Bar Tabs in Hemingway

Why does Hemingway chronicle every drink had in The Sun Also Rises?

First, it should be noted that Jake Barnes drinks a good deal of coffee too. He also eats a lot of food and Hemingway includes all this. So it is not just a preoccupation with alcohol in the The Sun Also Rises, it is a preoccupation with luxuries and pleasures. It is a focus on the sensualist, pleasure-seeking life that Jakes Barnes and his companions lead; going from one worldly pleasure to the next.

As the smart fellow on the back of the book says, the Lost Generation is full of moral bankruptcy and spiritual dissolution. They wander aimlessly, from pleasure to pleasure, consuming without thinking twice about it. Hemingway captures this by listing every little thing Jake and his friends consumes. Hemingway does not dwell on any of these drinks or foods, because neither does the characters.

Jake consumes these things, looking to fill himself with something, but gets nothing and goes to the next. He drinks, but is never content, he eats but is never full, he sleeps but is never rested; ultimately these all come down to the fact that he is an empty man who loves but is never satisfied. The constant drinking is a 'going through the motions', if you will, of the good life.  Jake walks from one bar to another, looking for something but finding nothing. His belly is full of wine and liquor, but his heart and spirit are always empty. I've read Hemingway before, and I have a funny image I've gleaned from his stories that I'd like to share with you. I like to picture Hemingway characters as these robots that go around drinking and talking and looking for humanity, or something that will make them human. They are robotic because they drink and drink and drink and just don't seem to notice or really comment about it. It's fuel for them.  Maybe that analogy works for, maybe it doesn't, but I always say what's an english paper without robots in it. Anyways, back to Hemingway and his ever-thirsty characters.  Hemingway doesn't think it odd or out of the ordinary for his characters to drink so much either. It seems like the most perfectly natural thing in the world for his characters to do. He doesn't comment about it through the narrative nor lend it any special weight, it just happens, the same way 'he said' or 'she said' is seamlessly worked into other stories.

There is a second reason why Hemingway includes all of Jake's tabs, and if you'd allow me another 150 or so words of your time, I'd like to explain it to you.
Drinking is cool. To have bulls and liquor and wine in every other paragraph lends the novel a definite air. People enjoy reading about wild parties and lavish extravagance. This aesthetic sells. The same sort of atmosphere can be found in the Great Gatsby. Today, we even have 'lost generation' parties, to recapture some of the fun from the 20s. And the new Baz Luhrmann adaptation of 'The Great Gatsby' hopes to earn several million dollars of this aesthetic. Now, I'm not saying Hemingway including alcohol to sell novels, but I am saying that the constant drinking and partying and chronicling of the nightlife makes the novel interesting and fun to read.



And that is why Hemingway includes all these tabs.
Cheers.
~Mike Gioia