(aka, that time Hemingway literally published his diary and won a Nobel Prize)

I finally read The Sun Also Rises. I had never bothered with it before, because unfortunately for him, my first exposure to Hemingway was The Old Man and the Sea, forced upon me by an unenthusiastic English Lit teacher at fourteen years old. The language was dull and the subject matter even more so: an old man tries to catch a fish. Like, tries really really hard to catch a fish. He catches the fish, then the fish dies.

The end.

Suffice to say, I did not care for it. I stayed away from Hemingway from then on, and was further deterred by his reputation as a misogynistic, adulterous drunk. However, Literature As A Whole adores Hemingway, so I, assured that there would be no paint-drying, fish-catching old-man antics, gave Sun a try.

First of all, they lied about the lack of fish-catching. There is a big ol’ detour in the middle of the book where two manly male characters sit by a river for some manly male time catching fish. It’s a shame, because the bits before and after that are full of juicy juicy action.

The story actually reads a bit like a 1920s version of Geordie Shore. Friendships, rivalries, jealousies and unconsumated love form the book’s backbone. (I couldn’t help but feel like fourteen-year-old me would have been a lot warmer to Hemingway if this was the book she’d read first). I was pleasantly surprised by the main character – here was a kind-hearted and likeable hero – in love with a woman who is engaged to his friend and also cheating on him with his other friend. And is getting divorced. And also has a thing for bullfighters. Actually, she wants to sleep with pretty much anything that moves.

Anyway, in spite of my fish-informed prejudice I enjoyed the book, even with all its melodrama and certain elements that did not age well. (The anti-Semitic and sexist language, for instance) I put it down and thought, I get it. This is why Literary People like Hemingway. His simple style places you squarely in the scene; I felt like I was there in the Spanish fiesta; sipping coffee at the cafes and drinking wineskins in the taverns.

In fact, I liked it so much I decided to find out a little more about expat life in the 1920s.

And here, my hard-won respect for Hemingway disintegrated.

I discovered that, like Jake the protagonist, Hemingway also worked as a journalist in Paris. This, alone, made sense, given the richness of the scenery descriptions. Usual, even, to base a novel off one’s own experiences. But there’s inspired by, and then there’s straight-up reporting: it transpires that Sun is little more than an embellished diary entry.

Hemingway made himself the hero of his own story, then proceeded to decimate the characters of real people who thought him a friend.

For more of what really happened, here’s a Vanity Fair article that covers just about every detail.