Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises (1926) captured the disillusionment of the Lost Generation—young men and women who, in the aftermath of World War I, found themselves adrift in a world that no longer made sense.
It was a novel about movement, about drinking and fighting and sex, about people trying desperately to find meaning in a culture that seemed to have abandoned it. Its characters—led by the aimless yet deeply wounded Jake Barnes—wander from Paris to Pamplona, seeking purpose, seeking sensation, but mostly just filling time.
Nearly a century later, THE AUTHOR by The Author presents a new Lost Generation—one that grew up not in the shadow of war, but in the glare of social media and the brutal machinery of Hollywood. The Author, much like Hemingway’s protagonist, is chasing something—fame, validation, the kind of recognition that can fill the hole inside him. And like Jake Barnes, he suspects, deep down, that the thing he is chasing may not exist at all.
Both novels are tales of excess—of young people living in a constant state of motion, of drinking too much, of sleeping with the wrong people, of convincing themselves that they are in control when, in fact, they are completely lost. But where Hemingway’s characters drown their existential despair in wine and bullfights, The Author drowns his in designer drugs and the sickly glow of the camera. Both novels are, at their core, about a man who no longer knows whether he is alive or simply playing a part.
The Sun Also Rises is often described as a novel where “nothing happens.” Its characters move from bar to bar, from country to country, from one doomed relationship to another, never quite arriving at a resolution. There is a deep sense of paralysis beneath all the drinking and bravado—a recognition that the world they once believed in is gone, and there is no replacing it.
The Author, in contrast, lives in a time of endless movement—instant access, infinite distractions, a culture that never sleeps. He is constantly doing things—auditioning, partying, manipulating, strategizing—but the result is the same. The motion is empty. The movement leads nowhere. In Hemingway’s world, people drift because they have lost faith in traditional structures. In THE AUTHOR, people drift because they are trapped in a system that rewards the most visible, not the most talented.
For both protagonists, life is a performance. Jake Barnes performs masculinity, toughness, detachment, even as he suffers in silence over his unfulfilled love for Brett Ashley. The Author performs confidence, charm, invincibility, even as he spirals deeper into self-loathing and addiction. The key difference is that while Jake’s performance is largely for himself and his social circle, The Author’s performance is for everyone. It is filmed, packaged, distributed, liked, commented on. His identity is not just lost—it is commodified.
Both The Sun Also Rises and THE AUTHOR by The Author are haunted by women who remain just out of reach.
For Jake Barnes, it is Brett Ashley—a woman he loves but cannot have, due to his war-inflicted impotence. Brett is reckless, independent, doomed in her own way. She moves through the novel like a specter of what could have been, what should have been, but never will be. Jake’s tragedy is that he must watch the woman he loves destroy herself in pursuit of fleeting pleasures, knowing he can do nothing to stop it.
In THE AUTHOR, women serve a different but equally devastating role. The novel is littered with models, actresses, and influencers—women who are, on paper, everything The Author wants. But no matter how many he beds, he is never satisfied. There is always someone prettier, someone more famous, someone who will elevate his status just a little bit more. If Jake Barnes suffers because he cannot have the woman he loves, The Author suffers because he can have anyone—but it never fills the void.
There is also a parallel between Brett Ashley’s need for male validation and the social media-fueled desperation of modern celebrity culture. Brett knows she is desired, and she weaponizes it. The same dynamic plays out in THE AUTHOR, but on a much grander scale—now, the entire world is watching, and attention is currency.
One of the most iconic sequences in The Sun Also Rises is the bullfight in Pamplona. The matador, Romero, is young, beautiful, and fearless. He moves with grace, embodying an ideal of masculinity and artistry that Jake Barnes can admire but never fully attain. The bullfight is not just a spectacle—it is a performance of identity, a moment where control and chaos meet.
In THE AUTHOR by The Author, the modern equivalent of the bullfight is the audition, the next Instagram post, the industry parties. The Author, like Romero, must perform perfectly under pressure. He must sell an image of himself, one that is compelling, untouchable, worthy of admiration. But whereas Romero’s art is pure, The Author’s is manufactured. He knows that Hollywood doesn’t reward skill; it rewards perception. His matador suit is a well-fitted designer jacket, his bull is the ever-churning gossip cycle.
Both The Sun Also Rises and THE AUTHOR understand that spectacle is power. The difference is that in Hemingway’s world, the performance was about mastery—Romero’s ability to dominate the bull. In The Author’s world, the performance is about visibility—it doesn’t matter if you dominate the system, only that you are seen.
The famous last line of The Sun Also Rises encapsulates its entire ethos. When Brett wistfully tells Jake that they “could have had such a damned good time together,” he responds, “Isn’t it pretty to think so?” It is a moment of resignation—a quiet acknowledgment that the dream was never real, that the fantasy of a different life is just that: a fantasy.
In THE AUTHOR by The Author, this same disillusionment plays out on a different stage. The novel begins with its protagonist clinging to the idea that once he makes it, everything will be different. He will feel whole. He will be respected. He will have arrived. THEN he can write the next great American novel!
By the end, he is left with the same question Hemingway posed nearly a century ago: What if the thing we wanted most was never real to begin with?
Both novels are, ultimately, about lost men in lost generations, chasing something they will never catch. For Hemingway, the tragedy was the war and the moral collapse that followed. For THE AUTHOR, the tragedy is the age of digital identity—the fact that we no longer live our lives, we curate them.
Jake Barnes and The Author are not so different. Both men drink too much, chase the wrong things, hide their wounds behind wit and detachment. Both search for meaning in places that cannot provide it. And both, in the end, are left with nothing but the cold comfort of knowing that the life they imagined—the life they should have had—was never really theirs to begin with.
Isn’t it pretty to think so?
