The Critical Reception of Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises

Book excerpt: This History of the criticism of The Sun Also Rises shows not only how Hemingway's first major novel was received over the decades, but also how different critical modes have dominated different decades, and what, besides tenure, critics of different eras looked for in it. As such, it shows what has interested critics, how they have reinterpreted the novel, and how they have seen the characters playing different roles. Thus the novel becomes a mirror, reflecting not only Paris and Spain in 1925, but us.