The Brilliance and the Badness of “The Sun Also Rises” | The New Yorker

I found myself reading the book quickly, unable to slow down to the pace that Hemingway’s style requires, knowing, as I sped through, that what I was doing was as senseless as taking big gulps of a grand-cru wine. Periodically, I was shocked by the book’s brilliance—in the bar scenes where so many people are talking, for example, and the reader is hovering among them—and by its breathtaking beauty. More significant, in addition to being wretched, the book is also periodically wise.