50 Fun Facts About The Sun Also Rises

An epigraph to The Sun Also Rises credits which American writer in Paris with the Lost Generation label?

Gertrude Stein said she picked the phrase up from a French garage owner scolding a young mechanic. Hemingway set her remark beside a Bible passage and later said his characters were battered, not lost.

Ernest Hemingway took the title The Sun Also Rises from a passage in which Old Testament book?

Ecclesiastes supplied the second epigraph, on generations passing while the earth endures. Hemingway told his editor that this endurance was the real point of the book.

Jake Barnes's war wound has left him with which condition, the unspoken barrier between him and Brett Ashley?

Impotence is never named outright in the book: Jake says only that he got hurt in the war. He and Brett love each other, and both know the injury rules out a settled life together.

After his last bullfight of the festival, Pedro Romero presents Brett Ashley with which part of the bull?

An ear is the trophy, cut from the very bull that had killed a man during the run through the streets. Brett wraps it in one of Jake's handkerchiefs and leaves it shoved in a hotel drawer.

Which star played Lady Brett Ashley in the 1957 film of The Sun Also Rises, at Hemingway's own insistence?

Ava Gardner had dropped out and been replaced by Susan Hayward before Hemingway stepped in. She later called Lady Brett the most interesting character she had ever played.

In which Spanish city does The Sun Also Rises end, with Jake Barnes and Brett Ashley riding in a taxi?

Madrid is where Brett ends up after leaving Pamplona with Romero. Jake arrives by night train, finds her alone in a cheap hotel, and the book closes on the two of them in a cab.

Which Star Trek actor played Count Mippipopolous in NBC's 1984 miniseries of The Sun Also Rises?

Leonard Nimoy took the role of the champagne-loving count, with Jane Seymour as Brett and Hart Bochner as Jake. The two-part version aired on consecutive nights in December 1984.

Which relative wrote to Ernest Hemingway in disgust at The Sun Also Rises, deploring its language and characters?

His mother, Grace, told him that every page filled her with loathing, after her book study class had torn into her son's work. The family's dismay did nothing to slow the sales.

With Pamplona out of season, the makers of the 1957 film The Sun Also Rises restaged its festival in which country?

Mexico stood in for Spain, with filming starting in the city of Morelia. Hemingway walked out of the picture, complaining that the setting looked wrong and the bulls were undersized.

Which name is given to Hemingway's method, on show in The Sun Also Rises, of leaving the key facts unsaid?

The iceberg theory holds that a story gains force from what the writer knows but leaves out, as most of an iceberg rides below the waterline. Jake's injury, never spelled out, is the classic case.

Jake Barnes, who keeps paying the bills for his idle Paris friends, earns his own living in which trade?

Journalism keeps Jake at a newspaper office by day, as it had kept Hemingway, a Paris correspondent for the Toronto Star. Hemingway credited a newsroom style sheet with the foundation of his prose.

Robert Cohn was a champion at Princeton in which sport, one he took up despite disliking it?

Boxing was Cohn's answer to feeling like an outsider at Princeton, and it made him middleweight champion. The skill lies idle until Pamplona, where he floors three men in a single night.

Which bankrupt Scot is Lady Brett Ashley engaged to marry once her divorce comes through?

Mike Campbell writes to Brett constantly and shrugs off her affairs, yet drink turns him vicious towards Robert Cohn. He blames his bankruptcy on friends who let him down.

Which fish do Jake Barnes and Bill Gorton catch on their five-day trip to the streams near Burguete?

Trout fill their bags at the Irati River, where the two men cool their wine in the cold water and say little about the war. The trip is the book's calm interlude before Pamplona.

Jake Barnes first met Brett Ashley in a wartime hospital in England, where she was serving as what?

A volunteer nurse with the Voluntary Aid Detachment, Brett met Jake as he recovered from his wound. Her true love had died of dysentery, and by Jake's account she has twice married men she did not love.

Which saint's festival in Pamplona, famous for its morning bull runs, is the high point of The Sun Also Rises?

San Fermín is honoured each July with processions, bullfights and dawn runs through the streets. Hemingway first went in 1923, and his book is a large part of why outsiders now flock there.

Dancers at the Pamplona festival seat Brett Ashley on a wine cask and give her a wreath of what?

Garlic is what the dancers wear around their own necks. They refuse to let Brett dance, wanting her as a figure to circle instead, like an idol at the heart of the party.

Which prejudice in the portrayal of Robert Cohn has The Sun Also Rises long been criticised for?

Antisemitism runs through the taunts Cohn takes from the group, and the narration rarely lets his background drop. The publisher queried the bull scenes yet let the slurs stand.

Stranded in a cheap hotel after sending Pedro Romero away, how does Brett Ashley summon Jake Barnes to her side?

By telegram, twice over: one wire reaches Jake forwarded from Paris and another from Pamplona, both saying she is in trouble. He books a place on that night's train at once.

Which fellow novelist's advice led Hemingway to cut the opening pages of The Sun Also Rises before it was printed?

F. Scott Fitzgerald read the draft and urged him to trim the slow start by at least 2,500 words. Hemingway went further and told the publisher to drop the whole opening sequence.

Jake Barnes tries to pray before the festival and then feels ashamed of being a poor member of which faith?

Catholicism gives Jake little comfort: his prayer wanders from his friends to the bullfights to making money. On the train down from Paris, a party of pilgrims from Ohio had beaten him to lunch in the dining car.

Which swashbuckling star played Brett's drunken fiancé in the 1957 film The Sun Also Rises, opposite Tyrone Power?

Errol Flynn's performance led him to a run of roles as alcoholics. Even Hemingway, who walked out of the film, allowed that Flynn was the best thing in it.

Which signal announces the start of the Pamplona festival at noon on Sunday 6 July in The Sun Also Rises?

A rocket bursts over the square, and seven days and nights of drinking and dancing begin. Pamplona still opens its festival that way, with a firework called the chupinazo set off at noon on 6 July.

Robert Cohn, sure that life is passing him by, begs Jake Barnes to travel with him to which part of the world?

South America had seized Cohn's fancy through W. H. Hudson's romance The Purple Land, which he took as a guide to life. He offers to pay for both of them; Jake proposes a drink instead.

Jake Barnes counts himself Robert Cohn's friend for which sport, as against Cohn's literary friend Braddocks?

Tennis is all the two men share at first: Jake ranks himself as the friend for games, not for confidences. Cohn loved to win, yet his game fell apart once he fell for Brett Ashley.

Basque passengers on the bus to Burguete teach Jake Barnes and Bill Gorton to drink from what?

Wineskins pass from one passenger to the next on the crowded bus, and an old Basque who once lived in the United States joins the talk. Jake later buys two of his own for the Pamplona party.

What does Montoya, who judges men by their passion for bullfighting, do for a living in Pamplona?

Hotelier to the best bullfighters, Montoya hangs photographs of those he thinks have the real passion and forgives a fellow devotee almost anything. He turns cold once Romero is seen drinking with Jake's crowd.

Which New York house published The Sun Also Rises, with Maxwell Perkins as Hemingway's editor?

Scribner's printed 5,090 copies at two dollars each and went back to press within two months. The firm had agreed to take all of Hemingway's later work as well.

The Sun Also Rises is dedicated to Hemingway's son and to which wife, who later received the book's royalties?

Hadley Richardson, his first wife, went to Pamplona with him three summers running. The marriage broke up as the book came out, and he made over its earnings to her in the divorce.

Under which one-word title, also Hemingway's working title, did Jonathan Cape publish The Sun Also Rises in Britain?

Fiesta was Hemingway's working title while he drafted the book in the summer of 1925. Cape used it for the London edition of 1927, which also dropped both epigraphs.

Count Mippipopolous, who says he has been in seven wars, shows Jake and Brett scars left by what?

Arrows left the marks he shows on his stomach and his back. Brett had already declared the count one of her own kind, and he spends the evening fetching and pouring champagne.

Which absinthe substitute do Jake Barnes and Georgette drink at a Paris café before their awkward cab ride?

Pernod, an imitation absinthe, is their first drink together. When Jake turns aside her advances and says he is sick, Georgette tells him he should not be drinking it.

On the first day of the Pamplona festival, why is Brett Ashley turned away at the door of a church?

She wears no hat, and the rule keeps the whole party outside while the procession goes in. Days later she does enter a church to pray for Romero, then asks to leave almost at once.

Which Spanish word for passion does The Sun Also Rises use for a true devotion to bullfighting, rare in a foreigner?

Afición is what Jake has and his friends lack. Spaniards at his Pamplona lodgings take some convincing that an American can have it, and once convinced they forgive him a great deal.

After the unloading of the bulls in Pamplona, Brett's fiancé taunts Robert Cohn by likening him to which animal?

A steer, a castrated bull put in the corral to calm the fighting animals, is the insult: Cohn trails after Brett and is never wanted. Cohn had just remarked that such a creature has no life at all.

Which figure from Homer's Odyssey does Robert Cohn call Brett Ashley, as her fiancé drunkenly reports in Pamplona?

Circe, the enchantress who turns men into swine, is Cohn's name for her. Her fiancé repeats it with relish and says he wishes he were one of the literary set himself.

After Robert Cohn knocks Pedro Romero down again and again, what does a weeping Cohn offer that earns another punch?

A handshake is Cohn's idea of an honourable ending. Romero, barely able to stand, hits him in the face instead and threatens to kill him if he is still in town by morning.

To which resort on Spain's northern coast does Jake Barnes retreat alone to swim once the festival is over?

San Sebastián gives Jake a brief spell of sea bathing and solitude before trouble calls him away. It is also where Brett had slipped off with Robert Cohn weeks earlier.

Brett's fiancé tells of borrowing what from his tailor for a grand dinner, then giving them away to girls?

War medals are the punchline of the story he tells when Brett asks for a tale of his soldiering: borrowed for one evening, they ended up handed round to girls in a nightclub.

Which future Paramount chief played Pedro Romero in the 1957 film of The Sun Also Rises, against Hemingway's wishes?

Robert Evans was selling suits when Darryl Zanuck spotted him in a nightclub. When the film's stars objected to him, Zanuck's ruling gave Evans the title of his memoir, The Kid Stays in the Picture.

By Brett Ashley's account at the end, what did Pedro Romero want her to do so that she would look more womanly?

He wanted her to grow out her hair, she says, having been ashamed of her boyish crop at first. He also offered marriage and money; she sent him away, sure she would be bad for him.

In which country was Jake Barnes serving when he was wounded, the same one where Hemingway himself was hit?

Italy is where Jake picked up the injury he broods over at night in Paris. Hemingway knew that front first-hand: he drove Red Cross ambulances there and was badly hurt by mortar fire.

Which satirical novella's rejection by Boni & Liveright freed Hemingway to take The Sun Also Rises to a new publisher?

The Torrents of Spring, written in about ten days, mocked the style of Sherwood Anderson, the firm's star author. Its rejection ended the contract, though Hemingway denied that this was the plan.

Which 1932 book did Hemingway devote to the history and ritual of bullfighting, six years after The Sun Also Rises?

Death in the Afternoon grew out of the plan he had before the 1925 trip: a factual book on the bullring. The week in Pamplona handed him a story instead, and the study waited seven years.

Which American poet in Paris blue-pencilled Hemingway's early stories and taught him to distrust adjectives?

Ezra Pound pushed the young writer towards understatement and images left unexplained. The lesson shows most at the close of The Sun Also Rises, where nothing about the lovers' future is settled.

Which British socialite, in Pamplona with Hemingway's party in 1925, was the model for Lady Brett Ashley?

Lady Duff Twysden came to Pamplona with her lover Pat Guthrie, and two other men in the party fell out over her. The first draft did not bother with disguise: its heroine was simply called Duff.

Which Guggenheim heir and Princeton man, Hemingway's rival in Pamplona in 1925, was the model for Robert Cohn?

Harold Loeb had just been away with the woman who became Brett, and the jealousy soured the whole week. In 1959 he answered the portrait with a memoir, The Way It Was.

Which real matador appears in The Sun Also Rises under his own name, back from retirement and outshone by Romero?

Juan Belmonte, famed for working dangerously close to the bull, is jeered by the Pamplona crowd while the newcomer triumphs. The real man was a friend of Hemingway, who wrote about him again later.

The Sun Also Rises follows expatriates left adrift by which conflict, the one in which Jake Barnes was wounded?

The First World War hangs over every page, though almost no one talks about it. Among the expatriate men at the centre of the story, only Robert Cohn is no veteran.

Which French painter did Hemingway credit with teaching him how to make a landscape, as in the Irati River scenes?

Paul Cézanne was the teacher he named in a 1949 interview with Lillian Ross. Critics compare the layered hills and water of the trip to Burguete with the painter's canvases.