The simplicity of his style is deceptive. Bloom writes that it is the effective use of parataxis that elevates Hemingway’s prose. Drawing on the Bible, Walt Whitman and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Hemingway wrote in deliberate understatement and he heavily incorporated parataxis, which in some cases almost becomes cinematic. His skeletal sentences were crafted in response to Henry James’s observation that World War I had «used up words,» explains Hemingway scholar Zoe Trodd, who writes that his style is similar to a «multi-focal» photographic reality. The syntax, which lacks subordinating conjunctions, creates static sentences. The photographic «snapshot» style creates a collage of images. Hemingway omits internal punctuation (colons, semicolons, dashes, parentheses) in favor of short declarative sentences, which are meant to build, as events build, to create a sense of the whole. He also uses techniques analogous to cinema, such as cutting quickly from one scene to the next, or splicing one scene into another. Intentional omissions allow the reader to fill the gap as though responding to instructions from the author and create three-dimensional prose. Biographer James Mellow writes that the bullfighting scenes are presented with a crispness and clarity that evoke the sense of a newsreel.
Hemingway also uses color and visual art techniques to convey emotional range in his descriptions of the Irati River. In Translating Modernism: Fitzgerald and Hemingway, Ronald Berman compares Hemingway’s treatment of landscape with that of the post-Impressionist painter Paul Cézanne. During a 1949 interview, Hemingway told Lillian Ross that he learned from Cézanne how to «make a landscape.» In comparing writing to painting he told her, «This is what we try to do in writing, this and this, and woods, and the rocks we have to climb over.» The landscape is seen subjectively—the viewpoint of the observer is paramount. To Jake, landscape «meant a search for a solid form …. not existentially present in his life in Paris.»
Reception
Hemingway’s first novel was arguably his best and most important and came to be seen as an iconic modernist novel, although Reynolds emphasizes that Hemingway was not philosophically a modernist. In the book, his characters epitomized the post-war expatriate generation for future generations. He had received good reviews for his volume of short stories, In Our Time, of which Edmund Wilson wrote, «Hemingway’s prose was of the first distinction.» Wilson’s comments were enough to bring attention to the young writer.
Good reviews came in from many major publications. Conrad Aiken wrote in the New York Herald Tribune, «If there is a better dialogue to be written today I do not know where to find it»; and Bruce Barton wrote in The Atlantic that Hemingway «writes as if he had never read anybody’s writing, as if he had fashioned the art of writing himself,» and that the characters «are amazingly real and alive.» Many reviewers, among them H. L. Mencken, praised Hemingway’s style, use of understatement, and tight writing.
Other critics, however, disliked the novel. The Nation’s critic believed Hemingway’s hard-boiled style was better suited to the short stories published in In Our Time than his novel. Writing in the New Masses, Hemingway’s friend John Dos Passos asked: «What’s the matter with American writing these days? …. The few unsad young men of this lost generation will have to look for another way of finding themselves than the one indicated here.» Privately he wrote Hemingway an apology for the review. The reviewer for the Chicago Daily Tribune wrote of the novel, «The Sun Also Rises is the kind of book that makes this reviewer at least almost plain angry.» Some reviewers disliked the characters, among them the reviewer for The Dial, who thought the characters were shallow and vapid; and The Nation and Atheneum deemed the characters boring and the novel unimportant. The reviewer for The Cincinnati Enquirer wrote of the book that it «begins nowhere and ends in nothing.»
Hemingway’s family hated it. His mother, Grace Hemingway, distressed that she could not face the criticism at her local book study class—where it was said that her son was «prostituting a great ability …. to the lowest uses»—expressed her displeasure in a letter to him:
The critics seem to be full of praise for your style and ability to draw word pictures but the decent ones always regret that you should use such great gifts in perpetuating the lives and habits of so degraded a strata of humanity …. It is a doubtful honor to produce one of the filthiest books of the year …. What is the matter? Have you ceased to be interested in nobility, honor and fineness in life? …. Surely you have other words in your vocabulary than «damn» and «bitch»—Every page fills me with a sick loathing.
Still, the book sold well, and young women began to emulate Brett while male students at Ivy League universities wanted to become «Hemingway heroes.» Scribner’s encouraged the publicity and allowed Hemingway to «become a minor American phenomenon»—a celebrity to the point that his divorce from Richardson and marriage to Pfeiffer attracted media attention.
Reynolds believes The Sun Also Rises could have been written only circa 1925: it perfectly captured the period between World War I and the Great Depression, and immortalized a group of characters. In the years since its publication, the novel has been criticized for its antisemitism, as expressed in the characterization of Robert Cohn. Reynolds explains that although the publishers complained to Hemingway about his description of bulls, they allowed his use of Jewish epithets, which showed the degree to which antisemitism was accepted in the US after World War I. Hemingway clearly makes Cohn unlikeable not only as a character but as a character who is Jewish. Critics of the 1970s and 1980s considered Hemingway to be misogynistic and homophobic; by the 1990s his work, including The Sun Also Rises, began to receive critical reconsideration by female scholars.
Legacy and adaptations
Hemingway’s work continued to be popular in the latter half of the century and after his suicide in 1961. During the 1970s, The Sun Also Rises appealed to what Beegel calls the lost generation of the Vietnam era. Aldridge writes that The Sun Also Rises has kept its appeal because the novel is about being young. The characters live in the most beautiful city in the world, spend their days traveling, fishing, drinking, making love, and generally reveling in their youth. He believes the expatriate writers of the 1920s appeal for this reason, but that Hemingway was the most successful in capturing the time and the place in The Sun Also Rises.
Bloom says that some of the characters have not stood the test of time, writing that modern readers are uncomfortable with the antisemitic treatment of Cohn’s character and the romanticization of a bullfighter. Moreover, Brett and Mike belong uniquely to the Jazz Age and do not translate to the modern era. Bloom believes the novel is in the canon of American literature for its formal qualities: its prose and style.
The novel made Hemingway famous, inspired young women across America to wear short hair and sweater sets like the heroine’s—and to act like her too—and changed writing style in ways that could be seen in any American magazine published in the next twenty years. In many ways, the novel’s stripped-down prose became a model for 20th-century American writing. Nagel writes that «The Sun Also Rises was a dramatic literary event and its effects have not diminished over the years.»
The success of The Sun Also Rises led to interest from Broadway and Hollywood. In 1927 two Broadway producers wanted to adapt the story for the stage but made no immediate offers. Hemingway considered marketing the story directly to Hollywood, telling his editor Max Perkins that he would not sell it for less than $30,000—money he wanted his estranged wife Hadley Richardson to have. Conrad Aiken thought the book was perfect for a film adaptation solely on the strength of dialogue. Hemingway would not see a stage or film adaption anytime soon: he sold the film rights to RKO Pictures in 1932, but only in 1956 was the novel adapted to a film of the same name. Peter Viertel wrote the screenplay. Tyrone Power as Jake played the lead role opposite Ava Gardner as Brett and Errol Flynn as Mike. The royalties went to Richardson.
Hemingway wrote more books about bullfighting: Death in the Afternoon was published in 1932 and The Dangerous Summer was published posthumously in 1985. His depictions of Pamplona, beginning with The Sun Also Rises, helped to popularize the annual running of the bulls at the Festival of St. Fermin.
