The Crack-Up by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Author:F. Scott Fitzgerald
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Alma Books
Published: 2018-05-03T13:10:15+00:00

Descriptions of Humanity (Physical)

¶ They rode through those five years in an open car with the sun on their foreheads and their hair flying. They waved to people they knew, but seldom stopped to ask a direction or check on the fuel, for every morning there was a gorgeous new horizon and it was blissfully certain that they would find each other there at twilight. They missed collisions by inches, wavered on the edge of precipices and skidded across tracks to the sound of the warning bell. Their friends tired of waiting for the smash and grew to accept them as sempiternal, forever new as Michael’s last idea or the gloss on Amanda’s hair. One could almost name the day when the car began to splutter and slow up; the moment found them sitting in a seafood place on the waterfront in Washington; Michael was opening his letters, his long legs thrust way under the table to make a footstool for Amanda’s little slippers. It was only May but they were already bright brown and glowing. Their clothes were few and sort of pink in general effect like the winter cruise advertisements.

¶ The unicellular child effect – short dress.

¶ Cordell Hull* – Donald Duck eyes?

¶ His hair was grey at thirty-five, but people said the usual things – that it made him handsomer and all that, and he never thought much about it, even though early grey hair didn’t run in his family.

¶ When Jill died at last, resentful and bewildered to the end, Cass Erskine closed up his house, cancelled his contracts and took a boat around the world as far as Constantinople – no further because he and Jill had once been to Greece and the Mediterranean was heavy with memories of her. He turned back, loitered in the Pacific Isles and came home with a dread of the years before him.

¶ Attractive people are always getting into cars in a hurry or standing still and statuesque, or out of sight.

¶ ——’s expression, as if he could hardly wait till you did something else funny – even when I was ordering soup.

¶ His mannerisms were all girls’ mannerisms, rather gentle considerations got from [—] girls, or restrained and made masculine, a trait that, far from being effeminate, gave him a sort of Olympian stature that, in its all-kindness and consideration, was masculine and feminine alike.

¶ Captain Saltonville – the left part of his hair flying.

¶ For better or worse, the awkward age has become shorter, and this youth seemed to have escaped it altogether. His tone was neither flip nor bashful when he said:

¶ Ernest – until we began trying to walk over each other with cleats.

¶ His features were well formed against the flat canvas of his face.

¶ Dr X’s story about the Emperor of the World.

¶ Big fingers catching lisps from unintended notes. Arms crowded against his sides.

¶ Max Eastman* – like all people with a swaying walk, he seemed to have some secret.

¶ Romanticism is really a childish throwback horror of being alone at the top – which is the real horror.

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