So I just finished the book. While I don’t fully understand why it’s considered one of the greatest novels of anglo-saxon literature (a field I don’t know much, I have to admit), I enjoyed it quite a lot. I’m a parisian guy and the depiction night life in Paris still feels very acute and it was even fun reading about the Rotonde, a famous brasserie I’ve been to. Also I was a student in the Montagne Sainte-Genevieve area so it was cool to read through the Paris sequence. Although, the novel was the most interesting when they go to Spain to see the corrida, something I heard a lot about but never saw.
The entire book felt like a head shake at the vast number of people who feel empty in their lives, that just go from one fixation to another. Many of us to this day still go through that, to the point of depression. Maybe Hemingway saw that as a generational problem but in 2023 a lot of us still live this, it made me relate to the book.
It was hard not to feel more empathy for Robert Cohn than for the other characters. I’m not even sure why, he’s not a better person than the others. His problem is similar to the others’, embracing a fixation that everyon knows won’t make him happy. It’s not just because of the blatant antisemitism, either. Perhaps the fact his backstory is laid out from the getgo contributes to his portrayal better than the rest. I still see Jake and Brett as the main characters, with the scars from the world war preventing what could have been a longlasting romance between the two. But, throughout the whole book I was especially attentive to what Robert was doing and how he reacted to the constant rejection by the group.
Anyone else like it? What you think?
by Dontevenwannacomment