Before I seriously attempt to do what I mentioned in the last post and stop looking backward forever (fat chance) or glorifying the past (probably not going to happen short of the grave), let us (us, forsooth) indulge ourselves (here's looking at you, kid) and adopt, for one day at least, one of Facebook's popular features, Throwback Thursday.
We shall do it, not with old photographs (although there are a couple over there in the sidebar) but with two articles for your reading pleasure or consternation (pick one, but not until you've read them) because it is important to stay busy (not to mention connected) during this pandemic, which government experts tell us on the one hand is winding down but which President Biden tells us on the other hand may last until Christmas. You may read one of them or both of them at your leisure, or neither of them. It's still a free country and the choice is up to you.
Where Did All The Saxophones Go?
The World's Most Misunderstood Novel
Any thoughts or comments? I mean besides that I should use fewer parenthesized asides.
Showing posts with label The Great Gatsby. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Great Gatsby. Show all posts
Thursday, February 18, 2021
Friday, October 19, 2018
I am not F. Scott Fitzgerald
I am on track, or so it appears, for 2018 to be a more productive year blogpost-wise than 2017. In all of 2017 I created 71 posts and with two-and-a-half months to go in 2018 I have already created 66 of them. Of course, in 2008, a whole decade ago now, I created 228 blogposts, but we won't go there. Changing horses in midstream, I could die tomorrow, and then where would that leave you?
High and dry, friends, high and dry.
I trust that will not happen, but one never knows, especially as one grows older.
Which all of us are doing, n'est-ce pas?
But of course.
There is no other way. No going back. Only forward.
Unless you are F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose novel The Great Gatsby ends with Nick, the narrator, contemplating Long Island, thusly:
Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.
And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning——
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
Tell me in the comments who you are not.
High and dry, friends, high and dry.
I trust that will not happen, but one never knows, especially as one grows older.
Which all of us are doing, n'est-ce pas?
But of course.
There is no other way. No going back. Only forward.
Unless you are F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose novel The Great Gatsby ends with Nick, the narrator, contemplating Long Island, thusly:
Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.
And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning——
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
Tell me in the comments who you are not.
Monday, March 18, 2013
Like sand through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives, or Thoughts On My Seventy-second Birthday
1, 2, 3, 4, 5...
...14, 15, 16, 17...
...25, 26, 27, 28, 29...
...38, 39, 40, 41, 42...
(yawn)...
...59, 60, 61, 62, 63...
...71, 72.
Seventy-two.
SEVENTY-TWO???!!
It can’t be!
Where did the time go?
It seems like just yesterday I graduated from high school.
It seems like just yesterday I got married.
It seems like just yesterday I watched my children playing.
It seems like just yesterday I became a grandfather.
My oldest grandson is now six feet, two inches tall and 17 years old.
Where did the time go?
It went where it always goes. It marches on.
And there’s not one blessed thing we can do about it.
Shakespeare talked about the seven ages of man in As You Like It, Act Two, scene seven. You know, the infant mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms and so forth all the way to second childishness and mere oblivion, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. I know the drill; I figure I’m at about stage six out of the seven, which I’ll let you look up for yourself, and it’s no comfort, let me tell you.
Dylan Thomas told us, “Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
That is definitely one approach. But I think F. Scott Fitzgerald said it best at the end of The Great Gatsby:
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
It’s not that I’m raging against the dying of the light or that I enjoy being borne back ceaselessly into the past particularly, it’s just that I can’t believe how soon this life is all over. I may live another 20 or 30 years, but still:
The doctor is IN. I recommend reading Psalm 103 every single day.
I also like to read Neil Theasby’s poem over there in my sidebar occasionally of an evening.
[Editor’s aside to Neil: You definitely now owe me. I have included you in an auspicious group that includes William Shakespeare, Dylan Thomas, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. --RWP]
...14, 15, 16, 17...
...25, 26, 27, 28, 29...
...38, 39, 40, 41, 42...
(yawn)...
...59, 60, 61, 62, 63...
...71, 72.
Seventy-two.
SEVENTY-TWO???!!
It can’t be!
Where did the time go?
It seems like just yesterday I graduated from high school.
It seems like just yesterday I got married.
It seems like just yesterday I watched my children playing.
It seems like just yesterday I became a grandfather.
My oldest grandson is now six feet, two inches tall and 17 years old.
Where did the time go?
It went where it always goes. It marches on.
And there’s not one blessed thing we can do about it.
Shakespeare talked about the seven ages of man in As You Like It, Act Two, scene seven. You know, the infant mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms and so forth all the way to second childishness and mere oblivion, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. I know the drill; I figure I’m at about stage six out of the seven, which I’ll let you look up for yourself, and it’s no comfort, let me tell you.
Dylan Thomas told us, “Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
That is definitely one approach. But I think F. Scott Fitzgerald said it best at the end of The Great Gatsby:
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
It’s not that I’m raging against the dying of the light or that I enjoy being borne back ceaselessly into the past particularly, it’s just that I can’t believe how soon this life is all over. I may live another 20 or 30 years, but still:
The doctor is IN. I recommend reading Psalm 103 every single day.
I also like to read Neil Theasby’s poem over there in my sidebar occasionally of an evening.
[Editor’s aside to Neil: You definitely now owe me. I have included you in an auspicious group that includes William Shakespeare, Dylan Thomas, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. --RWP]
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