Oh, Brett--just when I was saying how you're such a rebel for defying the stereotype**....
Cohn whines, and everybody "hates his suffering." When Brett whines, it's a real tragedy. Also, they tell Cohn to start drinking more, he does, and they still yell at him.
I don't like Cohn's whining any more than the rest of them do, but I hardly think yelling at him is going to help. I think it says something about human nature that we don't like to hear about other people's suffering. I mean... sometimes, we care a great deal about other people, but in the end, there's often an ulterior motive. In the absence of such a motive, unless the suffering is particularly tragic, or the sufferer is a particularly close friend... sometimes, it's dismissed as mere whining. It's unlikely that this is what Hemingway wanted me to get from chapter sixteen, but... that's what I got, nonetheless.
*another invocation
**more stereotype-talk
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