Fitzgerald is great. I want to return and discover these characters again, from the earlier chapters, from the beginning. There were so many lines written that I wish to re-visit. Though now I know more about these people, perhaps too much. It is impossible to go back. He has changed my relationship with them forever.
There is much that is strong and wonderful about his writing. My fear is that it will not hold until the end. It is becoming that considerable bubble that contains one's private imaginative life, for me. I know how poorly things ended for old Fitzgerald. This book was his last published. I want it to have the perfect clarity of balance that is found in Gatsby, the perfect beauty of loss, the symmetry of tragedy. Though I know that is much to ask, it's what I want.
There is something very delicate within the writing, something familiar yet fragile, something always on the verge of being broken. Almost as if its undoing is buried within its initial description. A thing that can not be held for long. It's as if the entire book begins with its gradual falling away from the reader, from itself.
It is odd, to me - with great writing there is the intense desire to find out how things unfold, how the beautiful structure is built and lost. But in so doing, all of it collapses, every time. Truly great writing resembles tragedy in this way. By experiencing it one is also involved in its ending. There is an immense sadness to it. What is it called when exhilaration passes? Demise?
It is heartbreaking, I can't wait for it.
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