I finished The Sun Also Rises and began Neuromancer this afternoon, which explains a potential head-scratching post title.

I didn’t realize that the majority of The Sun Also Rises takes place in Pamplona, Spain; had I known this, I would have read it sooner. I’ve discovered that I find Hemingway a highly enjoyable read. I read In Our Times as an undergrad and a great many other of his short stories on my own, but never any of the novels before For Whom The Bell Tolls a few months back. Except the Cliff’s Notes for A Farewell to Arms in high school and, unsurprisingly, they left no lasting impression.

In college, I always felt like Hemingway had to be handled with plastic gloves because of his unflattering portrayal of women and the unspoken closeness (i.e. closeted homosexuality!) shared by macho men who hunted, skiied, and fished together while never talking about their feelings. Now I see that just because you don’t buy in to Hem’s worldview doesn’t mean his words aren’t clever, his characters flat, or his stories uninteresting.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Sun Also Rises for a number of reasons, and not least because Hemingway, like me, is fascinated by most things Spanish. And because it takes place between the wars, which I’ve mentioned before is an area of literature that greatly interests me. Put those two things together (like in For Whom the Bell Tolls) and I’m an easy sell. There’s precious little story here, as a group of people go from getting drunk in Paris to getting drunk in Pamplona and watching bullfights. There’s a lot happening under the surface, of course, but not a lot of action to speak of. That sounds like something I’d hate, but Hem makes it work, and work well. I look forward to reading it again, the next time on paper.

Neuromancer is one of the million books that always comes up in conversations just after the words “I can’t believe you haven’t read.” I’m only twenty minutes in (audio again) and I already understand why everyone loves it and it’s a sci-fi classic. It’s edgy, it’s cool, and it’s spawned a billion clones that somehow aren’t quite as edgy and cool. Maybe I’m not a complete sci-fi convert yet because I’m always expecting the “classics” to let me down. I dunno, maybe blame Ender’s Game (which underwhelmed me) or maybe it’s an internal nerd alarm with a hair-trigger. Either way, I find my knee-jerk surprise that “Hey, this is actually really good” to be very annoying, especially since I am a practitioner of the speculative.

Current Mood: Huh? |