Hems and Ends

I haven’t read much Hemingway. I think the only other Hemingway that I started A Farewell to Arms because it was the book for The Big Read in Boise—but in fact I never finished it. My assessment after just one of his books is that I don’t love him as much as I love Edith Wharton, but I found him surprisingly engaging despite my expectations. I love the disparity between Cohon and everyone else, the difference in their tone and their attitude. Despite Brett’s seductress ways, I liked her a lot as the center of a love circle—and circle where everyone in the ring loves the one in the middle. And I found Jake to be a very interesting enigma that we only slowly learn about. It was interesting seeing the events written on the board today as a line graph, with the peak being fishing, until then I hadn’t given the order of their events much thought.

A little bit too near!

You guys, blogs seemed so much easier this semester than last! But I think that was just planning on my part. But because they felt easier, and like a less pressured conversation I enjoyed them a lot more than last semester. But maybe also it was because I was significantly more interested in the readings this semester than last. EITHER WAY, I liked the blogs at lot this semester, and they did make me think about the reading every week perhaps more than I would have on my own time.

Transitions Are Rough

“Babylon Revisited” ended strangely—I feel like the reader was waiting for the father to relapse and I can’t help but think this is because Fitzgerald wanted us to be waiting for the worst in him… But he doesn’t relapse, which should make the reader happy, but the lesson the father learned was sad: not only are there always consequences to your actions, but also they may never end, he may never be able to leave his faulted two years in his past to make a better future—his corrupted ghosts will always be there. “Babylon Revisited” is the only story we read of Fitzgerald that takes place after 1929, being published in 1931 and just two years after those shiny days, he is already revealing the universal consequences of the great depression. This story also the most widely taught, aside from the Great Gatsby, unlike our other four stories. Though it’s easy to understand why it is taught so frequently since it seems to represent his transition to writing that is apparently opposite to the romanticism he wrote with before, and most remarkable is the time period with which this transition took place: two years.

            “Winter Dream” is a perfect example of his stories prior to 1930s and is also what Fitzgerald later calls the sketch to the Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald is clearly a dreamer, but a dreamer who doesn’t believe that dreams will come true, so his hero’s never do end in their dream, and there always seems to be an edge of melancholy and loss that he himself never experienced… until the depression, and his marriage was on the fritz, his most ambitious book practically flopped and his alcoholism was an all time high.

Morris, Dickstein. "Fitzgerald: The Authority of Failure." F. Scott Fitzgerald in the Twenty-First Century. Ed. Jackson R. Bryer, Ed. Ruth Prigozy and Ed. Milton R. Stern. London: The University of Alabama Press, 2003. 301-316. Print.