I rate The Sun Also Rises three stars, which translates to an “I like it” on my scale and is an improvement from the two stars (“it’s okay”) I rated it the first time around. Aspects of Jake’s character that I found relatable did the heavy lifting for the higher rating, and I find a whole extra star generous given that the overall book is still quite painful to read. Hemingway is not a bad author by any means. However, the iceberg in his technique seems like a mere pebble above water and is the size of The Titanic below — a tragedy for the unwitting ship that hits it and the poor reader trying to decipher it. Additionally, nearly every character is insufferable. I understand that the characters in a book do not have to be likable for it to be good, but I refuse to go through the nebulous nothingness of The Sun Also Rises again. It is no wonder that everyone drinks all the time because it seems as though nobody likes each other, even Brett and Jake (I will not hear any argument that their relationship ever stood a healthy chance.) While reading, I constantly asked, “Why are these people friends (if you can call them that), and why do they continue to be? What are they getting from this situation — in materialistic or emotional reward — except further misery?” Like with any literary work to exist, I am sure valid, convincing arguments against my opinion exist. However, I choose to remove myself from the discourse around this book and never re-read it. Still, given that I have a physical, annotated copy of The Sun Also Rises, I admit I come back to certain parts I genuinely and deeply enjoy, like Jake’s solo time back in France, his stream of consciousness in the cathedral, and his thoughts on daytime hard-boildom, futile philosophies, and everything annoying about mortality — so, basically all the parts of the book that do not involve the other characters.
