SOURCE: Bloom, Harold. “Ernest Hemingway.” In Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds, pp. 569-574. New York: Warner Books, 2002.

In the following essay, Bloom argues that although Hemingway is better known for his life and personality than for his literary production, Hemingway's novel The Sun Also Rises is an important contribution to literary and cultural history.

They were seated in the boat, Nick in the stern, his father rowing. The sun was coming up over the hills. A bass jumped, making a circle in the water. Nick trailed his hand in the water. It felt warm in the sharp chill of the morning.

In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern of the boat with his father rowing, he felt quite sure that he would never die.

That is the conclusion of “Indian Camp,” one of the Nick Adams stories, in which Nick...