ginsudo

p. 51:

I had taken two finger bowls of champagne and the scene had changed before my eyes into something significant, elemental and profound.

After midnight the party is starting to crest and even the studiously detached observer falls into the flow. The champagne helps more than a little.

I also like on this page the ‘old men pushing young girls backward in eternal graceless circles.’

p. 50:

‘I’ve been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library.’

If you find yourself in a similar condition, you should try this, it works surprisingly well.

p. 49:

a persistent undergraduate given to violent innuendo and obviously under the impression that sooner or later Jordan was going to yield him up her person to a greater or lesser degree.

Something about this description assures us that the violence is ultimately impotent, befitting of the stunted ambition sure to envelop the undegrad later that night.

p. 48:

It was testimony to the romantic speculation he inspired that there were whispers about him from those who had found little that it was necessary to whisper about in this world.

Now, who doesn’t daydream about being whispered about in this way? Even considering that the speculation at hand is that he killed a man.

p. 47:

the girls had moved casually on and her remark was addressed to the premature moon, produced like the supper, no doubt, out of a caterer’s basket.

Just another lovely, easy turn of phrase, describing a beautiful night and Gatsby’s otherworldly wealth at the same time.

p. 46:

I went over to his lawn a little after seven and wandered around rather ill-at-ease among swirls and eddies of people I didn’t know

I like this notion of a party as a vast river, with rushing waters and hidden depths and dangerous rocks – it suits the observer, the outsider that even the invited guest feels himself to be.

p. 45:

already there are wanderers, confident girls who weave here and there among the stouter and more stable, become for a sharp, joyous moment the center of a group and then excited with triumph glide on through the seachange of faces and voices and color under the constantly changing light.

Fitzgerald was an astute observer of a certain breed of young women, social climbers who begin with open hearts and end with emotional bankruptcy. He could be talking about Gilda Gray or Paris Hilton, the story’s the same. The Basil and Josephine Stories paint a picture of such a girl and her counterpart young man, as they both try to find that sharp peak of social victory.