One of my reading goals for 2010 was to read a few classics, so to that end I am halfway through Hemingway's 1920's The Sun Also Rises. I am a little more than halfway through, and I wanted to post my preliminary impressions, which certainly may change as I finish the book.
To be honest, sacrilege though it may be, I am having a bit of an Emperor's New Clothes moment with this book. I will grant that it is evocative of a very different time and place; Paris and Spain in the expatriate days of the post-WW1 era. Beyond that...I don't know. From a plot standpoint, nothing much has happened, the characters are pretty much two-dimensional and unsympathetic, the dialogue is painful at times (beyond the vocabulary and idiom differences of a bygone time), and I don't see any real significant theme development pulling things together. I can't help thinking that if what I had read so far were presented to a creative writing teacher in its current state, the teacher might well ask/tell the student "where is this all going, and you have some style issues that probably need working on..."
Onward we go.
20mm War of 1812 British
4 days ago
You know I know how you feel. Last year I had the idea to read through some of the classics and was left rather sad by some of the classics I chose as well.
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