Taylor Swift's "Anti-Hero" and Hemingway's Flawed Characters (The Sun Also Rises, Part 2)

In Part 2 of our discussion on Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, editor Verna Kale returns to discuss the vintage bullfighting posters that inspired the cover of the Norton Library edition, a "hot take" on the traditional hero of the book, and the loss of sentence-level writing in adaptations of the story.  

Verna Kale is an Associate Research Professor of English at the Pennsylvania State University and Associate Editor of the Hemingway Letters Project. She is the author of a biography of Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway, part of the Critical Lives series; editor of Teaching Hemingway and Gender; and co-editor, with Sandra Spanier and Miriam B. Mandel, of The Letters of Ernest Hemingway: Volume 6 (1934–1936).

To learn more or purchase a copy of the Norton Library edition of The Sun Also Rises, go to https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324045717.

Learn more about the Norton Library series at https://wwnorton.com/norton-library.

Have questions or suggestions for the podcast? Email us at nortonlibrary@wwnorton.com or find us on Twitter at @TNL_WWN and Bluesky at @nortonlibrary.bsky.social. 

Transcript

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[Mark:] You are listening to the Norton Library podcast, where we explore classic works of literature and philosophy with the leading scholars of the Norton Library. A new series from ww Norton that introduces influential texts to a new generation of readers. I'm your host Mark Chino, with Michael Von Cannon producing. Today we present the second of our two episodes devoted to Ernest Hemmingway’s The Sun Also Rises, as we interview its editor, Verna Kale. In part one, we discussed Hemingway's life and how he came to write this novel, inspired by events from his own experience. In this second episode, we learn more about Verna Kel's own history with The Sun Also Rises, when she first read Hemingway, the music this novel inspires, her favorite line in this novel, and of course her hot take. Verna Kale is an Associate Research professor of English at Penn State University and Associate Editor of the Hemingway Letters Project. She has written a biography of Hemingway, has edited the book Teaching Hemingway and Gender, and co-edited volume six of the Letters of Ernest Hemingway. We are so pleased she could join us today. Verna Kale, welcome back to the Norton Library podcast.

[Verna Kale:] Thank you, it's great to be back.

[Mark:] Nice to see you again. Well, I look forward to our next discussion about Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and why don't we start by looking at your addition for the Norton Library? What inspired this scheme, that I see on the cover?

[Verna Kale:] Um, so the cover is kind of a yellow ochre and a blue and sort of a a dark red color and together this palette I think um evokes a lot of Spain, I think it was inspired by vintage bull fighting posters so, you know the yellowish dirt of the bull ring and the red of the matador's cape, you know maybe the the blue of uh the water outside San Sebastian along those beaches, it's got a very Spanish feel to it. I like the cover a lot it it uh it reminds me of also a a bull fighter painting by Manet, that's in the […] so yeah when I look at it, it transports me to Spain.

[Mark:] Would Hemingway have known that painting?

[Verna Kale:] Maybe. I'm not sure when that painting came to the to the museum, but he um he was a great fan of art and so he he would have um, he definitely knew the work of uh Picasso, Juan Gris and in fact, in later uh for his book about bull fighting he would choose a painting by Juan Gris as the […] piece painting and that's another painting about bull fighting, so yeah I think Hemingway would actually like this cover a lot. 

[Mark:] Yeah striking cover, yeah. They always do such a beautiful job with it. Do you remember how you first encountered Hemingway's work? Was it The Sun Also Rises that gave you your start in Hemingway?

[Verna Kale:] I read Hemingway in high school I read the uh a Farewell to Arms actually, and uh was devastated by it but I re-encountered Hemingway at a key point in my life that I think it's kind of a dangerous time to to encounter Hemingway, and that is I had graduated college and I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do with my life and I was in Spain traveling and I needed something to read and someone loaned me The Sun Also Rises and so I read this novel as as a young 20-something who didn't know what to do with her life in Spain and I think it it definitely flipped some kind of switch for me. It was it was a transformative experience, I'll put it that way.

[Mark:] Is that what got you thinking about Hemingway, as a scholar?

[Verna Kale:] Originally I was interested in medieval literature and uh when I went off to graduate school I I still wasn't sure if I wanted to study modernism or medieval literature, but I I really couldn't get away from Hemingway and I I just found his work so compelling, so interesting and um, ultimately did sort of veer off into into modernism and into editing because I I really liked you know seeing how what went into the work, what inspired it, um I'm I'm interested in the way that Hemingway saw the world, and Hemingway is sort of a a gateway for me of being able to explore a lot of interests in art, and history, and I just I don't know I feel like he's a, if you're going to devote your career to studying one person it should be someone as interesting as Ernest Hemingway.

[Mark:] Yeah, it's kind of a limitless journey to learn about Hemingway, isn't it? If you can put yourself in the position of somebody who is just encountering The Sun Also Rises for the first time, are there challenges that you would predict that this reader would have? Are there challenges that are common to readers approaching this book? 

[Verna Kale:] So one of the the challenges is one that I address directly in my addition and that is some of the um questionable language that that he uses. There are some slurs in the text that uh, would be very off-putting I think to to, students today and I, I kind of feel like in a way they're kind of gratuitous and they weren't really necessary and so, in editing this edition I just wanted to make the book that is the version of this novel that I give to my students and one in which, you know, we you know don't use the slurs when reading out loud in class, and so in in this Edition I've I've actually um kind of hyphenated over um some of the slurs. Also, you know the book's a hundred years old and so some of the stuff that gets mentioned students just you know they just don't know what that is. Um you know like cables, you know telegrams, what's a telegram? And so um in some of the notes I I explain some of you know, uh things like that some of the references to specific places um the bull fight itself has some some things related to the ritual that might need a little bit of explanation but, in a lot of ways I think that this book is actually very universal. Um, that you know you might have to explain a couple of the specific references but the relationships the things that are happening in it, I think are as relevant now um as they were hundred years ago and you don't have to explain that sort of thing you know, the um the personal relationships and the betrayals and you know things like that.

[Mark:] Do you have a favorite line in this novel?

[Verna Kale:] I really - there's so many good ones, it's really hard to pick a favorite but, probably there there are two contenders -- one is I love it when someone asks the minor character, Mike Campbell, uh how he went bankrupt, and he says gradually and then suddenly. That to me is very evocative of a lot of things and it actually, I I've used that line recently to talk about my own relationship with AI artificial intelligence, like suddenly AI with the you know gradually and then suddenly. I also though just really like this one passage from the middle of the book, you know, you've got the Paris scenes and then you've got the um the Spain scenes, but then in the middle you've got when they go to this little uh Village of Burguet and there's just beautiful passage so if I could pick a favorite passage, rather than a favorite line it would be when um, Jake is fishing in Burguete and he talks about pulling the fish out of the water and uh the trout that are jumping at the falls. And he says they were beautifully colored and firm and hard from the cold water, it was a hot day, so I slit them all and shucked out the insides, gills and all, and tossed them over across the river. I took the trout ashore, washed them in the cold, smoothly heavy water above the dam, and then picked some ferns and packed them all in the bag, three trout on a layer of ferns, then another layer of ferns, then three more trout then covered them with ferns, they looked nice in the ferns, and now the bag was bulky, and I put them in the shade of the tree. And it's just, I don't know, something about talking about the ferns, the ferns really get to me like the the beautiful cool sensory experience of pulling those trout out of the cold water and wrapping them in the ferns and then taking the nap, reading his book under the tree.

[Mark:] So why does Heming way invest so much detail into that which doesn't seem to matter to the plot that much, this mentioning as you're saying mentioning ferns you know a half dozen times in the span of a few sentences, why is that relevant? Why does that stand out?
 [Verna Kale:] He is just really masterful at describing places and bringing people into that place and letting them experience it, using all of their senses and I think that's one of the appeals of his writing, is that he uses his powers of observation that he developed as a journalist and as an amateur naturalist to describe the world around him factually, descriptively, and making it so that the reader can then feel, feel that world and becomes a part of it and um you know, they they understand it they you know, the the feeling of peace I get when I read that section is like a -- it's like a rest in between the frenetic energy of the Paris and the um the Pamplona sections.

[Mark:] Yeah, that's a great way to describe it. I wanted to do something unfair and offer a line from The Sun Also Rises and see if you had a reaction to it. This sort of reminds me of what we talked about in our first episode, where you were talking about when Hemingway was drafting the novel he was engaging in character studies almost before he removed a lot of it. Well, the first sentence of the novel is “Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton.” So, I just wanted to ask you about that first sentence because he's not the protagonist of the novel, so why are we starting with that declaration? Is Hemingway throwing like a curveball at us? How are we supposed to react?

[Verna Kale:] It's interesting because the novel didn't originally start like that, this was a a chapter that became the first chapter after Hemmingway lopped off the the first part when he decided he didn't need that part. It immediately drops us into the story with the characters and it tells us a little bit about Robert Cohen, who in a a forward to the novel that Hemingway later um did not use, he had he had said that that Cohen was the um the hero of the story and um, I think that people have not paid enough attention to Cohen as a positive character. Someone who has strength, who um stands up for what he believes in, and you know to to start the novel with that line, it lets us know that Cohen is a fighter. You know he was middleweight boxing champion at Princeton, there's you know some backstory there that tells us a little bit about um what he had to do in order to have social standing, you know, being one of the few Jewish students at Princeton um, his path to you know fitting in was through athletics. Um, but it also lets you know that uh this guy you know, he's, he can be tough too, he's got his own code that he lives by and he's not going to let Jake push him around and that's something that people often overlook when they read this novel.

[Mark:] That's a good point. We also ask Verna our Norton Library guests to offer a hot take -- something counterintuitive, about the work that they have edited or the writer that they are working on. Do you have such a hot take on The Sun Also Rises?

[Verna Kale:] I do, and it kind of actually stems from what I was just saying about um Robert Cohn and that is also that I don't think that we ought to read Jake is the hero of this book, you know, he's one of an ensemble of deeply flawed people and, and his flaw isn't his disability, his flaw is his personality and um his unwillingness to speak up and if you really look at this book, like we feel like Jake talks a lot in the novel because he's talking to us. You know he's the narrator, but he doesn't really say all that much in the dialogue and so you know he's not um the epitome of strength or anything, he's just a guy who's trying to get through life using these rituals that he's created for himself.

[Mark:] Does Hemingway know that he's creating such a flawed character? Is this part of the design of the of the novel?

[Verna Kale:] I think he does, and I think that's part of why he gets kind of irritated when people conflate him and his main character cause, he he's not Jake in that sense. Hemingway was um I think thought of himself as you know a stronger, more upstanding guy than that honestly.

[Mark:] Unlike some of the other writers that we treat on the Norton Library podcast, you hear this phrase the “Hemingway hero” almost as if Hemingway has traced a certain archetype throughout his entire career, um first of all is there any substance to that? But is Jake, does Jake qualify as a Hemingway hero?

[Verna Kale:] I mean in in some ways he does because he's um, one thing that I that the Hemmingway Hero has, is a like a personal code that they live by. And I do see that with with Jake. Um, with Jake its more kind of a coping mechanism, than as with other heroes like maybe Robert Jordan who comes along later in For Whom The Bell Tolls,  but there's something appealing about his characters, the way that they kind of withstand the forces that act upon them and they kind of make their own way in, in a difficult world um, and I -I think that that is um that's probably true that there there is a certain element of that in in this novel as well. And also, you know Brett, she also um you know she's uh in a lot of ways a strong and independent person.

[Mark:] Absolutely. In the past 100 years, has The Sun Also Rises been appropriated or adapted in any other form that readers might also investigate? Any hints you could give us about those?
[Verna Kale:] Well you know now it's in the public domain, so people can do whatever they want to The Sun Also Rises at this point. But yeah, there there have been some adaptations, there's a film it was not too long ago, adapted as a ballet which is kind of interesting. Um, Hemingway was not a fan of adaptations of his work. He um he actually refused to attend the premiere of the movie for um uh A Farewell to Arms you know, he just uh he wasn't a fan and I have to admit that I'm actually not a fan either of adaptations just because what I love about Hemingway is the writing, like the actual sentence level writing and and that gets lost in adaptation so, I I can't necessarily recommend an adaptation because I I generally tend to avoid them.

[Mark:] In the first episode, you mentioned the drummer as a bit character in The Sun Also Rises so, with that in mind is there a Sun Also Rises playlist that you could offer?

[Verna Kale:] I would be thrilled for someone to make a Sun Also Rises playlist um, I'm not 100% sure what all I would include on it um, maybe the the song that bill sings in the hotel in Burguete, which is a real song um the Bells Are Ringing for Me and My Gal, um I would also have to include Taylor Swift on there. Her song Anti-hero, um I think the lyrics they kind of remind me of of Jake Barnes and crew because like there's that line; it's me I'm the problem it's me. And that's a song about people like you know kind of causing their own problems, I think one of the lines is um uh I should not be left to my own devices they come with prices and vices and I'm not a huge Swifty but, I I have taught um students who love Taylor Swift and they love this novel and so i' I've become aware the the intersectionality between Taylor Swift's lyrics and The Sun Also Rises. I might on a playlist add Chris Kristofferson cover of Johnny Cash's Hangover song Sunday Morning Coming Down. Um, a classic song about drinking, a drinking problem and um interestingly enough I I recently learned that Chris Kristofferson, the uh country star recently passed away, he met Hemingway one time-

[Mark:] Did he?

[Verna Kale:] Uh in at a bull fight in the 1950s so um, that's that's kind of a fun fact and so I would want to put Chris Kristofferson on my playlist.

[Mark:] That is amazing. And Chris, I know Chris Kristofferson was also inspired by a chapter in The Grapes of Wrath and he wrote a song based on—

[Verna Kale:] I get the feeling that--   

[Mark:] Yeah.

[Verna Kale:] I get the feeling that Chris Kristofferson and Ernest Hemingway were both extremely well-read people and um people don't necessarily realize that about either of them, like just being you know um highly educated through you know one's own reading and and I I think that's really great.

[Mark:] I am interested of several of your notes in your Norton Library Edition, but one that I'd like to ask you about deals with the two epigraphs that come at the beginning of the novel, as epigraphs tend to tend to do. So, what will readers find when they begin the book and they are met with these two dueling quotations?

[Verna Kale:] So the first epigraph is um Gertude Stein, Hemingway's friend. She was a another one of the famous writers in Paris at this time um and the line “you are all a lost generation.” Um which she actually, um she took it to apply to uh Hemingway's group of of you know expatriate friends but, it was inspired by a conversation about all of the the young people who had been affected by World War I. Um, and then that epigraph is kind of in contrast to a passage from Ecclesiastes in the Bible and that's the the passage from which the the novel takes its name; one generation passeth away and another generation cometh but the Earth abideth forever, and Hemingway actually writes in one of his letters you know what was on his mind when he paired these two very different epigraphs together and he said um, in his letter “the point of the book to me was that the Earth abideth forever having a great deal of fondness and admiration for the Earth and not a hell of a lot for my generation.” Um and so it's a it's a conflicting idea there, that uh oh yeah all is lost it's terrible, but then also but you know it's a cycle and things are going to be okay and um the Earth whether you take that literally like nature is going to heal itself or-or you can maybe take it more metaphorically um, there is a chance for humanity to heal itself. Um, so it is at the same time um kind of a dismal viewpoint of someone who has you know just lived through a World War but, it's also um an optimistic viewpoint as a as a message of hope and you've got that that tension in the epigraph, and then you know you see that play out in the in the story that follows in the novel.

[Mark:] You mentioned that in the first quote Gertrude Stein seems to be using it as a as a pejorative, a lost generation. What is the lost generation more generally, how can we think about it as we approach this novel?

[Verna Kale:] The lost generation would be the people who had um, experienced this war where there's mechanized warfare, there's a a pandemic that happens during the war, the the flu uh killed millions of people and um, then you know what was it all for, what was the the cause of the war? And you'll see like in the in the footnotes, where I explained to students you know the reasons behind World War I, it was it was a problem of diplomacy, it was a problem of um uh you know nationalism and um alliances that got tangled up and it sort of like well, well really what was it all about? And there's this um, this feeling of you know, meaninglessness and I I think that that is um kind of what is is being characterized there by this lost generation; a generation that has um you know uh lost maybe its sense of purpose um, and um for Stein she's kind of like disappointed in Hemmingway um and and his his cohort for that, but he's kind of saying like you know, well of course we feel this way look at what we what we've had to endure and he writes about that a little bit later in his memoir um written much later, where he reflects back on these Paris years and he's kind of annoyed at Stein honestly for for that suggestion. But, he is talking about um that period after the war as being um, a time where he was able to um live independently to get away from older moral uh codes that would have you know, required that he live his life a certain way and instead he kind of breaks free from that and is able to um you know live uh, that creative life that allows him to you know leave journalism behind and write this groundbreaking novel that that kind of demonstrates to to readers like you know what this generation is concerned with, what they're facing, and how they're going to live their lives in a new way.

[Mark:] Yeah, and it's also striking that in the response to Stein's put down Hemingway is drawing from the Bible, which maybe people don't always associate with Hemingway. Does that say anything to you, that Hemingway is sort of relying on organized religion uh and and maybe his parents teaching for that kind of response? How does that factor into it?

[Verna Kale:] I don't know that um he was particularly religious at this phase in his life but he he was raised um, a Christian and um would convert to Catholicism and um, he was very interested in the Bible as a source of inspiration, um whenever was looking for book titles he would kind of delve into the Bible to see if he could you know find some inspiration there um. And I I think that Ecclesiastes probably appealed to him um, you know being very poetic and writing about the natural world in a way that kind of fit his world view.

[Mark:] By putting out an addition, one of the implicit arguments is that this novel published in 1926 is still relevant to current readers in 2025. What is the contemporary relevance of this novel? How do you see it as speaking to 21st century readers?

[Verna Kale:] I think that the way that Hemingway's writing is um, on the surface it seems very simple um, it seems very straightforward, that lets it hold a lot of um -- it can support a lot of different interpretations and he was he was always trying to uh describe the world as you know, exactly as it as it truly was and as a result that kind of gives the writing um, a longevity uh, because it it even though it's very evocative of its place in time, Paris of the 1920s, um it also is just um, it allows for interpretations that you know people in his own day might not have have even realized. So um, you know people think of Hemingway in terms of his status as an icon of masculinity um, but he understood the complexities of people's identity, he understood what it meant to be trans or queer or to experience PTSD, um and you know people maybe previously overlooked that in his work or they didn't understand it or they treated as as metaphorical but, really it is right there um, in in his major novels and the more we learn about people the more that some of the things in Hemmingway’s work um, make sense and you know, as our our society becomes more accepting um we're able to see like, oh gosh you know this this Hemingway was writing about this stuff. You know I don't know if he himself was you know super tolerant or anything, I'm not trying to like claim that but, um he was certainly an amazing observer of people and and life, and that really comes through in his work.

[Mark:] Verna Kale, thank you so much for joining us on the Norton Library podcast to discuss Ernest Hemmingway’s The Sun Also Rises. Thanks Verna.

[Verna Kale:] Thank you, Mark.

[Mark:] The Norton Library edition of The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway edited by Verna Kale is available now in paperback and Ebook. Check out the links in the description to this episode for ordering options and more information about the Norton Library, including the full catalog of titles. 

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