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THE SUN ALSO RISES
Ernest Hemingway
BOOK ONE
1
Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton. Do not think that I am
very much impressed by that as a boxing title, but it meant a lot to Cohn. He cared nothing for
boxing, in fact he disliked it, but he learned it painfully and thoroughly to counteract the feeling of
inferiority and shyness he had felt on being treated as a Jew at Princeton. There was a certain inner
comfort in knowing he could knock down anybody who was snooty to him, although, being very shy
and a thoroughly nice boy, he never fought except in the gym. He was Spider Kelly's star pupil.
Spider Kelly taught all his young gentlemen to box like featherweights, no matter whether they
weighed one hundred and five or two hundred and five pounds. But it seemed to fit Cohn. He was
really very fast. He was so good that Spider promptly overmatched him and got his nose
permanently flattened. This increased Cohn's distaste for boxing, but it gave him a certain
satisfaction of some strange sort, and it certainly improved his nose. In his last year at Princeton he
read too much and took to wearing spectacles. I never met any one of his class who remembered
him. They did not even remember that he was middleweight boxing champion.
I mistrust all frank and simple people, especially when their stories hold together, and I
always had a suspicion that perhaps Robert Cohn had never been middleweight boxing champion,
and that perhaps a horse had stepped on his face, or that maybe his mother had been frightened or
seen something, or that he had, maybe, bumped into something as a young child, but I finally had
somebody verify the story from Spider Kelly. Spider Kelly not only remembered Cohn. He had often
wondered what had become of him.
Robert Cohn was a member, through his father, of one of the richest Jewish families in New
York, and through his mother of one of the oldest. At the military school where he prepped for
Princeton, and played a very good end on the football team, no one had made him race-conscious.
No one had ever made him feel he was a Jew, and hence any different from anybody else, until he
went to Princeton. He was a nice boy, a friendly boy, and very shy, and it made him bitter. He took it
out in boxing, and he came out of Princeton with painful self-consciousness and the flattened nose,
and was married by the first girl who was nice to him. He was married five years, had three
children, lost most of the fifty thousand dollars his father left him, the balance of the estate having
gone to his mother, hardened into a rather unattractive mould under domestic unhappiness with a
rich wife; and just when he had made up his mind to leave his wife she left him and went off with a
miniature-painter. As he had been thinking for months about leaving his wife and had not done it
because it would be too cruel to deprive her of himself, her departure was a very healthful shock.
The divorce was arranged and Robert Cohn went out to the Coast. In California he fell
among literary people and, as he still had a little of the fifty thousand left, in a short time he was
backing a review of the Arts. The review commenced publication in Carmel, California, and finished
in Provincetown, Massachusetts. By that time Cohn, who had been regarded purely as an angel, and
whose name had appeared on the editorial page merely as a member of the advisory board, had
become the sole editor. It was his money and he discovered he liked the authority of editing. He was
sorry when the magazine became too expensive and he had to give it up.
By that time, though, he had other things to worry about. He had been taken in hand by a
lady who hoped to rise with the magazine. She was very forceful, and Cohn never had a chance of
not being taken in hand. Also he was sure that he loved her. When this lady saw that the magazine
was not going to rise, she became a little disgusted with Cohn and decided that she might as well get
what there was to get while there was still something available, so she urged that they go to Europe,
where Cohn could write. They came to Europe, where the lady had been educated, and stayed three
years. During these three years, the first spent in travel, the last two in Paris, Robert Cohn had two
friends, Braddocks and myself. Braddocks was his literary friend. I was his tennis friend.
The lady who had him, her name was Frances, found toward the end of the second year that
her looks were going, and her attitude toward Robert changed from one of careless possession and
exploitation to the absolute determination that he should marry her. During this time Robert's
mother had settled an allowance on him, about three hundred dollars a month. During two years
and a half I do not believe that Robert Cohn looked at another woman. He was fairly happy, except
that, like many people living in Europe, he would rather have been in America, and he had
discovered writing. He wrote a novel, and it was not really such a bad novel as the critics later
called it, although it was a very poor novel. He read many books, played bridge, played tennis, and
boxed at a local gymnasium.
I first became aware of his lady's attitude toward him one night after the three of us had
dined together. We had dined at l'Avenue's and afterward went to the Café de Versailles for coffee.
We had several _fines_ after the coffee, and I said I must be going. Cohn had been talking about the
two of us going off somewhere on a weekend trip. He wanted to get out of town and get in a good
walk. I suggested we fly to Strasbourg and walk up to Saint Odile, or somewhere or other in Alsace.
"I know a girl in Strasbourg who can show us the town," I said.
Somebody kicked me under the table. I thought it was accidental and went on: "She's been
there two years and knows everything there is to know about the town. She's a swell girl."
I was kicked again under the table and, looking, saw Frances, Robert's lady, her chin lifting
and her face hardening.
"Hell," I said, "why go to Strasbourg? We could go up to Bruges, or to the Ardennes."
Cohn looked relieved. I was not kicked again. I said good-night and went out. Cohn said he
wanted to buy a paper and would walk to the corner with me. "For God's sake," he said, "why did
you say that about that girl in Strasbourg for? Didn't you see Frances?"
"No, why should I? If I know an American girl that lives in Strasbourg what the hell is it to
Frances?"
"It doesn't make any difference. Any girl. I couldn't go, that would be all."
"Don't be silly."
"You don't know Frances. Any girl at all. Didn't you see the way she looked?"
"Oh, well," I said, "let's go to Senlis."
"Don't get sore."
"I'm not sore. Senlis is a good place and we can stay at the Grand Cerf and take a hike in the
woods and come home."
"Good, that will be fine."
"Well, I'll see you to-morrow at the courts," I said.
"Good-night, Jake," he said, and started back to the café.
"You forgot to get your paper," I said.
"That's so." He walked with me up to the kiosque at the corner. "You are not sore, are you,
Jake?" He turned with the paper in his hand.
"No, why should I be?"
"See you at tennis," he said. I watched him walk back to the café holding his paper. I rather
liked him and evidently she led him quite a life.

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