Ernest Hemingway and I are linked by the coincidence of a birth place: Oak Park, Illinois - a town I happen to be near on the annual family summer vacation that this year starts in Chicago. While it may seem like a random similarity, I think there is a shared Midwestern moral position between me and the protagonist (Jake) in The Sun Also Rises - who, in turn, is a thinly veiled version of the master himself. We are both drawn to and repulsed by the trappings of privilege, something that I think we as a culture more generally struggle with (at least I hope we do) as well.
Jake is an ex-patriate American living in Paris. The novel was published in 1926 and, according to Wikipedia, is a fictionalized version of events that occurred in the summer of 1924. The plot revolves around what would seem to be a love triangle but is really a love hub centered on Lady Brett Ashley, the soon to be divorced 34 year old woman whom every significant man in the tale falls in love with in one way or another.
Jake has the oldest history with Brett - they have been unconsummated lovers for a long time; unconsummated because Jake's war injury left him impotent. Their love has the quality of affection between friends, and Brett seems both to resonate with and to be oblivious to the erotic longing that Jake, despite his impotency, expresses for her. Robert Cohn enacts Jake's erotism by having an affair with Brett and then, like the smell of last night's dinner, refuses to go away as he properly should when her fiancée returns to the scene. Cohn who is a Princeton educated boxer is also Jewish and he is taunted throughout with anti-Semitic barbs - most pointedly by Mike, the fiancée. His being a boxer hints that we should expect this taunting to result in some kind of violent reaction, and one of the delicious tensions in the book is just how long it takes for this particular climax to occur - we have almost forgotten that this man, who has taken so much is capable of dishing it out as well.
Other men in Brett's orbit include a Count who spends money on her lavishly and seems content just to be in her company and to watch her, an acquaintance of Jake's who joins him for the fishing on the way to Pamplona, and then, finally and climatically, the next great bullfighter; the 19 year old Romero in Pamplona. Brett is, then, a queen bee and an enigmatic one. Her enigmatic quality - as much as her beauty - seems to be what draws men to her. She appears to be open and available, but perhaps this has more to do with what they imagine - what they project on her and less on who she is - something that we have little access to - in part because the story is being told through Jake's eyes and he is one of her suitors.
Jake tells another story as well - and this is the story of the expatriate lifestyle in Paris. He seems to be the only working man - he is a journalist - in the group. All the rest seem to be living on money that sometimes comes from home but sometimes doesn't. And, perhaps not just because I am traveling with my children, this lends the social group a kind of late adolescent quality - they seem to be living in a kind of borrowed luxury not based on their efforts but on their position as an heir or person who is in some way - by virtue of birth or, perhaps in their own minds by virtue of virtue - entitled to their lifestyle. My reaction to my children's entitlement mirrors Jake's reaction - a mixture of indulgence (Jake runs into one of his friends who hasn't eaten in three days because the check has not arrived - he loans him some money and they have a drink together - food can wait when their is companionship and alcohol available) and sometimes subtle and sometimes not so subtle judgment. Jake is mildly disdainful of these creatures who are so dependent and directionless while simultaneously being drawn to and attracted by them.
In the next section of the book, Jake goes fishing on his way to Pamplona. I think this trip betrays Jake to be essentially like those he disdains. Like them, he is a hedonist. His writing like a reporter - telling us the details of the roads and the clouds and the water betray his love for them. Similarly, his descriptions of the Basques who join them for parts of the trip betray a love for people who, while less wealthy, have turned drinking into an art and who are as generous and as ambivalent about living as he is. He is both akin to and completely different from these people of the hills.
Finally, we arrive in Pamplona. Again we are treated to the details of the town and the bullfight, the running of the bulls, and the recognition of a good bull. The similarity between the peasants and Jake's profligate friends is driven home in a central haunting image. One of the peasants who has come into the town for the festival is gored to death as he is running with the bulls. His wife and two children come to claim his body and take it home on the train. The Innkeeper notes the waste of life in the pursuit of frivolous entertainment - clearly a metaphor for the wasted lives of Jake's companions.
We discover that Jake has invited his friends into a place where he has, as an outsider, come to be trusted as someone who appreciates the aesthetics of the ring - he is an aficionado - so dubbed by the selfsame Innkeeper who finds the running of the bulls to be frivolous. His friends, however, are just the boors he has brought along, and their excessive drinking and lack of understanding of the aesthetics marks them as unworthy. Jake introduces them (and us) to his passion gently - Brett is seated high in the grandstand for the first bullfight, not close to the ring, to shelter her from the blood and gore - and this only excites her more, so she comes down to participate - to have a ringside seat. And here she falls for the Matador. Romero is not like the other Matadors - nor is he like the professional bicyclists they have passed on the way to Pamplona who have competed against each other and don't care who wins. He is the real thing - deeply invested in the aesthetics of his sport, he is a true artist (as, perhaps, Hemingway strives to be).
Brett, somehow not surprisingly, is taken with him. And the first person to notice this is her fiancée, the same fiancée who has been mercilessly and drunkenly riding the last man to cuckold him - Robert Cohn. Now he derisively notices her new interest seemingly before she does. Jake, for his part, betrays both his love for her and for the integrity of the community he reveres by arranging Brett's tryst with Romero. But it is only the much maligned Robert Cohn who has the cajones to deliver the blow of the jilted man - swelling the Matador's face the night before the final fight - and knocking Jake, his one true ally, completely out as an added bonus.
Despite his injury, the Matador does what only he can do; dazzling all with the artistry of a kill done right, and then high tails it to Madrid with Brett in tow (after publicly awarding her the ear of the dead bull - a prize that clarifies to all that he and she have crossed the line they were not supposed to have crossed). To her credit, Brett realizes, once she is in Madrid, that she is toying with a child - and perhaps realizes that she is nearing the end of her run of power - and releases the boy from her hold. As the son in Transparent proclaims, it is every teenaged boy's wet dream to be introduced to love by an older woman - but as his girlfriend points out, if the genders were reversed, it would be creepy - a predatory relationship. But Brett plays the dependent other - and calls Jake to rescue her and return her to her fiancée, whom she will take back (she knows he will have her as he is incapable of saying no to her no matter how badly she behaves) - God what a lump of nothing he turns out to be - the one who wins the prize.
So, what are we to make of this deeply disturbing, enthralling look at something that is simultaneously desirable and deplorable? We could look for universal truths - something about the various Oedipal triangles that are played out with Brett. We could also think about this as Hemingway's dream with the various men representing various aspects of himself in relationship with whoever it is that we imagine Brett symbolizes - and there would be manifold options for that - is she the entitled one? The dream of being the great author? The unattainable mother? Or is it more the wish to become the woman - one of the things that I find frustrating is that Hemingway who can so clearly map his characters with so few words spends so many words describing things - is he afraid that his feminine qualities threaten his much publicized wish to be masculine? Does depicting himself as impotent support this? All of these would require, from a psychoanalytic position, having access to Hemingway's associations to the work and to talking with him about it to have a sense of psychoanalytic certainty.
We don't have access to Hemingway, but we do have access to my reactions to the book (I take them as a starting point not to privilege my own associations over yours, for instance, it is just that these are the ones that I have at hand. We could also, were we in a conversation, have used yours as a starting point). Despite its age, this book felt very alive and disruptive. Why do I care what was going on in Paris almost 100 years ago (Woody Allen wants to have been there - I am less certain)? What comes to mind this week - and I'm not sure that the content of the reaction would be the same in the fall - when I might associate to my students - is: How am I to manage my conflicting feelings of envy for my children as they glory and - from my fuddy duddy position - waste this moment of their greatest powers? What am I supposed to do with the pride that I feel in having given them the gift of an interstitial space between childhood and adulthood (I have not been able to provide for them in a way that will let them become permanent expats)? I remember one of my college teachers noting that we were being afforded the luxury of productive leisure. How are we to distinguish that productive leisure - certainly Hemingway's book stands as one of the great fruits of that - from pure debauchery - some of his own which he chronicles here and which was certainly a significant component of my own college experience? How do we live with the ambiguity - the uncertainty - of what will come from our experiments in living? Who among us will live as artists?
Underneath my contempt and disdain, then, is a certain envy. An awareness that I, like Lady Brett, am coming to the end of my powers. If I am, for a moment, identifying with Jake, and each of these characters is an aspect of him, then Lady Brett might, among the other things she represents, be a stand-in for the powers that he has at this moment - the powers to enthrall and to engage others - and there is also an identification with the transitory nature of those powers. They are hers today, but may well be gone tomorrow, and certainly will be the day after that.
Like all good parents, I revel in the accomplishments of my children. I want them to surpass me. But I also feel, when they do, diminished by their accomplishments. Those accomplishments aren't really mine, after all. Were it not for this analytic position which I am so reluctant to hold, I would distance myself more fully from this aspect of my experience, but I think it is real. I am envious of them. I am also aware of what it will take to achieve that other aspect of Jake - the Matador. In his day (broadly speaking), becoming excellent at something, becoming an athletic artist was difficult (see a post on Boys in the Boat) - but the level of investment to hone oneself into a singular entity - the best in the world - is different today (Agassi's Open just hints at what is required of Novak Djokovic). While I am envious, I would also have my children enjoy their experience of being cared for - of having leisure be available to them and being able to both be productive and also to waste some of what is afforded to them in hedonistic and pleasure producing pursuits.
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