When I was a junior in high school, I took an English class where we had a simple icebreaker on the first day: a classroom bingo game where we needed to find unique people who had a fruit allergy or traveled to Hawaii. One of the squares was ‘Read Hemingway’ and the only person that could sign that square was the teacher. I signed the ‘never broke a bone’ squares.

After that game, ‘Hemingway’ stuck. The next time I had extra time at the mall, I picked up a blurred paperback of orange, red, and yellow titled ‘The Sun Also Rises’ by Ernest Hemingway. 

I expected a tough read with gnarled words I would have to infer through context clues and characters stuffed with symbolism that required a simple minded English translation. Instead, I got Hemingway. Terse prose, cut down to the bare minimum, and back and forth dialogue where the reader had to keep track of who was saying what because he excluded the ‘he said’ or ‘she replied’ remarks. The words were so limited that when he said something was ‘good’ or ‘nice’ they hit differently. There was contemplation behind words usually worn out as fillers.

After the rest of the family came through, my parents reluctantly gave me money to purchase the book. I read it in a few days, and it hooked me like a fish. That was the start of my reading obsession that lasted the next couple years.

Decades later, I finished rereading The Sun Also Rises for the third or fourth time. Jake and Brett came alive again in their car rides and earnest conversation. Cohen was as sad as ever with his sallow puppy dog face. And the fishing, bull fighting, and drinks were as good as last time.

Hemingway amazed me with the ability to do so much with so little. You could tell how tight someone was by the color of their humor. They’d declare it outright as anyone who’s had enough to drink would, but you could tell regardless. He described things as they were, and how they were supposed to feel. One of my favorite drinks are when Jake and Bill are out fishing and they chill their two bottles of wine in the cold stream as they fished. After, they compared their catch, ate lunch, and drank the cooled red wine in the shade of a tree, protected from the hot Spanish sun. Thank God I disavowed alcohol or else Hemingway would really make me want to knock a few glasses back.

I also connected with the characters more this time around. They weren’t people who I would understand when I grew up anymore. Now, they were people who reminded me of friends I’ve come to know and love. Everyone thinks they’re a Jacob Barnes like they think they’re Don Draper. They wish they could be as witty and affable as Bill. They want to date women who can hold the attention of the room like Brett or be as athletic and skilled as the young Romero.

Deep down inside, a lot of us are Robert Cohen. Sorry, sallow, quiet Robert. Or at least, that’s who I could identify best with. He had his strengths: he was a decent boxer and good writer when he didn’t get in the way of himself. When times were good and full of merriment, he fit in all the same. He just didn’t know when to go away, and stared at Brett with his sad puppy dog face even though Mike (her fiancé) was present. He’d create uncomfortable situations and not notice how badly he was behaving. What rot.

And in the earnestness of my soul, I know I am like Robert. I know I am an outsider just trying to understand the dynamics of the group most of the time. I get caught up in not knowing what to say, so I stay silent and make for bad conversation. And I stare at other people’s wives and follow them to San Sebastian, abandoning my friends when we had a fishing trip already planned lol jk. But we’re all awkward sometimes, and we can’t all know what to do like Jake does. And that’s all right. Sometimes we can be like Jake or Bill. A lot of times, I am Robert. And that’s fine.

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The next books I’m reading are still rereads. Of Mice and Men, and then The Old Man and the Sea. Hemingway kind of puts you to sleep with his descriptions, but Steinbeck is a master. I could listen to him describe scenery for days on end. And then after that, the plan is finish up my ten plus year journey through Brother’s Karamazov. It’s been years since I last tried to read it. I might just pick up where I left off which is around 200-300 pages in. If that’s cheating, then call me a cheat. I simply don’t care anymore and want the nagging feeling of incompletion to shush up.