The Roaring 20s Book Club met yesterday. Our assignment was “The Sun Also Rises” by Ernest Hemingway.
We had selected it at the conclusion of our robust discussion on “The Great Gatsby.” I highly anticipated reading it because I had just completed “My Paris Wife.” WIFE is historical fiction of Hemingway’s stint in Paris from his first wife’s (Hadley Richardson) perspective. He is actually writing SUN during their French stint. The SUN characters are the group that the Hemingways hung out with. The character Jake is Hemingway. And Hadley is awkwardly missing from the story.
In WIFE, the reader gets a sense of Hadley’s emotional turmoil over the deliberate omission. She hates that her husband didn’t think her contribution to the group warranted a character. And yet, she believes SUN to be his best work to date.
Really, Hadley?
I found it a hard read. Not difficult. Hard defined as annoying. Hemingway was critically praised for SUN. To me, it reads like a book I would have written in my early 30s about my friends‘ drinking exploits. Those days, we thought we were the sh#t. And every encounter mixed with enough alcohol is dramatic. But here’s the wrinkle… it’s not memorable. Hemingway’s dialogue sounds like Facebook postings:
Cafe Iruna – check in Lady Brett, with Jake, Mike and Robert Cohn and three others.
LADY BRETT: Hello, you chaps! 
JAKE: Where the hell have you been?
ROBERT COHN: I brought them up here.
LADY BRETT: What rot! We’d gotten here earlier if you hadn’t come.
JAKE: You’d never have gotten here.
LADY BRETT: What rot! You chaps are brown. Look at Bill.
**Liked by Robert Cohn and Mike
MIKE: Did you get good fishing? We wanted to join you.
JAKE: It wasn’t bad. We missed you.
**Liked by Lady Brett
ROBERT COHN: I wanted to come but I thought I ought to bring them.
LADY BRETT: You bring us. What rot.
**Liked by Jake, Mike and two others
Full disclosure: I didn’t finish the book. What rot! Despite being obsessively compulsive, if I don’t like a book or movie or TV show, I no longer feel the need to complete it. Wisdom gives me the freedom to choose what I want to invest in. Age reminds me my time is precious and limited.
The book club still had a lively discussion of the ‘lost generation,’ Hemingway, literary critics, drinking, sex with friends and the 1920s era. Sara and Katrina hosted a perfect afternoon cheese and wine discussion.
NEXT BOOK: Dorothy Parker’s “Big Blonde and other Stories.”