The Sun Also Rises at 100: Michael Shannon, Richard Schiff, Jay McInerney, and others

Award-winning actors Michael Shannon (The Shape of Water) and Richard Schiff (The West Wing), along with Jay McInerney and other acclaimed novelists join us for a reading and centennial celebration of The Sun Also Rises — Hemingway’s indelible portrait of love, disillusionment, friendship, and the generation transformed by the First World War.

“No amount of analysis can convey the quality of The Sun Also Rises,” The New York Times declared upon its publication in 1926. “It is a truly gripping story, told in lean, hard, athletic prose.” One hundred years later, Ernest Hemingway’s debut stands as one of the most powerful novels of the century. Published by Scribner on October 22, 1926, the novel introduced readers to Jake Barnes, Lady Brett Ashley, and their restless circle of expatriates, following them from the cafés of Paris to the bullfights of Pamplona. Its stripped-down prose and charged silences helped change the sound of American fiction.

What makes a book survive a century? How does Hemingway read now — after generations of writers have absorbed, imitated, challenged, and reinvented his influence? In an evening introduced by members of the Hemingway family, Shannon, Schiff, McInerney, and others revisit the novel that announced one of the 20th century’s most consequential literary voices, exploring its style, its mythology, its contradictions, and the strange alchemy that keeps a classic alive. Celebrate 100 years of the novel that set a new standard for American fiction.

This program is part of the Unterberg Poetry Center.