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LIVING & TRAVEL Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises" by Craig Boreth Back to Literatour index page. Web Resources: The Hemingway Bookstore: Order Hemingway's books from amazon.com. Ernest Hemingway Timeline The Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park, Illinois, Hemingway's birthplace Banned Hemingway Books: The history of which ones were banned, and why. The Papa Page: Biography, photo album, quotes and links, chronicling his life from first breath to last.

PART ONE: ITINERARY "Oh Jake," Brett said, "we could have had such a good time together." Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly pressing Brett against me. "Yes," I said. "Isn't it pretty to think so." Not five minutes after returning from Madrid, the lilt of that ethereal dialogue is bullied away by the drone of the heartless customs guy who confiscates my semi-harmless 4 lb. Pamplonese chorizo, and I am in terror, faced with the arduous task of explaining not only to myself, but to anyone out there who may be in the least bit curious, why this brief trip along a literary road, paved without ornament 70 years prior, altered my frame, outlook, way of life and everything. So here I now stand, meatless in America, returned form the lands of "The Sun Also Rises," with a story I'm going to try like hell to tell. The itinerary reads like a hedonist's spring break: A drinking tour of Paris; hiking and fishing the Pyrenees; surviving the madness of the Fiesta de San Fermín in Pamplona; inhaling the tapas lifestyle in San Sebastián; and partying through the hot night in Madrid. Visiting any one of these is a drama; but weave them in a crafted narrative flow, replete with conflict and climax, and you have an adventure of truly, well, Hemingway-esque proportions. Add the evocative Hemingway style, and not only are you on the trip of a lifetime, but you wax nostalgic for your last visit in the summer of '25. E.L. Doctorow wrote, "When writing anything, [Hemingway] would construct the sentences so as to produce an emotion not by claiming it but by rendering precisely the experience to cause it." It is the "experience" you get when reading Hemingway that imparts each morning on the road, each spray of mountain wine, each aroma of livestock and clay, with a deliciously tangible sense of déjà vu. Shall we indulge? CHOOSE YOUR NEXT DESTINATION: Paris The Pyrenees Pamplona/Fiesta San Sebastián Madrid PRACTICAL TIPS FOR THE TRAVELER: Razor-witted curmudgeon Paul Fussel described travel (as opposed to tourism) as "a quest for a new kind of strenuousness ... a laborious adventure amidst strange evil as well as strange good." With that in mind, I have only two rules for your journey: 1. No Youth Hostels. First of all, you can find hotels throughout this journey that are barely more expensive than a hostel. More importantly, the safety and familiarity of the hostel crowd detracts from your experience of all the strangeness that swirls about you. If you want to meet and party with Americans, there are plenty back home. Finally, there's not a curfew in Europe that could stand up to this adventure. 2. Lay off the camera a bit. When I travel, I collect stories, not photos. Of course, there are some photos worth taking: Remember Mystery Train ... take photos of the hotel rooms, the bathrooms, all the things you'll forget. The grand stuff is much more suited to the eyes and the memory. Back to Literatour index page. Craig Boreth is the author of "Run With the Bulls: The Adventurer's Guide to Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises." Visit his Web site for more information, or to order the book. Illustration by Federico Jordan, a freelance illustrator based in Mexico. © 1996 Tripod, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Coming Next Week: "The Casablanca Literatour"