The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald (summer beach reads .txt) đ
- Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
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BEAUTY: (_Placidly_) It all sounds so vulgar.
THE VOICE: Not half as vulgar as it is. You will be known during your fifteen years as a ragtime kid, a flapper, a jazz-baby, and a baby vamp. You will dance new dances neither more nor less gracefully than you danced the old ones.
BEAUTY: (_In a whisper_) Will I be paid?
THE VOICE: Yes, as usualâin love.
BEAUTY: (_With a faint laugh which disturbs only momentarily the immobility of her lips_) And will I like being called a jazz-baby?
THE VOICE: (_Soberly_) You will love itâŠ.
(_The dialogue ends here, with_ BEAUTY still sitting quietly, the stars pausing in an ecstasy of appreciation, the wind, white and gusty, blowing through her hair.
All this took place seven years before ANTHONY sat by the front windows of his apartment and listened to the chimes of St. Anneâs.)
Crispness folded down upon New York a month later, bringing November and the three big football games and a great fluttering of furs along Fifth Avenue. It brought, also, a sense of tension to the city, and suppressed excitement. Every morning now there were invitations in Anthonyâs mail. Three dozen virtuous females of the first layer were proclaiming their fitness, if not their specific willingness, to bear children unto three dozen millionaires. Five dozen virtuous females of the second layer were proclaiming not only this fitness, but in addition a tremendous undaunted ambition toward the first three dozen young men, who were of course invited to each of the ninety-six partiesâas were the young ladyâs group of family friends, acquaintances, college boys, and eager young outsiders. To continue, there was a third layer from the skirts of the city, from Newark and the Jersey suburbs up to bitter Connecticut and the ineligible sections of Long Islandâand doubtless contiguous layers down to the cityâs shoes: Jewesses were coming out into a society of Jewish men and women, from Riverside to the Bronx, and looking forward to a rising young broker or jeweller and a kosher wedding; Irish girls were casting their eyes, with license at last to do so, upon a society of young Tammany politicians, pious undertakers, and grown-up choirboys.
And, naturally, the city caught the contagious air of entrïżœâthe working girls, poor ugly souls, wrapping soap in the factories and showing finery in the big stores, dreamed that perhaps in the spectacular excitement of this winter they might obtain for themselves the coveted maleâas in a muddled carnival crowd an inefficient pickpocket may consider his chances increased. And the chimneys commenced to smoke and the subwayâs foulness was freshened. And the actresses came out in new plays and the publishers came out with new books and the Castles came out with new dances. And the railroads came out with new schedules containing new mistakes instead of the old ones that the commuters had grown used toâŠ.
The City was coming out!
Anthony, walking along Forty-second Street one afternoon under a steel-gray sky, ran unexpectedly into Richard Caramel emerging from the Manhattan Hotel barber shop. It was a cold day, the first definitely cold day, and Caramel had on one of those knee-length, sheep-lined coats long worn by the working men of the Middle West, that were just coming into fashionable approval. His soft hat was of a discreet dark brown, and from under it his clear eye flamed like a topaz. He stopped Anthony enthusiastically, slapping him on the arms more from a desire to keep himself warm than from playfulness, and, after his inevitable hand shake, exploded into sound.
âCold as the devilâGood Lord, Iâve been working like the deuce all day till my room got so cold I thought Iâd get pneumonia. Darn landlady economizing on coal came up when I yelled over the stairs for her for half an hour. Began explaining why and all. God! First she drove me crazy, then I began to think she was sort of a character, and took notes while she talkedâso she couldnât see me, you know, just as though I were writing casuallyââ
He had seized Anthonyâs arm and walking him briskly up Madison Avenue.
âWhere to?â
âNowhere in particular.â
âWell, then whatâs the use?â demanded Anthony.
They stopped and stared at each other, and Anthony wondered if the cold made his own face as repellent as Dick Caramelâs, whose nose was crimson, whose bulging brow was blue, whose yellow unmatched eyes were red and watery at the rims. After a moment they began walking again.
âDone some good work on my novel.â Dick was looking and talking emphatically at the sidewalk. âBut I have to get out once in a while.â He glanced at Anthony apologetically, as though craving encouragement.
âI have to talk. I guess very few people ever really think, I mean sit down and ponder and have ideas in sequence. I do my thinking in writing or conversation. Youâve got to have a start, sort ofâsomething to defend or contradictâdonât you think?â
Anthony grunted and withdrew his arm gently.
âI donât mind carrying you, Dick, but with that coatââ
âI mean,â continued Richard Caramel gravely, âthat on paper your first paragraph contains the idea youâre going to damn or enlarge on. In conversation youâve got your vis-ïżœ-visâs last statementâbut when you simply ponder, why, your ideas just succeed each other like magic-lantern pictures and each one forces out the last.â
They passed Forty-fifth Street and slowed down slightly. Both of them lit cigarettes and blew tremendous clouds of smoke and frosted breath into the air.
âLetâs walk up to the Plaza and have an egg-nog,â suggested Anthony. âDo you good. Airâll get the rotten nicotine out of your lungs. Come onâIâll let you talk about your book all the way.â
âI donât want to if it bores you. I mean you neednât do it as a favor.â The words tumbled out in haste, and though he tried to keep his face casual it screwed up uncertainly. Anthony was compelled to protest: âBore me? I should say not!â
âGot a cousinââ began Dick, but Anthony interrupted by stretching out his arms and breathing forth a low cry of exultation.
âGood weather!â he exclaimed, âisnât it? Makes me feel about ten. I mean it makes me feel as I should have felt when I was ten. Murderous! Oh, God! one minute itâs my world, and the next Iâm the worldâs fool. To-day itâs my world and everythingâs easy, easy. Even Nothing is easy!â
âGot a cousin up at the Plaza. Famous girl. We can go up and meet her. She lives there in the winterâhas lately anywayâwith her mother and father.â
âDidnât know you had cousins in New York.â
âHer nameâs Gloria. Sheâs from homeâKansas City. Her motherâs a practising Bilphist, and her fatherâs quite dull but a perfect gentleman.â
âWhat are they? Literary material?â
âThey try to be. All the old man does is tell me he just met the most wonderful character for a novel. Then he tells me about some idiotic friend of his and then he says: âThereâs a character for you! Why donât you write him up? Everybodyâd be interested in him.â Or else he tells me about Japan or Paris, or some other very obvious place, and says: âWhy donât you write a story about that place? Thatâd be a wonderful setting for a story!ââ
âHow about the girl?â inquired Anthony casually, âGloriaâGloria what?â
âGilbert. Oh, youâve heard of herâGloria Gilbert. Goes to dances at collegesâall that sort of thing.â
âIâve heard her name.â
âGood-lookingâin fact damned attractive.â
They reached Fiftieth Street and turned over toward the Avenue.
âI donât care for young girls as a rule,â said Anthony, frowning.
This was not strictly true. While it seemed to him that the average debutante spent every hour of her day thinking and talking about what the great world had mapped out for her to do during the next hour, any girl who made a living directly on her prettiness interested him enormously.
âGloriaâs darn niceânot a brain in her head.â
Anthony laughed in a one-syllabled snort.
âBy that you mean that she hasnât a line of literary patter.â
âNo, I donât.â
âDick, you know what passes as brains in a girl for you. Earnest young women who sit with you in a corner and talk earnestly about life. The kind who when they were sixteen argued with grave faces as to whether kissing was right or wrongâand whether it was immoral for freshmen to drink beer.â
Richard Caramel was offended. His scowl crinkled like crushed paper.
âNoââ he began, but Anthony interrupted ruthlessly.
âOh, yes; kind who just at present sit in corners and confer on the latest Scandinavian Dante available in English translation.â
Dick turned to him, a curious falling in his whole countenance. His question was almost an appeal.
âWhatâs the matter with you and Maury? You talk sometimes as though I were a sort of inferior.â
Anthony was confused, but he was also cold and a little uncomfortable, so he took refuge in attack.
âI donât think your brains matter, Dick.â
âOf course they matter!â exclaimed Dick angrily. âWhat do you mean? Why donât they matter?â
âYou might know too much for your pen.â
âI couldnât possibly.â
âI can imagine,â insisted Anthony, âa man knowing too much for his talent to express. Like me. Suppose, for instance, I have more wisdom than you, and less talent. It would tend to make me inarticulate. You, on the contrary, have enough water to fill the pail and a big enough pail to hold the water.â
âI donât follow you at all,â complained Dick in a crestfallen tone. Infinitely dismayed, he seemed to bulge in protest. He was staring intently at Anthony and caroming off a succession of passers-by, who reproached him with fierce, resentful glances.
âI simply mean that a talent like Wellsâs could carry the intelligence of a Spencer. But an inferior talent can only be graceful when itâs carrying inferior ideas. And the more narrowly you can look at a thing the more entertaining you can be about it.â
Dick considered, unable to decide the exact degree of criticism intended by Anthonyâs remarks. But Anthony, with that facility which seemed so frequently to flow from him, continued, his dark eyes gleaming in his thin face, his chin raised, his voice raised, his whole physical being raised:
âSay I am proud and sane and wiseâan Athenian among Greeks. Well, I might fail where a lesser man would succeed. He could imitate, he could adorn, he could be enthusiastic, he could be hopefully constructive. But this hypothetical me would be too proud to imitate, too sane to be enthusiastic, too sophisticated to be Utopian, too Grecian to adorn.â
âThen you donât think the artist works from his intelligence?â
âNo. He goes on improving, if he can, what he imitates in the way of style, and choosing from his own interpretation of the things around him what constitutes material. But after all every writer writes because itâs his mode of living. Donât tell me you like this âDivine Function of the Artistâ business?â
âIâm not accustomed even to refer to myself as an artist.â
âDick,â said Anthony, changing his tone, âI want to beg your pardon.â
âWhy?â
âFor that outburst. Iâm honestly sorry. I was talking for effect.â
Somewhat mollified, Dick rejoined:
âIâve often said you were a Philistine at heart.â
It was a crackling dusk when they turned in under the white faïżœade of the Plaza and tasted slowly the foam and yellow thickness of an egg-nog. Anthony looked at his companion. Richard Caramelâs nose and brow were slowly approaching a like pigmentation; the red was leaving the one, the blue deserting the other. Glancing in a mirror, Anthony was glad to find that his own skin had not discolored. On the contrary, a faint glow
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