OT: The Sun Also Rises

[Angel]

English class for me is a love-hate relationship. For instance, last year, I loved Macbeth, but I disliked Death of a Salesman. (It was good, but depressing...)

But the most memorable case of this was in eighth grade. I loved To Kill a Mockingbird.Great book, great movie, great story. But I HATED The Old Man and the Sea! I don't care if it's a classic, it was the most boring book I ever read. I thought nothing could redeem Ernest Hemingway for that agonizingly awful book.

I was wrong.

In a year full of books, ones I loved (The Scarlet Letter), somewhat disliked (The Great Gatsby), and hated (One day, Emerson, I will have my revenge on you...), the book we just started, The Sun Also Rises, is the only one that actually tells you what's going on with any clear emotion. The Scarlet Letter did that, but it took a long time for it to get to the point about Hester and Dimmesdale. Gatsby was so confusing that I had to call my grandfather to even get a clue of what was going on (turns out he read it three times and he still doesn't understand Daisy). But in the short amount I've read, The Sun Also Rises gives you a relationship, has the narrator show some actual feeling (No offense, Nick Carraway), and even if it doesn't give you the whole story right away, it at least gives you some clear plot points in the first few chapters.

Did Hemingway write any more books like this? It would be good to know that The Old Man and the Sea was just a one-time thing.

[superluser]

But the most memorable case of this was in eighth grade. I loved To Kill a Mockingbird.Great book, great movie, great story. But I HATED The Old Man and the Sea! I don't care if it's a classic, it was the most boring book I ever read. I thought nothing could redeem Ernest Hemingway for that agonizingly awful book.

I thought that the metaphor of the fish as Hemingway's work, and the sharks representing the critics, and the fishermen representing Hemingway's fellow writers was absolutely brilliant.

Hemingway spends all of his time and effort struggling to write this book (Hemingway's Over the River and into the Trees is commonly cited as inspiration for The Old Man and the Sea), and the critics tear it apart, but all the authors see the skeleton of the great work that he's written and know that this man is a true author.

Brilliant.

The Sun Also Rises is listed on The Modern Library's list of 100 best books of the 20th century at 45.  A Farewell to Arms is 74.  I've never read it, but I'd suggest For Whom the Bell Tolls, since anything that references John Donne is bound to be good.

The Old Man and the Sea won Hemingway the Pulitzer in 1953 and the Nobel Prize in 1954, so it can't be that bad.