ginsudo

p. 26:

When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness.

If you’ve ever stood in the night alone, you’ve heard how relative quiet can be more than silence, and this turn of phrase captures it precisely. Only a few lines on this page, and this phrase is the one that sticks with me. I’m capturing the phrases and sentences that stay with me for the resonance of the writing, but the first chapter ends here with a classic image I have to cite:  Involuntarily I glanced seaward – and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock.  One of the most famous bits of symbolism in all of literature, the green light representing the dream, the girl, the distance between ambition and class. When he wrote it, did Fitzgerald realize this was to become the legendary totem that it did?

p. 25:

Something was making him nibble at the edge of stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his peremptory heart.

Possibly one of my favorite phrases in the entire novel – his peremptory heart – hearkens back to one of my favorite poems, surely one that Fitzgerald admired as well:  Ozymandias, the king of kings whose boast of immortality was carved on the rubble strewn beside the sands of his former kingdom, also had a “heart that fed” – insatiable, demanding, dictatorial heart.

This same page contains a flurry of beautiful phrases, as Fitzgerald cruises to the end of the chapter like a commanding boxer ending a round with a hail of lovely glovework.  It’s possible though perhaps overreaching to find the reference to Ozymandias and see that Fitzgerald himself is the king of kings, littering the page with the jewels of his talent, destined to become forgotten and lost in the sands of time.

p. 24:

They came to the door with me and stood side by side in a cheerful square of light.

A minor example of good writing, an evocative turn of phrase.  But given all that’s gone on during the evening, the classic picture of the host couple bidding farewell to their departing guest almost insists on a sinister subtext.  That square of light, framing Daisy and Tom, shows their outline without shedding any illumination on their turmoil.

p. 23:

pleasing contemptuous expression

A photo of Jordan captures this expression, her face contemptuous with her youth and virtuosity, and pleasing rather than off-putting for that contempt. It’s very curious and deep when you think about it: What does the observer believe about himself to find attraction in contempt?

p. 22:

The instant her voice broke off, ceasing to compel my attention, my belief, I felt the basic insincerity of what she had said.

We’ve all met someone like this, someone who is so compelling, convincing, captivating in person.  In a one-on-one conversation, these people exude a magic circle of belief – they are not exactly deceiving you, but they create their own limited reality with the force of their personality.  And then they turn it off, like a switch, you turn away, the world comes seeping into the circle and you realize the basic insincerity of that temporary reality.