I'm currently re-reading Tender is the Night and recently re-read The Great Gatsby, and just look at these snippets of his writing:
For Daisy was young and her artificial world was redolent of orchids and pleasant, cheerful snobbery and orchestras which set the rhythm of the year, summing up the sadness and suggestiveness of life in new tunes. (Gatsby)
She smiled at him, making sure that the smile gathered up everything inside her, and directed it toward him, making him a profound promise of herself for so little, for the beat of a response, the assurance of a complementary vibration in him. (Tender)
Fifty yards away the Mediterranean yielded up its pigments, moment by moment, to the brutal sunshine; below the balustrade a faded Buick cooked on the hotel drive (Tender)
Who uses the word redolent anymore? I wish we did. I remember I learned the word in 10th grade English class. Yielded up its pigments...Buicks cooking...Semicolons!
Fifty yards away the Mediterranean yielded up its pigments, moment by moment, to the brutal sunshine; below the balustrade a faded Buick cooked on the hotel drive (Tender)
Who uses the word redolent anymore? I wish we did. I remember I learned the word in 10th grade English class. Yielded up its pigments...Buicks cooking...Semicolons!
FSF would be proud of your writing! I am too! :) Love, Mom
ReplyDeleteI never appreciated Fitzgerald until recently. Reading The Great Gatsby in high school was torture. But I think I would enjoy it much more now.
ReplyDeletei've read the great gatsby twice, and both times, i hated it. but the first passage from tender is really fantastic: "gathered up everything inside her"...such a simple yet poetic way to describe a smile.
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