A modernist staple, I read this in high school. Hated it then. Hate it now. Based on people in Hemingway's "friends" going to Spain in 1925. Recounts their drinking, fighting, fucking. Shallow bullshit. The book is too long for such vapid dick-tickling.
I vaguely remember talk of the whole point of the book being that these are young people of a "lost generation” not really knowing what to do with their lives. The novel then recounts something of a diversion for these moody, aimless sorts. Having reread it as an adult who has critically read a thousand or so books, I feel that is a cop-out. This was what he knew and fell into. The whole man-coming-home-from-war to a peaceful life with all the shit bubbling under the surface. These themes are better developed in his shorter work, in my opinion. So is his style, for that matter.
I know the meditations on life and death are extremely moving and thought-provoking to some. However, it didn't move shit for me. "The few unsad young men of this lost generation will have to look for another way of finding themselves than the one indicated here," John Dos Passos said. That was a friend of Hemingway's. I'd rather read Camus, Joyce, or Kafka from that period.
I find Hemingway to be the idol of masculine males I strongly dislike. Hunting, bullfighting, racist, antisemitic, meat-obsessed, sloppy drunk. What's not to love, am-I-right? Personally, I hate all of those things and anyone who imitates Hemingway in those beliefs. He is an embarrassing cliché of a dead white male firmly on the losing side of history.
All that said, there are things I really dig about Hemingway and his writing. He was a dog and cat lover. He wrote standing up and fucking lived. I believe his short stories are some of the best ever (though I may need to revisit them). “50 Grand” is probably my favorite. About a washed-up boxer who puts everything on his opponent. Gets punched in the balls. If he goes down, he wins the fight but loses everything. Stays up and nails the other guy in the nuts, giving the guy the win. I can think of no more appropriate metaphor for Papa's bullshit than this. It is fantastic. Plus, he is 100% my style icon.
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In addition to the glorification of animal cruelty and what have you, there are a couple other things that make me hate the guy that pop up in the novel. When we read this in high school, I remember one of my classmates saying that Hemingway was obviously racist/antisemitic. Throwing the N-word and the K-word around (but also the treatment of black and Jewish people). Someone asked if that was the way it was back then. The answer is no. Yes, if you were a racist antisemite, yeah, which was more socially acceptable, but this was more than problematic even back then.
The Robert Cohn character, who, with Bill, is probably the only person in the novel I'd hang out with. Cohn is pretty much always condescendingly called “a Jew,” save for when he's being called a “rich Jew” or “kike”. He is ostracized for being different, and we never forget that he is Jewish. “'Brett's got a bullfighter,'” the character Mike, Brett's fiance, says at one point. “'But her Jew has gone away .... Damned good thing.'” That seems to be the only real problem anyone has with him. They are annoyed by his presence. What is fucked is the character is based on a guy that Hemingway hung out with who thought of himself as Hemingway's friend. A guy named Harold Loeb, also a writer, was Hemingway's rival for the inspiration for Brett – Lady Duff Twysden.
While I'm not a Hemingway fanboy, there is greatness there. However, this is a "first novel" that's meh though it does put forth essential themes that he continues to explore. Come home from the brutality of war and keep on keeping on with your traumatized peeps.
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