For Whom the Glass Is Always Half-Empty
Ben BrantleySeptember 16, 2010: PHILADELPHIA — Time is measured in martinis in “The Sun Also Rises,” Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel of expatriate life in Europe as one long bender. Well, martinis and Pernod and beer and Champagne and bottle after bottle of rough Spanish wine. The religiously efficient Hemingway didn’t bother wasting his terse lyricism on descriptions of drinks, usually just listing the kinds and quantities instead. Alcohol, you see, is the very element through which his characters move, and you might as well try describing oxygen.
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