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During the warm, friendly, tender hours of the evening twilight, as the day’s burdens slowly drifted away, my attention was redirected towards F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Life in Letters. As an alleged friend and supporter of Ernest Hemingway, Fitzgerald suggested a number of revisions to The Sun Also Rises.

“Anyhow I think parts of Sun Also are careless + ineffectual.�� �� F. Scott Fitzgerald

My curiosity was piqued. Would the impressionable Hemingway accept these review points or reject them?

I had to find out! Investigation hats on!

The Sun Also Rises is set shortly after World War I where a group of riotous expats (Robert Cohn, Jake Barnes, Lady Brett Ashley, Bill Gorton, Mike Campbell) find themselves living in Paris with imbibing being the order of the day. After some time, the group decides to gallivant to Spain to experience the bull-fighting season and other largely forgettable activities. However, as so often happens when excess alcohol is involved, many of the characters behave badly.

While Hemingway struggles to balance dialogue with descriptive prose, The Sun Also Rises hits many of the right notes.

There are some gorgeous lines:

“I like him. But he’s just so awful.��

“Cohn had a wonderful quality of bringing out the worst in anybody.��

“It was like certain dinners I remember from the war. There was much wine, an ignored tension, and a feeling of things coming that you could not prevent from happening.��

Interestingly, some of the characters in The Sun Also Rises are based off real-life people. Lady Brett Ashley was inspired by Duff Twysden, and Hemingway struck up a friendship with hotelier, Juanito Quintana who shared his knowledge of bull fighting and ran the now-defunct Hotel Quintana. He is the inspiration behind Montoya and the Montoya Hotel.

The Prince of Wales was mentioned in relation to a medal-awarding ceremony. Now, earlier this month, I was reading out of The Great Gatsby manuscript, and there is a certain section that did not make it into the published book—a passage about a rumor that the Prince of Wales was using dope. Who was the Prince of Wales at this point in history you ask? Edward VIII, the gentleman who ended up abdicating to marry an American divorcee.

Despite the uneven pacing, the symbolism in the last half of the book was worth the endurance. Tip: You may want to look up the difference between a bull and a steer.

Some sections were slow—the fishing scene was particularly boring and seemed only to exist to make the point that someone had the bigger fish. Tee hee.

What did the great F. Scott Fitzgerald really think of The Sun Also Rises?

This two-faced friend of Hemingway wrote to Maxwell Perkins, the editor for both Fitzgerald and Hemingway at Scribner:

“I liked it but with certain qualifications. The fiesta, the fishing trip, the minor characters were fine. The lady I didn’t like, perhaps because I don’t like the original. In the mutilated man I thought Ernest bit off more than can yet be chewn between the covers of a book, then lost his nerve a little and edited the more vitalizing details out. He has since told me that something like this happened.��

Hemingway had had enough of Fitzgerald’s “help.�� When Fitzgerald tried to send another set of review notes for Hemingway’s next novel, A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway wrote on the letter, “Kiss my ***�� and largely ignored his advice.

The Green Light at the End of the Dock (How much I spent):
Hardcover Text - $82.32 at Abe Books for a First Edition Library copy
Audiobook - Free through Libby

2025 Reading Schedule
Jan A Town Like Alice
Feb Birdsong
Mar Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Berniere
Apr War and Peace
May The Woman in White
Jun Atonement
Jul The Shadow of the Wind
Aug Jude the Obscure
Sep Ulysses
Oct Vanity Fair
Nov A Fine Balance
Dec Germinal

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