The Sun Also Rises

The Sun Also Rises [I cannot express to you how glad I am that I am taking this class. I am thoroughly enjoying

Hemingway. The Sun Also Rises is one of the best books

I've read in quite a long time. For a while there, I was, for

God knows what reason, taking Physics and Chemistry and

Biology. It is really an adventure to be back with books and words and reading. I am also amazed that I never could read more of Him when it wasn't an assignment. And how is it that when I am told to write "a 3-5 page essay" I can only come through with two-and-a-half, but a "one-page response" always wants to be twenty pages long?] I finished reading SAR around ten o'clock tonight. I could have taken it all in one big gulp when I began a week ago, but I couldn't do that. It wanted me to bring it out slowly, so I often found myself reading five or ten pages and laying it aside to absorb without engulfing. A man gets used to reading Star Wars and pulp fiction and New York Times Bestsellers and forgets what literature is until it slaps him in the face. This book was written, not churned out or word-processed. Again, I thoroughly enjoyed reading. I never noticed it until it was brought up in class, maybe because it wasn't a point for me in In Our Time, but He doesn't often enough credit quotations with, ",he said," or, ",said Brett," or, ",Bill replied." In SAR it stood and called attention to itself. I wasn't particularly bothered by His not telling me who said what, but it was very...pointed. I first noticed around the hundredth page or so. Then I realized I couldn't keep track of who was speaking. By not dwelling on it, though, sort of

(hate to say this) accepting it, I managed to assign speech to whomever I felt was speaking. Gradually I came to enjoy it, in another plane of reading, figuring out from whom words were originating. To not notice it, as if it were one of those annoying 3-D posters that you can't see until you make a concerted effort not to try and see, became simple - much like those 3-D pictures are once you know what not to look for. (I abhor ending sentences with prepositions...) His not telling was heightening to the story. It made things come even more alive. As a conversation that you're hearing at a nearby table in a restaurant, the exchanges flowed, with me as a more passive reader than in a story written to be read