I finally read The Sun Also Rises. It was good. It wasn’t until someone asked me what it was about that I realized how good of a writer Hemingway was. For instance check out this passage.
“We all had absinthe at the cafe, no one was drunk so we decided to have dinner. We ate lamb with a few bottles a wine and then fourteen more bottles for dessert. Hal showed up, fresh from the states. He had just finished his book so we soaked a cat in gin and ate it. Hal is a writer as is his wife Judy, whom I’ve slept with. I slept with Judy’s book too and it was lousy. The waiter came by and we dosed him with port and drank his blood. I was starting to feel a bit drunk so I went outside for some air. I waxed poetically about how fucking awesome Paris is for a paragraph. Then the blond that I was in love with waved at me from across the street. I nodded and she made her way towards me, fucking and drinking her way through the crowd. I had a few dozen whiskeys while I waited.”
Thats the whole book. Just a bunch of Americans drinking their way through Paris & Spain. Passing around a drunk blond and waxing poetic about the scenery. But Hemingway could make eating a bowl of Cap’n Crunch sound epic.
