The Sun Also Rises

This is the house where Ernest Hemingway was born (in Oak Park, IL). I've become quite a Hemingway fan lately so on my recent trip to Chicago I took a little westerly detour and visited the Hemingway house (and museum).

My love of Hemingway is somewhat new found. I, like most people, was first exposed to the writing of Ernest Hemingway in high school. I was required to read a couple of his short stories and, at the time, I hated them.

I make no apologies for the fact that I like happy endings and I didn't see them in Hemingway's stories. Not that I dislike all stories without happy endings, but Hemingway's stories often don't seem to have endings at all. When I was younger I hated open endings. I liked my stories tied up in nice tidy bows for me (preferably, happy bows).

My aversion to open ended stories started to diminish over time and was finally abandoned completely because of some really great short stories written by the very same person who inspired me to (among other things) change the title of this blog. He writes really great open endings, I think they're better than any I've read.

There is a real art to open endings. You have to give enough information that the reader feels satisfied, the story does still have to have some resolution, but also leave enough loose ends to that the reader is left thinking about it, wondering. I still don't think Hemingway gets it exactly right a lot of the time, at least not in his short stories.

The other problem I had with Hemingway was what I perceived as pessimism that seemed prevalent in his stories. It turns out there's quite a history of sever depression in the Hemingway family (a lot of suicides). Hemingway himself suffered from depression for much of his life so it stands to reason that his writing might be somewhat dark, but now I'm not so sure I'd call it pessimism.

I started reading his novels at recommendation of my friend who's writing I love so much. First I read Old Man and the Sea, then I re-read some of the short stories, then I read his memoir (A Moveable Feast), then I read The Sun Also Rises...and the more I read, the more I started to think that the pessimism is actually optimism in disguise. There's a sense, especially in The Sun Also Rises, that the current circumstances are unbearable (for the characters) but that they are, that everything is, temporary.

You might think that it is my own optimism that's changed my mind about Hemingway. I can't help thinking that things are just on the verge of getting better for these characters but maybe a pessimist would feel that things were only going to get worse. I don't think though that it's just my personal optimism, I think the optimism is inherent in the stories. The desperation is palpable in almost all Hemingway stories but the characters don't give up. It's especially clear in The Old Man and The Sea. After everything that character goes through in the story, he still gets up the next day and goes on. Right now, my favorite is The Sun Also Rises, it does this same thing but the suffering and desperation are dealt with a little more indirectly and are also more emotional. Even the title of, The Sun Also Rises, seems like it just teetered off the edge of the line between optimism and pessimism firmly onto the optimistic side. It's definitely become one of my favorite books.