Some Observations

Every so often I write a post that makes no attempt at organization or cohesion. Thought it was about time for one of those.

• At one point Jake tells Cohn that Brett's "one true love died in the war". This is conceivable given that a large portion of her generation was lost to WWI and that Brett must have known some of these young men during her time as a nurse. However, I happened to read this line just after glancing at a quote of Brett's employing the exact same phrase: "Jake, you're my one true love", which could afford a different interpretation of Jake's claim. Given that Brett's chances of being with Jake romantically died with his war injury, would it be too much of a stretch to suggest that Jake might be referring to himself when he speaks of Brett's dead lover? (darn it, Mr. Mitchell! I promise I wrote this before you mentioned it in class.) If this is the case, it seriously takes Jake's reliability as a narrator into question. If he could lie to Cohn in this believable but slightly self-flattering/pragmatic way (self flattering because it suggests that he is actually Brett's true love, and pragmatic in that it's meant to discourage Cohn from pursuing her) about Brett's past, he could be lying to us about his relationships with the aficionados or with Brett; about how Bill's little joke about impotency makes him feel-- who knows. Although he probably respects his reader more than he respects Cohn; don't know if that would make a difference in his honesty.
• Poor Cohn. Poor, poor Cohn. My classmates don't seem to agree with me, but I think that there is absolutely nothing wrong with Robert Cohn. I'm familiar with the dynamic going on between Cohn and the other's in the story: the group of friends+awkward outsider dynamic. And I don't like it. There's something about being in a group of people like you that makes a small seed of annoyance directed at someone who's socially unusual echo around, feed off the other members of your group and amplify into an unrelenting and unjustified cacophony of ridicule--even hatred. Basically, I think Cohn is being bullied. And it probably has something to do with the fact that he's a Jew, which makes it even worse. I'll grant you that Cohn's a little odd sometimes, and maybe a little too chivalrous, but in my opinion it's not an offensive chivalry, and he's certainly well meaning. For one thing, he's the only one who reacted reasonably to the bullfighting (a disgusting and unforgivable tradition). His discomfort with that alone made me like him more than the other characters, no matter how much more clever they are.
• There's this section at the end of book II in which Jake goes into all sorts of detail about the experiences of the older, less well-liked matador, Belmonte (perhaps he's only less well liked because he's more famous, but he's still less well liked). Apparently Belmonte had intended to have a good afternoon, but now everything hurts because he's sick. It's an odd, almost Clarissa-Septimus type moment, in that Jake seems to have this magically personal connection to this guy's experiences, despite not knowing him well at all. And it's only made weirder by Hemingway's strict refusal to look beneath the surface of any other situation or character (I think we've seen more of this guy's thoughts than we've seen of Jake's!), and by the fact that his character is hardly relevant to the rest of the story at all. I suppose it illustrates Jake's aficion that he's so in tune with the fighters, but it's a weird little passage. 
• Also, this is completely unproductive (and to you I'm sure uninteresting), but 2 summers ago I took a trip that included nights in Paris, Biarritz, Madrid, San Sebastian and a little Basque town near San Sebastian called Oartzan or something like that, so the descriptions in this book are really bringing back memories (although Madrid was not all that hot).