it is spiritually sicker than it knows.”
This chapter also deals with an aspect of geography Reynolds hadn’t mentioned in chapter six. Jake and a friend go fishing near where Roland took his stand, in the country of Don Quixote. The allusions suggest that Jake, too, is a doomed, deluded romantic hero. He loves Brett and obeys her summons to come to gather her in Madrid after the departure of Romero, the young bullfighter. But because the war has made him into a steer, she’ll remain his unapproachable Dulcinea. He had even introduced her to Romero, an action that costs him his standing among the aficionados at the Hotel Montoya. He can never go back.
Reynolds has a clear take on Barnes. Jake knows his way around. He looks after his friends, representatives of the lost generation. An incredible quantity of alcohol is consumed in the book, but the one time Jake gets blindingly drunk is in the wake of the climactic event, when he is “gored” by Cohn. Jake pimped for the woman he loved, introducing her to the best of the young generation of bullfighters. Montoya will no longer look him in the eye. He rescues Brett in Madrid, but this clean-up action doesn’t cleanse him. Reynolds doesn’t say so, but his portrayal makes it seem that Jake’s relative sobriety and sense of responsibility—compared to that of his friends—only makes him more acutely aware that he, too, is one of the lost.
I’m glad that I didn’t read this book before reading the novel itself, but I was glad to have it nearby to supplement my own take. ( )