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Oh, to have been Ernest Hemingway. Except for the whole shotgun thing.

He was a man, back when that meant something. Whatever that means. He had it all: a haunted past; functional alcoholism; a way with words; a way with women; and one hell of a beard. I mean, this was the guy who could measure F. Scott Fitzgerald's penis without anyone batting an eye. He was just that cool.

I love Hemingway. You might have guessed that, but let's make it clear off the bat. For Whom the Bell Tolls is in my top five all-time fave books (there's nothing better than a literary novel about blowing up a bridge). The Old Man and the Sea is a fever dream. A Farewell Arms is one of the most exquisitively depressing things I've ever read.

Despite my high expectations, The Sun Also Rises does not "rise" (get it?) to the level of those books. Or maybe I'm an idiot. It's possible. This book is supposedly one of his masterpieces - if not his magnum opus. I thought it was - gulp - kinda boring.

Generally, I attempt to avoid using the word "boring" in a review. It's a broad, vague, and diluted descriptor; a subjective one-off that doesn't tell you anything. Its use is better suited for a bitter 10th grader's five-paragraph theme, turned in on the last day of school after that tenth grader skimmed twenty pages, read the Cliffs Notes version, and stayed up all night typing with two fingers. I try to hold my Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ reviews to a slightly higher standard (the standard of an 11th grader who is taking summer school classes to get a jump on senior year).

Really, though, that was my impression: boring. Of course, I didn't read this while lapping sangria in Madrid, which I've heard will heighten this novel's overall effect.

The Sun Also Rises tells the story of Jake Barnes, an ex-patriate living in Paris. He was wounded in World War I and is now impotent. He is in love with Ashley, who is a... What did they call sluts in the early 20th Century? Because that's sort of what she is, though she has a tender place in her heart for Jake, to whom she keeps returning. Jake is a journalist, apparently haunted by the war, and he spends his time drinking in Paris. There's also a guy named Robert Cohn, a former boxer, who's also in love with Ashley. Bill and Mike also hang around; Mike was originally in a relationship with Ashley, before he lost her to Cohn, who in turn loses her to a Spanish bullfighter.

The plot, as it is, involves a bunch of drinking in Paris. Jake drinks a lot, stumbles home, then drinks some more before falling asleep. (The drinking and stumbling home reminds me of my own life, which is worth at least one star). Jake eventually takes the train to Spain to do some fishing. Hemingway describes the scene in excruciating detail and you really get a feel for the place:

Then the road came over the crest, flattened out, and went into a forest. It was a forest of cork oaks, and the sun came through the trees in patches, and there were cattle grazing back in the trees. We went through the forest and the road came out and turned along a rise of land, and out ahead of us was a rolling green plain, with dark mountains beyond it. These were not like the brown, heat-baked mountains we had left behind. These were wooded and there were clouds coming down from them. The green plain stretched off. It was cut by fences and the white of the road showed through the trunks of a double line of trees that crossed the plain towards the north.

The book goes on in this manner, for some time. It's as though Hemingway has turned into an eloquent Garmin device. Step by step. The walk to the creek. The heat of the sun. The taste of the wine. It is all very vivid, and beautifully written, but really, it didn't go anywhere. It seemed like filler. Something to break up the constant drinking (while the drinking breaks up the Spanish travelogue).

The lack of a plot normally wouldn't bother me much, but the book as a whole just wasn't working for me. I didn't care for the characters, who are mostly drunken, indolent, well-off whiners. Also, I was intensely jealous of the characters, who are mostly drunken, indolent, well-off whiners. In other words, aspirational figures.

Really, though, I just wanted more out of this book. Hemingway's other works have burrowed deep into my consciousness, so that I find myself referring back to them time and again.

The Sun Also Rises did not achieve this feat.

Eventually, Jake's merry band of drunkards go to Pamplona to watch the bullfights. There is drinking. Fighting. Drinking. Bullfighting. Drinking. Drinking. Passing out. Drinking. I actually got a contact drunk from reading this book.

I imagine that sex also occurred, somewhere in the midst of the drinking and the bulls and the overflowing testosterone, but Hemingway is discrete.

There are some good things, here. As I mentioned earlier, Hemingway is a master of description. His prose is deceptively simple; his declarations actually do a great deal to put you there, into the scene, with immediacy. The book also features one of Hemingway's most famous quotes: "Nobody lives life all the way up, except bullfighters." For some reason, that line has taken on a kind of profundity, though I have to admit, I almost missed it in context.

The best part of the book is the last lines, uttered by Jake Barnes: "Isn't it pretty to think so." I'll leave it to you to determine its meaning. As for me, I am anxiously awaiting the moment when, after a night of hard drinking, I can use this line on someone who has just uttered an inane comment.

Alas, I'm still waiting for that moment. And that gives me all the excuse I need to keep sidling up to the bar, ordering a whiskey straight with a whiskey back, and chatting up the people around me in the hopes that one of the drunks I meet will also be a Hemingway fan.