Il Mio Italiano è Perfetto

"We went out to the Café Napolitain to have an apéritif and watch the evening crowd on the Boulevard." -- Page 21

I chose the above quote to represent this chapter because I felt like it.  Likewise, Ernest Hemingway wrote a pointless five-page continuation to Chapter I titled Chapter II simply because he had nothing better to do at that moment in time.  On an only slightly related note, I knew what apéritif meant because of my time spent in Milano; it's similar to the Italian word aperitivo, which is essentially a hip place twenty-somethings go to have a drink (you actually pay for the drink itself, the buffet that comes with the alcohol is free).  After I made this cultural connection, I started disliking the chapter significantly less than I did only sentences before.  In addition to this newfound love, I noticed a valuable moral Jake effortlessly lays on Cohn in dialogue that's quite Gilmore Girls-esque: if you hate your very character, taking a trip to South America won't change that.  This is the first of what I assume to be many of Hemingway's poor attempts at brainwashing my mind into resisting self-loathing and using my midlife crisis years instead to build a schoolhouse for orphan children or some other way of improving the world.  Bah.  Pulitzer Prize-winning author I think not.

Something to ponder: Napoleon Bonaparte under a nation more formidible than the French, let's say, the Caliphate.