The Great Fitzgerald — Carte Blomst

“Yet high over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening streets, and I was him too, looking up and wondering. I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald is one of my favorite writers, and The Great Gatsby is one of my favorite books. Unfortunately it can be associated with “required reading”—some “classic” that one is forced to digest, respect, and like. I guess that is the fate of greatness.

I was fortunate enough to read it without any previous associations. For me it was not required reading, nor did it become attractive after the latest film version came out. What makes Fitzgerald stand out is his ability to flash upon the reader the essence of feeling in carefully chosen groupings of words. The Great Gatsby is not a long book, yet in those nine chapters Fitzgerald weaves a nuanced story full of sobering truths. Like Nick Carraway, the book’s narrator, Fitzgerald seemed to live within and without the Jazz Age, both reveling in and realizing its emptiness.

There are so many passages in this book that I have read over and over again, they seem to live like moving pictures in my mind. In particular, the final pages stun me with their brilliance and utter lack of pretension. They are what I’d like to write, if I could write.

Flowers are often mentioned in The Great Gatsby; in fact, the female protagonist’s name is Daisy. When Daisy, Gatsby, and Nick are entering Gatsby’s mansion, Fitzgerald describes the flora beautifully: “With enchanting murmurs Daisy admired this aspect or that of the feudal silhouette against the sky, admired the gardens, the sparkling odor of jonquils and the frothy odor of hawthorn and plum blossoms and the pale gold odor of kiss-me-at-the-gate. It was strange to reach the marble steps and find no stir of bright dresses in and out the door, and hear no sound but bird voices in the trees.”

You’ll find those flowers and steps in the design below.

You may also see another Fitzgerald-inspired post in the future. By this point you know I like him.