I read this in
2013. I don't remember why, but I think it was because Out of Print was doing a book club on it. There was some reason,
because until I started listening to audiobooks, I wasn't prone to picking
these types of reads.
What I
remember about the book is little, except there's some decline of a character
or two, some medical time in Switzerland, some relapsing, a doctor, some weird
groupings of people, an American starlet, her mom? It's not much, but when my
family started booking a Viking River Cruise that starts in Switzerland, I
remembered having notes on "a book" that I probably hadn't blogged
yet. That book was Tender is the
Night.
It's
Fitzgerald. He captures feelings, moments, thoughts with his words that are so
clear to you, and yet things that you don't realize (like the ticking of the
clock, or the space you take in people's lives). He reveals people, unearths characters
that quite possibly exist in your own life, even if this fictional world is so
far from your own.
Below are the
passages I flagged when reading the book.
Some of the
quotes I noted fall under the "sexual innuendo that's not quite sexual
innuendo" category, given the fact the guy's name is Dick.
Most of us
have a favorite, a heroic period, in our lives and that was Dick Driver’s. For
one thing he had no idea that he was charming, that the affection he gave and
inspired was anything unusual among healthy people. In his last year at New
Haven some one referred to him as “lucky Dick”—the name lingered in his head.
“Lucky Dick,
you big stiff,” he would whisper to himself, walking around the last sticks of
flame in his room. 116
“I
never did go in for making love to dry loins,” said Dick. 310
Other things I
noted were related to gender. Men seemed to be more typical, but women seemed a
bit more liberal--perhaps more self aware in relation to their gender.
If
her person was property she could exercise whatever advantage was inherent in
its ownership. 23
You
were brought up to work—not especially to marry. Now you’ve found your first
nut to crack and it’s a good nut—go ahead and put whatever happens down to
experience. Wound yourself or him—whatever happens it can’t spoil you because
economically you’re a boy, not a girl. 40
Rosemary
had never done much thinking, save about the illimitability of her mother’s
perfections, so this final severance of the umbilical cord disturbed her sleep.
40
She
was laughing hilariously, unashamed, unafraid, unconcerned. 192
Of course, there's the obligatory collection
of his generally fantastic writing:
...the
heterogeneous indistinguishable mass of college boys interested only in love at
first sight...
I
want to give a party where there’s a brawl and seductions and people going home
with their feelings hurt and women passed out in the cabinet de toilette. 27
Nearby,
some Americans were saying good-by in voices that mimicked the cadence of water
running into a large old bathtub. 83
The
best I can wish you, my child is a little misfortune.117
There
were other letters among whose helpless caesuras lurked darker rhythms. 123
It
is harder to deprive oneself of a pain than of a pleasure and the memory so possessed him that for the moment there was nothing to do but to pretend. 168
He
stayed in the big room a long time listening to the buzz of the electric clock,
listening to time. 171
Well,
you never knew exactly how much space you occupied in people’s lives. 207
Dick
and Rosemary had luncheon at the Castelli dei Caesari, a splendid restaurant in
a high-terraced villa overlooking the ruined form of an undetermined period of
decadence. Rosemary took a cocktail and a little wine, and Dick took enough so
that his feeling of dissatisfaction left him. 213
