Ernest Hemingway, ‘The Sun also Rises’

The plan was  to go to the Tattersal’s Club in pitt st but the nice old huntin shootin fishin type bar is not open on sundays, so we changed venues to the hemingway room  in gertrude and alices bookshop and cafe – bondi. This seemed fabulously appropriate because getrude and alice are gertrude stein and alice b toklas who knew hemingway in paris in the 20s and stein describes her impressions of him in her book – the autobiography of alice b toklas

Unfortunately gertrude and alice were too full for us, so as expected we had to find somewhere else to ‘talk rot’ and ‘get tight’ as brett might say

Due to the skill of our scouts we found another place very nearby that seemed appropriate as it was called the mediteranean. but as it turned out it was the opposite end of the mediteranean from spain – yemen/lebanon/israel. Nevertheless it ‘utilised very well’ as bill might say.

No one had a fight and no-one ran off with a bullfighter but we did discuss the book with some afficion as jake might say. Everyone seemed to find a lot of pleasure in it particularly the early stages, although the characters got to some of us by the end when they started to hurt innocent bystanders. The sparse, almost naive, direct writing style also seemed to be a hit with many of us.

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