The novel also risks reader dissatisfaction with regard to structure. And yet, as soon as we figure out Jake's postwar anatomical condition he was castrated in a place crash , we know that he will never be satisfied. Therefore, according to the conventions of storytelling — not to mention common sense — there's no real reason to read on.
And yet we do read on. Typically, a contemporary novel begins with a scene, dropping readers directly into the action of the story and thereby piquing our interest. Who are these people? What are their relationships to one another, and to their time and place? We read on, at least at first, to find out the answers to such fundamental questions.
By the time we've comprehended a story's fundamental situation, we're inside its special world. Alternately, a book-length work of fiction might start with background, answering those questions before we've had the chance to ask them. Sometimes called exposition, background is information we need in order to fully understand the action of the story. Without it, readers may be unsure of the significance of the scenes they read. They may even lose their way altogether.
An example of a novel that begins with background is Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, the first line of which reads "The family of Dashwood had long been settled in Sussex" — after which Austen describes the circumstances most of them financial leading up to the book's first actual scene.
This is perhaps a more logical way to begin a story than the first approach described. It is also less dynamic and engaging, however. After all, sheer information is never as compelling as action.
However he or she begins, somewhere early in any novel an author must introduce the book's conflict that is, the situation wherein the protagonist, the main character, lacks something that is not easy to obtain.
In a way, conflict is story, as we read, consciously or unconsciously, to see if and how the protagonist will get what he or she wants. Will Odysseus arrive home safely to regain control of his kingdom? Will Hamlet kill his uncle, as instructed by the ghost of his father?
Will Jane Eyre survive childhood and adolescence? Though a notoriously hard drinker, she handled her liquor admirably for such a fashionably gaunt creature. She was gregarious—one of the boys—but also exuded an air of unattainability, a necessary attribute for any successful siren. Men followed Lady Duff wherever she went—including Hemingway. After that, Hemingway was seen for weeks on end in Montmartre, buying drinks for both her and her official paramour, Patrick Guthrie, a dissipated thirtysomething Briton who subsisted on checks from his rich mother back in Scotland.
Sometimes Hadley joined these excursions with Lady Duff, but they were not happy outings for her. She often burst into tears, and Hemingway would prevail upon McAlmon or their friend Josephine Brooks to take his wife home while he stayed out drinking with Lady Duff. Loeb was dumbfounded. Why on earth had Hemingway pledged good behavior?
Was he sleeping with Duff now as well? Hemingway had, in any case, learned about her liaison with Loeb. Their secret had been working its way through the Left Bank gossip mill.
When a mutual friend told Hemingway the news, he had been furious. The upcoming Pamplona trip was starting to look like a powder keg. Yet no one backed out. Hemingway, Loeb, and Lady Duff all put on their best poker faces.
He even pledged to escort her and Guthrie to Pamplona. In the meantime, Hemingway and Hadley dispatched their month-old son, Bumby, to Brittany with his nanny, packed their bags, and left Paris, heading to a quiet, remote Basque village in the Pyrenees called Burguete to kick off the Pamplona holiday with a week of trout fishing.
But the trout were in no position to oblige them. A logging company had destroyed the local pools, broken down dams, and run logs down the river.
Hemingway was in despair over the sight. It was not an auspicious start to the excursion. He grew upset the moment Lady Duff stepped off the train onto the platform. Unlike Hemingway, he had no intention of pretending not to know. The party immediately repaired to the station bar, which Loeb and Lady Duff had graced together just a few weeks earlier. Three martinis later, Guthrie adjourned to the pissoir.
Loeb began to interrogate Lady Duff. Her behavior toward him had changed, he said. What had happened? The trio hired a car for the awkward mile journey to Pamplona. When they reached the Hotel Quintana, where Hemingway had booked rooms for the entourage, Lady Duff and Guthrie went to one room and Loeb to another. Hemingway, Hadley, and the Burguete group arrived the next morning in similarly petulant spirits. A round of absinthe, a large Spanish lunch, and a walk through the town helped alleviate the atmosphere, but already it was clear that the jubilance of the previous year was probably not going to be repeated.
First of all, Pamplona itself had changed. Rolls-Royces now idled outside the hotel. Yet Lady Duff would prove the most disruptive intruder of all. The next day, everyone scraped themselves out of bed in time to see the bulls driven from their corral to the stadium, with the usual crowd of men scrambling ahead of the herd. The press corps was on hand, including photographers. Hemingway, wearing a beret and white pants, got right down to the business of baiting the bulls.
One bull knocked Smith down; it then turned and faced Loeb, who took off his sweater and waved it at the animal. The real bullfights began that afternoon. In front of the Hemingway crew, a bull gored a horse, which took a death-throes run through the arena, trailing its intestines. At another point, a bull tried to escape by jumping over the wall surrounding the ring.
The fiesta was in full swing. Hundreds of people filled the main square, along with the relentless thump of drums and shrill piping of fifes. Hemingway asked Loeb what he thought of his first bullfight. Being less than reverential about bullfighting was one of the surest ways to antagonize Hemingway. The only worse offense might be stealing the limelight from him. Smith cut to the chase. When Loeb pressed Smith about whether Hemingway was also in love with Lady Duff, Smith refused to give a straight answer.
The conversation abruptly ended when Loeb realized that Lady Duff and Hadley—sitting together at the far end of the table—had gone silent. Loeb quickly changed the subject.
If Hadley had indeed overheard the chat and entertained her own suspicions about a possible affair between her husband and Lady Duff, she appears to have kept them to herself. In the morning, Hemingway, Loeb, and Smith headed back to the bullring for amateur hour. To spare his wardrobe any further indignities, Loeb came armed with a hotel towel. This time when a bull charged him, there was no chance to get out of the way.
The bull loped across the arena and eventually tossed Loeb into the air. Miraculously, he landed on his feet, as though the entire episode had been a choreographed stunt. The crowd went mad; photographers caught his moment of glory.
Hemingway, not to be outdone, then emerged from the sidelines and approached a bull from behind. He grabbed the animal and then managed to catch hold of its horns and wrestle it to the ground.
When Brett and the Count visit Jake's apartment, Jake tells Brett he loves her and asks if they can live together. She replies that doing so is impossible because she would be tempted to cheat on him. She also tells him that she is about to travel to San Sebastian, a coastal town in the Basque region of Spain.
Later, Brett admits to Jake that she feels miserable, apparently due to her unfulfilled love for him. Jake receives a postcard from Brett in San Sebastian, as well as a note from Cohn saying that he's leaving the country for a while; it is rumored that Frances has gone to England. Jake's friend Bill Gorton visits Paris, severely intoxicated. Mike, too, is falling-down drunk. Mike invites himself and Brett along, and they arrange to rendezvous in the nearby town of Pamplona.
Jake and Bill depart Paris via rail and arrive in Bayonne in the evening. The next morning, Jake, Bill, and Cohn travel to Pamplona; however, Brett and Mike are not on the train they were scheduled to take.
The following day, Jake and Bill go fishing as planned. Cohn has announced his decision to remain in Pamplona. While fishing, they befriend an Englishman named Harris. There they meet up with Brett, Mike, and Cohn before walking to the corrals outside of town to see the unloading of the bulls for the coming bullfights.
Pamplona's yearly fiesta of San Fermin, which will last for seven days, begins. Musicians and dancers fill the streets and shops — including the wine store, where Brett is placed on a cask so the Basque peasants can dance around her as if she were a pagan idol.
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