Jul. 5th, 2011

monk222: (Mori: by tiger_ace)
Before putting Gatsby back on the shelves, I want to suss out a key passage. Daisy and Tom Buchanan came to one of Gatsby’s big, wild, open-mansion parties. After five years of relentlessly pursuing his dream lover, Gatsby finally has her within arms’ reach. After the party, He is giddy and chatty, and he relates some of the background of this romantic saga to his new friend and confidant, our narrator, Nick Carraway.

Fitzgerald beautifully encapsulates Gatsby’s romantic obsession in one episode, in two paragraphs. Gatsby, recall, was a golden boy, handsome and sharp, but who came from impoverished origins. Through wit, charm, and fierce ambition, as well as some luck naturally, he climbs America’s social ladder. Along the way, while still poor, he met Daisy, the golden all-American blonde, rich and beautiful, whose voice musically chimes with the sound of money, whose gravitational attraction pulled all his desire and ambition into her orbit:
One autumn night, five years before, they had been walking down the street when the leaves were falling, and they came to a place where there were no trees and the sidewalk was white with moonlight. They stopped here and turned toward each other. Now it was a cool night with that mysterious excitement in it which comes at the two changes of the year. The quiet lights in the houses were humming out into the darkness and there was a stir and bustle among the stars. Out of the corner of his eye Gatsby saw that the blocks of the sidewalk really formed a ladder and mounted to a secret place above the trees - he could climb to it, if he climbed alone, and once there he could suck on the pap of life, gulp down the incomparable milk of wonder.

His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy’s white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.
It is gloriously mythic. Gatsby is given a cosmic choice: continue to build your destiny and achieve true greatness, or pursue love with this woman and live or die by her. He kissed her; he chose love. And he dies violently, miserably, and young.

I am glad that I did not find “Of Human Bondage” and had this opportunity to rediscover Fitzgerald’s “Great Gatsby”. It is a rather poetic novella. Hard realists and postmodernists may prefer to pass over it, but it bears repeated readings across the years if you have a little tragic romance in your soul, if you like the idea of fatal love.
monk222: (Mori: by tiger_ace)
Before putting Gatsby back on the shelves, I want to suss out a key passage. Daisy and Tom Buchanan came to one of Gatsby’s big, wild, open-mansion parties. After five years of relentlessly pursuing his dream lover, Gatsby finally has her within arms’ reach. After the party, He is giddy and chatty, and he relates some of the background of this romantic saga to his new friend and confidant, our narrator, Nick Carraway.

Fitzgerald beautifully encapsulates Gatsby’s romantic obsession in one episode, in two paragraphs. Gatsby, recall, was a golden boy, handsome and sharp, but who came from impoverished origins. Through wit, charm, and fierce ambition, as well as some luck naturally, he climbs America’s social ladder. Along the way, while still poor, he met Daisy, the golden all-American blonde, rich and beautiful, whose voice musically chimes with the sound of money, whose gravitational attraction pulled all his desire and ambition into her orbit:
One autumn night, five years before, they had been walking down the street when the leaves were falling, and they came to a place where there were no trees and the sidewalk was white with moonlight. They stopped here and turned toward each other. Now it was a cool night with that mysterious excitement in it which comes at the two changes of the year. The quiet lights in the houses were humming out into the darkness and there was a stir and bustle among the stars. Out of the corner of his eye Gatsby saw that the blocks of the sidewalk really formed a ladder and mounted to a secret place above the trees - he could climb to it, if he climbed alone, and once there he could suck on the pap of life, gulp down the incomparable milk of wonder.

His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy’s white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.
It is gloriously mythic. Gatsby is given a cosmic choice: continue to build your destiny and achieve true greatness, or pursue love with this woman and live or die by her. He kissed her; he chose love. And he dies violently, miserably, and young.

I am glad that I did not find “Of Human Bondage” and had this opportunity to rediscover Fitzgerald’s “Great Gatsby”. It is a rather poetic novella. Hard realists and postmodernists may prefer to pass over it, but it bears repeated readings across the years if you have a little tragic romance in your soul, if you like the idea of fatal love.
monk222: (Cats)
Washing my breakfast dishes and looking out the kitchen window, I watch Sammy pawing the lightweight water bowl. He is lying there leisurely, half-tipping the bowl and letting it fall back into place, repeating this over and over, rather like the way we might tap our fingers on an armrest.

I keep watching because I know this is going to get good. Sammy finally succeeds in tipping the bowl completely over, pouring out all the water and getting a good bit wet himself. He jumps up and is utterly amazed by this phenomenon. He seems to be studying it, his feline head turning from side to side, so earnest in his gaze and expression as he walks around this miraculous scene, pondering its cause, meaning, and significance.

What a wondrous world this is, so full of the most strange and marvellous things!
monk222: (Cats)
Washing my breakfast dishes and looking out the kitchen window, I watch Sammy pawing the lightweight water bowl. He is lying there leisurely, half-tipping the bowl and letting it fall back into place, repeating this over and over, rather like the way we might tap our fingers on an armrest.

I keep watching because I know this is going to get good. Sammy finally succeeds in tipping the bowl completely over, pouring out all the water and getting a good bit wet himself. He jumps up and is utterly amazed by this phenomenon. He seems to be studying it, his feline head turning from side to side, so earnest in his gaze and expression as he walks around this miraculous scene, pondering its cause, meaning, and significance.

What a wondrous world this is, so full of the most strange and marvellous things!

A True King

Jul. 5th, 2011 03:40 pm
monk222: (Default)


(Courtesy of Pousez)

A True King

Jul. 5th, 2011 03:40 pm
monk222: (Default)


(Courtesy of Pousez)
monk222: (DarkSide: by spiraling_down)
So groggy all day. Feels like I have been involuntarily medicated. Can't clear the heavy fog in my head. I just want to eat Pop-Tarts all day and read trashy novels, and if that gets a little heavy for me, then I can take more naps.
monk222: (DarkSide: by spiraling_down)
So groggy all day. Feels like I have been involuntarily medicated. Can't clear the heavy fog in my head. I just want to eat Pop-Tarts all day and read trashy novels, and if that gets a little heavy for me, then I can take more naps.
monk222: (Default)
"Last night I dreamed about you. What happened in detail I can hardly remember, all I know is that we kept merging into one another. I was you, you were me. Finally you somehow caught fire."

-- Franz Kafka to Milena Jesenska, 1921

I am at my best in my dreams, myself.
monk222: (Default)
"Last night I dreamed about you. What happened in detail I can hardly remember, all I know is that we kept merging into one another. I was you, you were me. Finally you somehow caught fire."

-- Franz Kafka to Milena Jesenska, 1921

I am at my best in my dreams, myself.

Profile

monk222: (Default)
monk222

May 2019

S M T W T F S
    1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
262728293031 

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Sep. 26th, 2025 12:02 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios