I've been liking The Sun Also Rises a lot as a book, and a lot of that can be attributed to the style Hemingway presents, but a lot of it has to do with the characters. Jake is a complex narrator who surrounds himself with very interesting people, and I can form a solid opinion on almost every one of them.
The reason I said "almost every one of them" is that I've had a hard time recently forming my opinion of Bill as a character. I find him hilarious and quick-witted regardless of the situation he finds himself in, and for a while I really enjoyed him as a character.
Then...the bigotry surfaced. While racism and homophobia has been a constant throughout the book ranging from subtle (Jake saying Cohn getting his nose flattened improved it) to overt (Jake becoming infuriated by the black drummer's friendly attitude towards Brett) it had never been quite so inflammatory as it can be with Bill.
At first, I tried to brush it away as being an attitude of a bygone era, but the more time we spend with Bill, the harder it is to make that argument. It's hard to defend rants about the American Civil War being caused by Lincoln's homosexual affairs as anything less than rampant bigotry.
And here is where I run into my problem. I really want to like Bill as a character but can't simply ignore these sometimes horrifying displays of ignorance and hate. I still "enjoy" Bill's presence in a scene and find him much more preferable to Mike the drunken ass or Brett, who, quite comically, I recently discovered is referred to as a "demi-bitch" by many literary critics. Even so, I can never view Bill in the same way I would Howie or Holden. I can picture spending time with him being fun for a little while, but it wouldn't take long for the bigotry to reach the surface. For this reason, although I may enjoy his inclusion in the book and believe the narrative is greatly improved by his involvement, I cannot like the character himself
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And it's not even clear what the others think when Bill gets into this kind of stuff--Jake never offers an "amen" or even a comment. Mike's anti-Semitic vitriol seems pretty clearly connected to outrage and jealousy and exasperation surrounding Cohn and his intrusion into his personal life (not that this *excuses* it, but it makes it more understandable psychologically--like with Jake and the drummer, he seizes upon the most readily available rhetoric to bolster his own sense of superiority; it's *reactive*). The thing with Bill, which you're hitting on here, is that he really has no *stake* in this story--he's more an "onlooker" than Jake. (Well, I guess he has a stake in being made to wait for dinner, but his Klan "joke" to the priest is a rather extreme reaction to such an inconvenience--is he seriously suggesting pro-Catholic bias on the part of the railway? Or just reaching for the big guns society makes available to him as a white Protestant man?)
I agree--the early scenes with Bill are some of the most enjoyable in the book (even if we gag a bit on the boxer anecdote, the tone is still so recklessly ironic there's humor there), but he does kind of "wear out his welcome." THis may be connected to my recent entry on irony in the novel--it only gets you so far.
I feel like sanitizing or PC-ifying Bill would kill his character. He's wrong- SO wrong- but he doesn't really mean anything by it. He obviously knows that he's being incredibly offensive (the Lincoln stuff, especially, would have raised just as many hackles then as now) and he probably knows better than to actually subscribe to any racist or homophobic viewpoints, but he says the stuff anyways, because his brand of humor- his brand of irony- relies totally on being way beyond the pale. I believe someone drew the obvious comparison to Lenny Bruce in class the other day; Dylan's thoughts on Bruce are pretty much my thoughts on Bill. "He never robbed any churches, nor cut off any babies' heads." He's harmless, unless you're listening to his jokes with a parent or teacher in the room. You can say that they're "horrible displays of ignorance and hate" if you like, and it's probably the safest way to go, but let's be honest- we've laughed at worse.
Charles--I hadn't heard Dylan's line on Lenny Bruce before. That's a good one, and applicable to many who have followed in Lenny's footsteps . . .
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