My Writing Wishlist: Voices I Wish were Mine!

"Make a wishlist of writer's voices that you envy."  My creative writing tutor set my class this task as homework, and it's got me thinking.  

There are several writers of whom I am intensely jealous.  If only I had that 'thing' that they have.  This homework exercise has prompted me to consider more deeply what it is that I love about my favourite writers.  

This is my wishlist - writer voices that I wish were mine!

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Fitzgerald is my first true love in terms of voice.  I was floored by his writing long before I could articulate any of my feelings for his work in the technical terms I now know from a year of university.  

The atmosphere and very essence of his era is conveyed in his effortless prose.  His flow is fluid and elegant.  His writing sparkles with sensory experiences - each scene is inhaled and tasted as well as viewed.  

Fitzgerald is on my wishlist of writer voices because it is my ultimate aspiration to have even a fraction of his natural flair for elegance, grandeur, and luxuriant bedazzlement.  I aspire to write with a focus on the senses and I've never seen this done better than in Fitzgerald's work.  

Jonathan Safran Foer

Safran Foer's writing is special is so many ways, as lovers of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close already know.  The visual experience of his experimental work is exhilarating.  

In reference to his voice as a writer, he seems to float through his stories with a heady sense of wonderment for the world and the humans that habituate it.  He articulates so many intimate and authentic observations of the world through sumptuously visual metaphors.  I love his way of constantly questioning the possibilities.  

Safran Foer is on my wishlist of writers voices because I am in awe of his childlike way of experiencing the world with wonderment, from the biggest things like death and love, to the smallest, most intimately unnoticeable things.  I aspire to be a writer who presents wonderment.  

Ian McEwan

McEwan's voice is crystalline, pristine and perfect.  Each word seems fastidiously handpicked so that every image and scene is composed with fragility and delicacy, as though from glass. 

The atmosphere and sensory experience of his writing is sumptuous and heady.  I adore the feeling of entering his worlds, which on arrival, are already perfectly fashioned and refined down to the last detail.  There is a sense of an ingenious omnipotent mind weaving this universe from a thousand threads so that every image is important in the grand scheme.  

McEwan is on my wishlist of writers voices because I aspire to build my characters and story worlds to his level of atmosphere and refinement.  

So, having seen my wishlist, what do you think?  As an aspiring writer, this homework prompt has really assisted me in articulating some of my goals.  

Thank Goodness for Fitzgerald

Today is F. Scott Fitzgerald's birthday, and obviously, as one of my favourite authors, he deserves a tribute.  

He was born on the 24th of September 1869, and died of a heart attack on the 21st of December, 1940.  His legacy of great American novels consists of such essential classics as The Great Gatsby, The Beautiful and Damned, This Side of Paradise, Tender is the Night and The Last Tycoon.  

For me, and for countless other readers and writers, Fitzgerald's work is inspirational.  The atmosphere of his work effortlessly transports you to the Jazz Age.  He weaves around you a palace of words that tantalises all your senses, lets you smell smokey rooms, lets you feel salty sea spray in summertime, lets you hear traffic on New York streets and silverware in French cafes, and the voices of people so absurd and marvellous that they are bigger than life.  He has taught me one of the greatest lessons - to read and write with all the senses, and yet no one can do it quite so brilliantly as he does.  

He is timeless.  I don't believe that there was ever an author from any era who so perfectly painted a picture of their time and place.  He gives colour to an era of which the only memories are black and white photographs.  As the works of Monet, Renoir, Degass and Davinci are significant to the art world, so his portraits of life, both tragic and triumphant, are to the literary world.  

So happy birthday, Francis.  Thank goodness that you lived as you did.  

Francis, Zelda and Frances Scott Fitzgerald

The Beauty of Re-reading 'The Beautiful and Damned'

As they entered, the orchetra were sounding the preliminary whimpers to a maxixe, a tune full of castanets and facile faintly langurous violin harmonies, appropriate to the crowded winter grill teeming with an excited college crowd, high-spirited at the approach of the holidays.  Carefully Gloria considered several locations, and rather to Anthony's annoyance paraded him circuitously to a table for two at the far side of the room.  Reaching it she again considered.  Would she sit on the right or on the left?  Her beautiful eyes and lips were very grave as she made her choice and Anthony thought again how naive was her every gesture; she took all the things of life for hers to choose from and apportion, as though she was continually picking out presents for herself from an inexhaustible counter. 

The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald, published 1922.

It being the holidays, I'm back to my favourite pasttime of reading to my dad, and we've just begun The Beautiful and Damned, which I deem to be one of the greater works of the wonderful F. Scott Fitzgerald.  It's been so much fun, and rediscovering this book with someone whose perspective is not only very different but much more mature than my own means that I am reaping more from the experience than the first time round.  I'm getting the oppertunity to re-enjoy the writing, laugh at different parts, and articulate the beauty as I go.  I remember everything from the first time I read it, but I think that I'm realising how brilliant it is with a greater comprehension of the brilliance; reading it and thinking every paragraph that that was amazingly written.  It's an exciting rediscovery!

The In-the-Moment Magic

There was a statement made in a scriptwriting handout from drama that my brain specially remembered:

"There is an immediacy about theatre.  The audience has to watch.  Something is happening now and it cannot be missed."

This ' in-the-moment' magical quality of theatre is something that can't be found in movies or books... or so I thought. 

But Fitzgerald, in This Side of Paradise, in the chapter 'Babes in Arms', was so tinglingly momentous and 'now' that I was scared and thrilled by the possibility of it running away from my eyes as I read. 

It was about the romantic tension between Isabelle, the Popular daughter, and Amory Blaine.  The clean, crispness of the night an the tremling, flighty feelings of fear in the reveral of power roles and possibility, exhilarated me.  I was agraid I would miss it.  I wanted to laugh out loud at how perfectly real it all seemed, but I couldn't give the pure moment an oppertunity to escape. 

It was beautiful, and felt so inevitable.  By my emotions were Isabells's - up, up, racing heart, must, must, will, shall I?  It was sickening, anxious, hungry.  Amory's impatience, the interruption by the party, the smashing of the moment and its oppertunities, possibilities and passion turning off with the switching on of the light.  It was so rare and exhilarating and momentous.  My poundig pulse cooled with curiosity that I should ever know his kiss. 

What an experience!  

My Romancewith Fitzgerald

I had recently been feeling that my relationship with F. Scott Fitzgerald was on shaky grounds.  My parents assured me that the age difference was to blame, and my friends suggested that we had grown apart.  I felt that I didn't have time for writers who couldn't provide me with two, what I thought, necessary, things - a beautiful writing style and a good story line.  I was worn out by writers who flirted with one ideal or the other, but couldn't commit to both.  I accused him of falling under this banner, but I don't think I did him justice with this label. 

 

The season I spent away from Fitzgerald gave me time to experiment, but the time also made me forget about the nicer parts of living with him.  I threw my time and care to Jonathan Safran Foer, and for weeks on end I went to bed each night with the lovely Mr. Herriot chattering warmly away in my ear.  But Spring romances faded on my shelf and I returned to Fitzgerald.  I wondered whether we still shared a spark of love anymore  Just so I could know for sure that it had properly died out after those months of avoidance.

I was soon reawakened to his loveliness; his subtleties, his beauty and romantic whims.  He forgave me quickly for my doubt and amended my fears with his familiar smile - a smile that warmed me every page of our romance.  We danced alone, long into the night, for hours and hours, back in love.  He reminded me quickly why I had fallen in love with him in the first place.

Peanut Brittle

As you know, I am officially on holidays now, and what more fitting for the first week of holidays than to finally get round to reading F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise?  Because that is what I've done.  I was thinking I might even be a bit naughty and read a couple of books simultaneously.  Just to shake it up a little and avoid falling into the lingering slough of despond that waits to gobble up bored readers.  I ordered Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer from the library, but it'll obviously take some time to arrive.  I know the story well since the film is a family favourite, but I'm sure that his writing will make it wonderful regardless. 

However, in true Fiztgerald style, I am already hooked in This Side of Paradise on a line:

"The invitation to Miss Myra St. Claire's bobbing party spent the morning in his coat pocket, where it had an intense physical affair with a dusty piece of peanut brittle".

Isn't it great?  That fantastic, almost random idea, like an orchestra's forte blast to make sure that no one falls asleep, (a trick my school strings ensemble has often had to use).  He's a clever, clever, clever writer!

A Fleeting Tender Moment

"You once like me, didn't you?" he asked.

"Liked you - I loved you.  You could've had anybody you wanted for the asking-"

"There has always been something between you and me." 

She bit eagerly.  "Has there, Dick?"

"Always - I knew you troubled and how brave you were about them."  But the old interior laughter had begun inside him and he knew he couldn't keep it up much longer.

"I always  though you knew a lot," Mary said enthusiastically.  "More about me than any one has ever known.  Perhaps that's why I was afraid of you when we didn't get along so well."

His glance fell soft and kind upon hers, suggesting and emotion underneath; their glances married suddenly, bedded, strained together.  Then, as the laughter inside of him became so loud that it seemed as if Mary must hear it, Dick switched off the light and they were back in the Riviera sun. 

Part III, Chapter XII, Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fizgerald published 1934. 

This little moment of awkward intimacy in a glance is so life like and beautifully put.  Do you think so?  It's on the second last page of the book - a last second of almost romance to thrive on.  But however tender the night was, morning has arrived and a fresh new day awaits.  That was so cheesy that I had to add it. 

Now I'm just waiting for The Picture of Dorian Gray.  I'm even more excited than I was before after everyone's been saying how much I'm going to enjoy it and what a great book it is.  Does that mean you'll have some of your own favourite bits to share from it? 

By the way, our Extraordinarily Ordinary challenge ends tomorrow afternoon.  We'll start a new challenge almost immediately if you like, and we'll try and get into the habit of having something interesting to read or write about as often as possible.  It's good fun for me too.  Oh, and just as I'm finishing, the interviews for the shortlisted school captain candidates are being held tomorrow! 

Something plus Something

Rosemary had another dinner date, a birthday party for a member of the company.  Dick ran into Collis Clay in the lobby, but he wanted to dine alone, and pretended an engagement at the Excelsior.  He drank a cocktail with Collis and his vague dissatisfaction crystallized into impatience - he no longer had an excuse for playing truant to the clinic.  This was less an infatuation than a romantic memory.  Nicole was his girl - too often he was sick at heart about her, yet she was his girl.  Time with Rosemary was self-indulgence - time with Collis was nothing plus nothing. 

Part II, Chapter XXI, Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald, published 1934. 

I love that his dissatisfaction crystallised into impatience and the idea that time with Collis was nothing plus nothing.  They're two very lovely little thoughts, one begetting a prickly visual and the other just a funny sort of phrase to muse over. 

We found out about the shortlist for school captain today.  We've been waiting on tenterhooks for days and days, disappointed as it's been postponed and postponed again.  But now we know.  I was in music and one of my best friends, (one of the male candidates), came in and told us that all four of the guys got shortlisted, but he didn't know about the girls.  And so we waited, flinching whenever the door moved.  Then the year level coordinator came in and I jumped out my skin.  My friends told me afterwards that I immediately flushed bright red.  I skipped out after him and in the privacy of the hallway he told me that I was shortlisted!!!  I was so delighted.  After I thanked him and asked a few questioned, he went off to finish telling the other candidates and I returned to my music room in silence.  I was very unsure who to lock eyes with, and no one locked eyes with me straight away.  I think that they were all scared that I hadn't got it.  But then I stuffed all and exploded and we danced and screamed and laughed and hugged and it was a wonderful little moment of heaven.  

Of course, others were disappointed with the results and it felt a bit as though it was awful and insensitive to stay so cheerful and bouncy.  But where congratulations were due, we gave them, and where support and compassion were needed also, we hugged and back-patted and complimented.  All-in-all, it was a great day, and I'm excited to my core about its results.   

Tommy and the Squirrel

Tommy Barban was a ruler, Tommy was a hero - Dick happened upon him in the Marienplatz in Munich, in one of those cafes where small gamblers diced on "tapestry" mats.  The air was full of politics, and the slap of cards.

Tommy was at a table laughing his martial laugh: "Um-buh-ha-ha!  Um-buh-ha-ha!"  As a rule, he drank little; courage was his game and his companions were always a little afraid of him.  Recently an eight of the area of his skull had been removed by a Warsaw surgeon and was knitting under his hair, and the weakest person in the cafe could have killed him with a flip of a knotted napkin. 

Part II, Chapter XVII, Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald, published in 1934.

Once when we hopped in the car with the radio on, in the rare instance that we drive with it on, we became mesmerised on one station on which a middle-aged woman was reading a novel to an audience.  I have never been able to learn what that book was, and indeed, I've searched on the Internet for ages trying to find the smallest clue to it's title, but one little thing that she read from it has never left my mind since.  It was about some men, maybe some sort of military men, who were so clever with their knives that they could skin a live squirrel so tenderly and precisely that afterwards the poor creature could walk away unharmed, shivering slightly with cold. 

What an grotesque but mesmerising image of vulnerability.  When I read the above passage from F. Scott Fitzgerald, it reminded me so much of the skinned squirrel, because of how strangely and frighteningly vulnerable Tommy Barban was so that the weakest person in the cafe could have killed him with the flick of a knotted handkerchief.  It makes you sit up straight, shudder and think.  I won't ever have either image out of my mind.

A Profound Sigh

The last chamber was devoted to bead-work, weaving and work in brass.  The faces of the patients here wore the expression of one who has just sighed profoundly, dismissing something insoluble - but their sighs only marked the beginning of another ceaseless round of ratiocination, not in a line a with normal people but in the same circle.  Round, round, and round.  Around forever.  But the bright colours of the stuffs they worked with gave strangers a momentary illusion that all was well, as in a kindergarten. 

Part II, Chapter XIV, Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1934.

This is a very poignant passage, isn't it?  I can just visualise "the expression of one who has just sighed profoundly".  It kind of appears to me like a melting wax mask or silk mask, even, pale and softly, sadly slumping downwards. 

That is such a truthful statement, about the bright colours giving you the illusion that everything was well, as in a kindergarten.  It's completely true, and I don't want to talk about it because you already believe it, don't you? 



The Blinding Belladonna

"I'm in love with Rosemary," he told her suddenly.  "It's a kind of self-indulgence saying that to you."

It seemed very strange and official to gim, as if the very tables and chairs in the Cafe des Allies would remember it forever.  Already he felt her absence from these skies: on the beach he could only remember the sun-torn flesh of her shoulder; at Tarmes he crushed out her footprints as he crossed the garden; and now the orchestra launching into the "Nice Carnival Song," an echo of last year's vanished gaieties, started the little dance that went on all about her.  In a hundred hours she had come to possess all the world's dark magic; the blinding belladonna, the caffein converting physical into nervous energy, the mandragora that imposes harmony.

Part II, Chapter XI, Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald, published 1934.

I don't really have anything intelligent to say today.  Funny.  Except that a coconut macaroon cake will be involved today because it's my dad's birthday.  I can hear the electric beaters whipped up the meringue this very moment!  Suspense!



Soft Pink Glittering Kisses

"Give me a chance now."

The voice fell low, sank into her breast and stretched the tight bodice over her heart as she came up close.  He felt the young lips, her body sighing in relief against the arm growing stronger to hold her.  There were now no more plans than if Dick had arbitrarily made some indissoluble mixture, with atoms joined and inseperable; you could throw it all out but never again could they fit back into atomic scale.  As he held and tasted her, and as she curved in further and further toward him, with her own lips, new to herself, drowned and engulfed in love, yet solaced and triumphant, he was thankful to have an existance at all, if only as a reflection in her wet eyes.

"My God," he gasped, "you're fun to kiss."

Part II, Chapter VIII, Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald, published 1934.

Once again I successfully pull off the one-handed typing trick.  I have to hold to book open with the other, you see, and it's so easy to make crazy mistakes when you're typing with just a couple of fingers. 

This book is a great one for romance.  I love Fitzgerald's little pink, soft, glittering romantic moments like this and the one I posted under the title of The Essence of a Continent.  There is something wonderfully strange but perfect about Fitzgerald that I'm sure you have heard me mention before.  He writes so that we can tell he knows and he's been there, done that, heard, seen, tasted, smelt, felt whatever, becaues he puts it in a terrifically authentic and beautifully wise way. 

As he held and tasted her, and as she curved in further and further toward him, with her own lips, new to herself, drowned and engulfed in love, yet solaced and triumphant, he was thankful to have an existance at all, if only as a reflection in her wet eyes.

You couldn't write a line like that unless you knew.  And because he knows, and because he can tell us gently and secretly about this glorious and sacred second of love, I feel very much in love with Fitzgerald in turn. 

The Essence of a Continent

She smiled at him, making sure that the smile gathered up everything inside her and directed it toward him, making him a profound promise of herself for so little, for the beat of a response, the assurance of a complementary vibration in him.  Minute by minute the sweetness drained down into her out of the willow trees, out of the dark world.

She stood up too, and stumbling over the phonograph, was momentarily against him, leaning into the hollow of his rounded shoulder. 

"I've got one more record,"she said.  "Have you heard 'So Long Letty'?  I suppose you have."

"Honestly, you don't understand - I haven't heard a thing."

Nor known, nor smelt, nor tasted, he might have added; only hot-cheeked girls in hot secret rooms.  The young maidens he had known at New Haven in 1914 kissed men, saying "There!", hands at the man's chest to push him away.  Now there was this scarcely saved waif of disaster bringing him the essence of a continent...

Part II, Chapter V, Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald, published 1934.

I certainly never realised what a gorgeous and moving passage this was until I had to press open the book with one hand and type it all out slowly and tortously with the forefinger of the other. 

There are so many lines in this that are so poignant.  And I feel that I know the first half of the first paragraph from myself.  Smiling a smile that gathers up everything inside.  And the contrast of the girls from 1914 feels so brutally frank, doesn't it?  I know what he means because I've seen it.  Never experienced it, mind, but I've seen that sort of unemotional, meaningless coquettishness, and to then think of something deeper and lovlier, sweet, with the essence of a continent...  It's a moment made for a movie that will become the best loved romance, but then yes - the very subtle and fragrant beauty of this passage will slip between the craps in a movie.  Pity. 

Sappy Love Stories

The day seemed different to Rosemary than the day before.  When she saw him face to face their eyes met and brushed like birds' wings.  After that everything was all right, everything was wonderful, she knew that he was beginning to fall in love with her.  She felt wildly happy, felt the warm sap of emotion being pumped through her body.  A cool, clear confidence deepened and sang in her.  She scarcely looked at Dick but she knew everything was all right.

Chapter XVI, Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald, published 1934.

I love the image of emotion being a warm sap pumping through Rosemary's body.  You get that idea of something thick and hot and sticky, honey-like.  Something raw and unprocessed, straight from earth.  I think that it is so completely true.  Isn't emotion just raw and unprocessed in general?  Yes, it is, isn't it?  I love that Fitzgerald said this. 



Green Milk and Laundry Water

Her shoulders were too burned to swim with the next day, so she and her mother hired a car—after much haggling, for Rosemary had formed her valuations of money in France—and drove along the Riviera, the delta of many rivers. The chauffeur, a Russian Czar of the period of Ivan the Terrible, was a self-appointed guide, and the resplendent names—Cannes, Nice, Monte Carlo—began to glow through their torpid camouflage, whispering of old kings come here to dine or die, of rajahs tossing Buddha’s eyes to English ballerinas, of Russian princes turning the weeks into Baltic twilights in the lost caviare days. Most of all, there was the scent of the Russians along the coast—their closed book shops and grocery stores. Ten years ago, when the season ended in April, the doors of the Orthodox Church were locked, and the sweet champagnes they favored were put away until their return. ‘We’ll be back next season,’ they said, but this was premature, for they were never coming back any more.

It was pleasant to drive back to the hotel in the late afternoon, above a sea as mysteriously colored as the agates and cornelians of childhood, green as green milk, blue as laundry water, wine dark. It was pleasant to pass people eating outside their doors, and to hear the fierce mechanical pianos behind the vines of country estaminets.

 

Part I, Chapter III, Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald, published 1934.

 

This passage was the moment when I became completely immersed.  It was the first moment to pinch me awake and tenaciously grip me ever afterwards.  There are so many beautiful, atmospheric pictures in this.  I love the idea of sea 'mysteriously colored as the agates and cornelians of childhood, green as green milk, blue as laundry water, wine dark'.  I know myself what this looks like, and I've often wondered at the right words to describe this phenomenom.  But this is just it!  Wine dark.  Mysterious.  Green as green milk, blue as laundry water.  It's so dark and silky and powerful, isn't it?  Like something incredibly strong and dangerous but tender and wonderful.  I adore it! 

And of course, how many stories could be conjured up behind the idea of the Russians and the rajahs and the English ballerinas?  It's like a hundred histories hinted at with a gesture of the hand.  Isn't Fitzgerald glorious?

Codename Four Eyes

He tried breaking into other dialogues, but it was like continually shaking hands with a glove from which the hand had been withdrawn - so finally, with a resigned air of being among children, he devoted his attention entirely to the champagne. 

Part I, Chapter VII, Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald, published 1934. 

This single line, simple and short, is something very exciting, isn't it?  I love the image of shaking hands with an empty glove.  I know what it feels like, and I'm sure if you don't, you could guess.  But it is such a joy to stumble across a single line like this and feel suddenly like you get it!  It's a whimsical fleeting thought that was snatched and folded in. 

I got my glasses yesterday.  I spent yesterday afternoon 'weaning' myself into them a bit, and then I wore them frequently today and made sure that everyone I knew got an eyeful.  My depth perception, especially looking down, is a tad mutilated, but not to the extent of putting things down a foot from the table or reaching to pick something up from a meter away.  It's more to the extent that if I was to throw a rubber across the class to someone, I had better peek out from under my glasses so I can aim accurately.  Actually, I'm enjoying being a little handicapped, because it's a great fuel for jokes.  How typically Australian is that?  Self-mocking humour.  Remember that assignment? 

Anyway, the difference between wearing and not wearing glasses is the difference between seeing a crisp, bright white word, and guessing at a  faint, pale smudge.  The difference between seeing every individual greasy strand of split-ended hair on my head to seeing a soft, glowy, chocolate head of hair.  It's obviously not all good.  And this is short and long distance.  I feel empowered.  Television looks better too - even more three dimension, despite the fact that that is physically impossible.  In short, I think that besides rendering me the biggest girl nerd registered in this crazy continent, wearing glasses is going to actually help me see things a whole lot better.  I suppose that figures.

A Spoonful of Sugar

Following a walk marked by an intangible mist of bloom that followed the white border stones she came to a space overlooking the sea where there were lanterns asleep in the fig trees and a big table and wicker chairs and a great market umbrella from Sienna, all gathered about an enormous pine, the biggest tree in the garden. She paused there a moment, looking absently at a growth of nasturtiums and iris tangled at its foot, as though sprung from a careless handful of seeds, listening to the plaints and accusations of some nursery squabble in the house. When this died away on the summer air, she walked on, between kaleidoscopic peonies massed in pink clouds, black and brown tulips and fragile mauve-stemmed roses, transparent like sugar flowers in a confectioner’s window— until, as if the scherzo of color could reach no further intensity, it broke off suddenly in mid-air, and moist steps went down to a level five feet below.

Part I, Chapter VI, Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald, first published 1934.

First of all, my dears, sorry for yesterday's silence.  It was all the fault of my faulty internet.  It was impossible to even open a web page from early afternoon until midnight last night, and obviously I was in no position to blog at midnight. 

Anyway, I read this paragraph yesterday afternoon, and I was absolutely lullabied by that just sugar-sweet analogy of the fragile, young roses being "transparent like sugar flowers in a confectioner's window".  And how about the lanterns "alseep in the fig trees"?  They were not dangling, hanging or suspended in the branches.  They were asleep.  To me, that just sings of the soft, luminous sleepiness of the scene - something warm and gently glowing, yet refreshing as it is at night.  Can you just imagine in the things that would follow?  Crisp, rejuvenating salty sea breeze in lungs hot from the upstairs party, hard, cold pavers beneath hot bare feet.  Although it does not scream at you from this paragraph, I believe Fitzgerald to be a master of atmosphere, and he paints pictures that are perfect but unfinished, and suggest to your imagination a thousand things that smell, taste, sound and feel incredibly fresh and wonderful.  There will be some real treats ahead!

Black Gloves and a Nickel

Hello my dears.  I started reading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein yesterday afternoon, but I couldn't begin talking about it until I had mentioned this one last little thing that has been waiting as a draft for the past two days. 

There is a rivetting little scene in The Last Tycoon in which film producer, Monroe Stahr, is feeding inspiration to his colleagues.  He paints for them in words and actions the setting and characters and leaves them hanging to fuel their intrigue and interest in their task of writing a script.  I was actually quite surprised and delighted how it affected me, too. 

I incidentally found this very scene from Youtube, from the film adaption, and thought you might like it.  Observe that Stahr is being played by Robert DeNiro.  I never imagined that, but it's good.

We'll get onto Frankenstein and whatnot tomorrow, hey?  Take care. 

(Ps.  Don't forget about the Open Sesame Challenge.  It won't be open for too much longer because there have been no new entries for almost a week.  To enter, just suggest your favourite opening line, paragraph or page from a book.  When the challenge is closed, we will look back at the entries, and hold a poll on which you think is the most 'interesting' way to begin a book.)

Fitzgerald's Ton of Bricks

I've been on a bit of a roll of late!  After completing Hitchhiker's in a single day, I snapped up The Last Tycoon by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and after three days of nothing to do except read, I wish to report, I have finished that too. 

Now, I have several things to say on the subject.

Firstly, as I have found with both of the previous two books by F. Scott Fitzgerald I have read, The Last Tycoon is gorgeously crafted, atmospheric and blustery.  It started off with considerably less than the usual oomp, but by a third of the way in, I was well won over by the atmoshphere, which leads me to mention the second thing.

F. Scott Fitzgerald had this uncanny propensity which I think can be fairly blamed for how much I adore his writing.  My Dad always says that when someone is telling a story, you can always tell whether they were really there or not, because they mention things that otherwise people would never think to mention.  Like an old, close friend of mine once remarked that when she had been in Paris, at the top of the Eiffel Tower, she could hardly breathe because the wind rushed your breath right back down your throat.  And an old teacher of mine once remarked that when she had been living in London, the sign of Spring was not birds or blossoms or sunshine, but the absence of the nip in the cold.  I truly believe that unless they had experienced it, they wouldn't have thought to mention things like this.  It makes it so authentic.  I'd never thought of putting it this way before, but this is exactly what F. Scott Fitzgerald does. 

The windsheild wiper ticked domestically as a grandfather's clock.  Sullen cars were leaving the wet beaches and starting back to the city.  Further on they ran into fog - the road lost boundaries on either side, and the lights of cars coming towards them were stationary until just before they flared past.

and

'It rained the day I came.  Such an awful rain - so loud - like horses weeing.'

Do you see what I mean?  And though these passages sound fresh and real by themselves, mixed into the context of the story, they are leaping with other emotions.  Imagine the first passage not at all as dreary and wet, but as sparkling and exciting, and a moment shared by two anticipating lovers after a hot, sunny, salty, Californian day by the sea.  The context makes it blare out with brighter colours, doesn't it?  I love the atmosphere of F. Scott Fitzgerald's writing.  His authenticity and his smells, sounds and sights are grittily superb.  Hmm!  I feel like I could just inhale whole paragraphs and it would remove dinginess from my lungs. 

Thirdly, I would like to admit that I was somewhat astounded to discover, half way through the book, that it was unfinished.  I would have liked to have been told that.  Ah well.  It has been a real experience!  It went something like this...

The Last Tycoon was incomplete and only in rough form when F. Scott Fitzgerald passed away in 1940 at the age of 44.  He had suffered from tuberculosis hemorrhaging and several heart attacks.  However, his extensive notes for the novel gave Edmund Wilson, (close friend of Fitzgerald's), enough to work with to complete a brief outline of the intentions for the missing end to the story and polish what had actually been written.  The novel was published in 1941.  

I reached the end of Fitzgerald's work this morning, and might have been content to let it lie where it was, as the last sentences gave me enough to contemplate, except Edmund Wilson's outline for the end of the novel was included, and this path I trotted down readily.  I think that to have the last half or so of a book described briefly and unemotionally in the space of five pages is like a smack in the jaw regardless of which book it is.  What I read of Fitzgerald's was like the story and the ending was like a 'where are they now' column in the paper.  And what happened to them all in the end, was a lot to take in.  I imagine that if it had all been written out, the end would have been very powerful, but to hear it all so quickly and bluntly was gut-wrenching.  Like hearing the first fifty years of her life story from your grandmother and then waking up to be told by a surgeon that she died in the night.  That was what it was like.  It hits like a ton of bricks, and is so poignant and metaphorical, I feel.  I think to hear the story in this way makes it even more brilliant than it might have been.  It realises the savage irony represented in the story in the novel's own story.  It was incredible.  I think perhaps it's time for me to have a good long think. 

.

The Final Polish of the Shoe

In 1913, when Anthony Patch was twenty-five, two years were already gone since irony, the Holy Ghost of this later day, had, theoretically at leastm descended upon him.  Irony was the final polish of the shoe, the ultimate dab of the clothes-brush, a sort of intellectual 'There!' - yetat the brink of this story he has as yet gone no further than the conscious stage.  As you first see him he wonders frequently whether he is not without honour and slightly mad, a shamrful and obscene thiness glistening on the surface of the world like oil on a clean pool, these occasions being varied, of course, with those in which he thinks himself rather an exceptional young man, thoroughly sophisticated, well adjusted to his environment, and somewhat more significant than any one else he knows.

The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald, (published 1922). 

This is my new entry to the Open Sesame Challenge.  It is the opening paragraph to The Beautiful and Damned, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald.  Isn't it so completely full of imagery?  It is bluntly but very brilliantly put, and I can see it all in my head, laid out like a domestic scene in a mouse's doll's house that represents the play of humanity.  Hmmm.  Where did that line come from? 

Please, my dears, enter your favourite opening line, paragraph or page from a book, and have a read of all the entries so far, (the list on the right hand side has links to all entries so far).  Let's hear what you like about the entries and what you value about your own.