Today I stopped by Starbucks on the way home from work and decided I'd use my 'coffee name'. Unfortunately for me, I don't really have a coffee name. I've test driven a few (Deek, Sal, Arthur) but nothing has ever stuck. Today I decided to order my tall blonde using the alias Amory. I thought maybe the Batista would hesitate for a second but she didn't. Apparently, though, Amory likes his coffee 'with room'.
I really meant to write a post about Book 2 Chapter 2 yesterday but was too exhausted to make it happen and so you beat me to it. I'm being to lazy to re-read your Book 2 Chapter 1 post so I'll answer all your questions in two ways. 1. Yes. 2. Agree I don't know if those answers apply but let's run with it.
About Chapter 2 Book 2, I honestly do agree that it's a difficult one to write about. Amory hits bottom and begins a three-week drunken stupor. Well done, Amory! Well done. As far as making predictions about Monsignor Darcy, I think we're going to find out he is actually Amory's father but this news won't come until Darcy is dead or dying.
You're totally right about Fitzgerald's lack of quality female characters. This is the same case for Gatsby as well. The women simply serve as revolving door/door mats. However, if they were in the story longer we might learn that they aren't so different than Amory and he's not exactly the own of a winning list of qualities. Maybe it's best we don't see much of them. Certainly, this is not a feminist text.
I liked a few things about this chapter. First, I enjoyed the repeated call for different writing and novels that mean something. Essentially, this idea is what leads the expatriates into the modernist movement. Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Pound, Stein...these are the names that rose up from this dissatisfaction in American literature. TSoP would have been written before the modernist were really in full swing and I liked reading the chapter as if it hadn't begun yet...does that make sense? I think it's cool that this is an early text of what was to come.
Second, I loved this line: "Every author ought to write every book as if he were going to be beheaded the day he finished it." I think that's beautiful. Actually, that's the note I wrote in the margin (sorry librarians) when I read it. I like the urgency and necessity of writers treating their craft with respect. While I'm no longer a book snob, I do find I roll my eyes at author's such as Patterson, Evanovich, Grafton, et al. Would Grafton really be happy to know her last novel was called W is for Wasted? I think not.
I don't have much else to say about this chapter. I'm intreged about Eleanor. With only sixty pages left, how many more women can Fitzgerald run through?
Onward and upward!
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