"Oh, yes," I said. "I'm all right".

I'm in the middle of a chapter, and I usually don't blog until the end, but I feel like I just hit an important moment with Cohn.
Everyone has been giving him such a hard time about following Brett around. He knows everyone hates him now. Even Brett admitted it: "'My God! I'm so sick of him!...I hate him too,...' she shivered". (page 186). (This was a conversation she had with Jake, but we all know Cohn was listening in.
And now I'm going to go all the way back to page one. "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" (page 1). Robert was taught to hit when he felt inferior. He doesn't like it, but I think it is instinct. Now everybody is ganging up on him, he was bound to hurt someone. (I think Jake ought to have known that, I mean, he told me.) So I guess my conclusion on Robert is that he was never trying to make anyone annoyed or upset. His motivation are his feelings and I don't think he thinks about others or consequences. I knew from the beginning he was naive. He probably felt he loved Brett so much, and he tells us now that they even used to live together in San Sebastian. They broke up (I'm guessing), she moved on, and he didn't. But he follows his feeling nonetheless. He should get over it, but that's not the way he works.