This Side of Paradise F. Scott Fitzgerald (mini ebook reader .txt) đ
- Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
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âLove and war did for you.â
âWell,â Amory considered, âIâm not sure that the war itself had any great effect on either you or meâ âbut it certainly ruined the old backgrounds, sort of killed individualism out of our generation.â
Tom looked up in surprise.
âYes it did,â insisted Amory. âIâm not sure it didnât kill it out of the whole world. Oh, Lord, what a pleasure it used to be to dream I might be a really great dictator or writer or religious or political leaderâ âand now even a Leonardo da Vinci or Lorenzo de Medici couldnât be a real old-fashioned bolt in the world. Life is too huge and complex. The world is so overgrown that it canât lift its own fingers, and I was planning to be such an important fingerâ ââ
âI donât agree with you,â Tom interrupted. âThere never were men placed in such egotistic positions sinceâ âoh, since the French Revolution.â
Amory disagreed violently.
âYouâre mistaking this period when every nut is an individualist for a period of individualism. Wilson has only been powerful when he has represented; heâs had to compromise over and over again. Just as soon as Trotsky and Lenin take a definite, consistent stand theyâll become merely two-minute figures like Kerensky. Even Foch hasnât half the significance of Stonewall Jackson. War used to be the most individualistic pursuit of man, and yet the popular heroes of the war had neither authority nor responsibility: Guynemer and Sergeant York. How could a schoolboy make a hero of Pershing? A big man has no time really to do anything but just sit and be big.â
âThen you donât think there will be any more permanent world heroes?â
âYesâ âin historyâ ânot in life. Carlyle would have difficulty getting material for a new chapter on The Hero as a Big Man.â
âGo on. Iâm a good listener today.â
âPeople try so hard to believe in leaders now, pitifully hard. But we no sooner get a popular reformer or politician or soldier or writer or philosopherâ âa Roosevelt, a Tolstoy, a Wood, a Shaw, a Nietzsche, than the crosscurrents of criticism wash him away. My Lord, no man can stand prominence these days. Itâs the surest path to obscurity. People get sick of hearing the same name over and over.â
âThen you blame it on the press?â
âAbsolutely. Look at you; youâre on The New Democracy, considered the most brilliant weekly in the country, read by the men who do things and all that. Whatâs your business? Why, to be as clever, as interesting, and as brilliantly cynical as possible about every man, doctrine, book, or policy that is assigned you to deal with. The more strong lights, the more spiritual scandal you can throw on the matter, the more money they pay you, the more the people buy the issue. You, Tom dâInvilliers, a blighted Shelley, changing, shifting, clever, unscrupulous, represent the critical consciousness of the raceâ âOh, donât protest, I know the stuff. I used to write book reviews in college; I considered it rare sport to refer to the latest honest, conscientious effort to propound a theory or a remedy as a âwelcome addition to our light summer reading.â Come on now, admit it.â
Tom laughed, and Amory continued triumphantly.
âWe want to believe. Young students try to believe in older authors, constituents try to believe in their Congressmen, countries try to believe in their statesmen, but they canât. Too many voices, too much scattered, illogical, ill-considered criticism. Itâs worse in the case of newspapers. Any rich, unprogressive old party with that particularly grasping, acquisitive form of mentality known as financial genius can own a paper that is the intellectual meat and drink of thousands of tired, hurried men, men too involved in the business of modern living to swallow anything but predigested food. For two cents the voter buys his politics, prejudices, and philosophy. A year later there is a new political ring or a change in the paperâs ownership, consequence: more confusion, more contradiction, a sudden inrush of new ideas, their tempering, their distillation, the reaction against themâ ââ
He paused only to get his breath.
âAnd that is why I have sworn not to put pen to paper until my ideas either clarify or depart entirely; I have quite enough sins on my soul without putting dangerous, shallow epigrams into peopleâs heads; I might cause a poor, inoffensive capitalist to have a vulgar liaison with a bomb, or get some innocent little Bolshevik tangled up with a machine-gun bulletâ ââ
Tom was growing restless under this lampooning of his connection with The New Democracy.
âWhatâs all this got to do with your being bored?â
Amory considered that it had much to do with it.
âHowâll I fit in?â he demanded. âWhat am I for? To propagate the race? According to the American novels we are led to believe that the âhealthy American boyâ from nineteen to twenty-five is an entirely sexless animal. As a matter of fact, the healthier he is the less thatâs true. The only alternative to letting it get you is some violent interest. Well, the war is over; I believe too much in the responsibilities of authorship to write just now; and business, well, business speaks for itself. It has no connection with anything in the world that Iâve ever been interested in, except a slim, utilitarian connection with economics. What Iâd see of it, lost in a clerkship, for the next and best ten years of my life would have the intellectual content of an industrial movie.â
âTry fiction,â suggested Tom.
âTrouble is I get distracted when I start to write storiesâ âget afraid Iâm doing it instead of livingâ âget thinking maybe life is waiting for me in the Japanese gardens at the Ritz or at Atlantic City or on the lower East Side.
âAnyway,â he continued, âI havenât the vital urge. I wanted to be a regular human being but the girl couldnât see it that way.â
âYouâll find another.â
âGod! Banish the thought. Why donât you tell me that âif the girl had been worth having sheâd have waited for youâ? No, sir, the
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