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Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises: "Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton".

This phrase sums up the relationship between the narrator and his subject, Mr. Cohn quite perfectly. He shows the Robert's glory was pretty mediocre ("middleweight") and a long time ago ("once") and not actual. It also shows the pretentiousness of the character through the association with Princeton. It is almost the prototypical Hemmingway prose as well being dry and direct and to the point. The reference to boxing which is a violent, masculine sport, gives us an inkling of the bull fighting that will become the center of this early 20th century masterpiece.

The relationship between Jake and Brett is an old one of disappointment and resignation, Brett always doomed to make poor decisions and Jake always doomed to clean up the messes she leaves behind.

The great irony I find in Hemingway is that he uses a very direct language with a limited vocabulary and repetition, and yet there is an incredible subtlety here. Jake’s wartime injury castrated him, but we only learn this by inference: when Georgette tries to touch him there, he moves her hand away and says he’s sick, later with Brett their contact is limited to kisses and he cries when she leaves him, he observes himself naked in the mirror in his room and only then does he talk in roundabout terms about getting injured in the war and how the other officers made a joke about it. As a result of this castration, and his inbred anti-Semitism, he acts as a entremetteur in trying to tempt his erstwhile friend Robert Cohn into infidelity at the beginning of the book when he mentions the girl in Strasbourg in front of his wife, Frances. Tragically, this playing matchmaker later backfires on him when he learns that Brett has spent a weekend in Bayonne with Robert rather than coming to Spain with him.

It is admittedly upsetting to see Hemingway’s anti-Semitism in his description of how Robert had � a hard, Jewish, stubborn streak.� (p. 10) There is also unveiled homophobia in Jake’s hostile reaction to the gay men with whom Brett shows up to the bal musette in the Latin quarter: “Somehow they always made me angry. I know they are supposed to be amusing, and you are should be tolerant, but I wanted to swing on one, any one, anything to shatter that superior, simpering composure.� (p. 20) Note the alliteration there, � swing, shatter, superior, simpering�; that is one of the great markers of Hemingway’s writing that makes one want to forgive him for his many many faults. In that same section, the phrase “with them was Brett� is repeated twice reemphasizing how Jake’s sudden feeling of violence is tied up in his own impotence - they are gay and will not make love to her either, but this just reminds him of how much he would like to making him more angry. It is a lot to unpack, but the terse prose brings out all this nervousness in the words themselves.

I had forgotten that most of the novel takes place in Paris entre-guerres and recall that the first time I read this 3 decades ago or more, I had never seen much less dreamed of living in Paris. And so it goes.

Late in the book when Jake returns briefly to France before a final return to Spain, he makes a comment about French servers not having a “my friend� attitude and that you get what you pay for - I have found this to be the case and despite my past annoyance with arrogant French service, it is true that pedantic, over-friendly service elsewhere in desperate attempts to solicit a tip is even more annoying.

I love Papa’s writing: the spartan use of language, the evocation of things in such an abbreviated, staccato manner…and I had also forgotten how much drinking goes on in this book!

One day before I am too old, I truly want to see a bullfight in Pamplona. Some day�.

Don't miss my review of the Meyer biography of Hemingway: /review/show...