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#gatsby was boring to no end to me

wordsarelife · 1 month

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𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐟𝐨𝐮𝐫: 𝐢'𝐦 𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐚𝐧𝐞 (𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐢'𝐦 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐛𝐚𝐛𝐲)

pairing: theo nott x fem!reader

summary: the line between lust and hate is awfully slim between theo and you, resulting in something that changes everything between the two of you

warnings: (like massive) spoilers for the great gatsby, mentions of sex, cursing, let me know if i missed anything else

notes: i’m just gonna quickly leave this here hehe

previous part | masterlist | next part

monday felt like you had woken up in a different world. cursed legacy had made it their personal task to spend their time with you, much to yours and theo’s dismay.

they treated you like you were their friend again and while you had to admit that you didn't hate that, you still hated theo and being their friend meant being in his presence the entire time.

it started during math-, when enzo and mattheo decided to sit down in between april and you. leaving no other option but for their friends to follow behind them,- and reached it’s peak during english.

it was the only class that mattered to you, like really mattered to you. you knew it did to theo too, so you couldn’t understand how he had to ruin everything. atleast all had gone great, until the end. then all hell had broken loose.

"okay, we don't have too much time left" mrs walker said with a look to the clock "but i do have one last question: do you think daisy and mr gatsby should've ended up together?"

you raised your hand and mrs walker nodded. "yes, y/n?"

"i don't think so" you said honestly "i don't think they should've been involved with each other in the first place. i get that she had a shitty husband and she should've definitely left him, but she was at fault for everything that went wrong in gatsby's life and her loved her too much to realize that"

"thank you" mrs walker nodded before she gave the word to theo.

you turned your head in surprise. you hadn't even noticed him raising his hand. honstely, you had thought that he didn't even read the book in the first place.

"i disagree" he said.

"what a wonder" you muttered under you breath.

"daisy was everything he always wanted. she was the green light at the end of the peer and he might've been blinded by love, but isn't that what love is about? being so blinded that you would do anything for your person?"

you raised your eyebrows and send a look in theo's direction. you noticed that draco was wearing a similiar look as his eyes glided back and fourth between theo and the book in his hands, probably wondering if they had read the same story.

"sorry" you raised your arm "you could be right, but your're not"

mattheo beside you snorted.

"gatsby threw everything away for a woman that loved him for a short while before she went back to another man. he could've easily found someone better"

"maybe he didn't want to" theo was talking to you directly now "maybe it was enough for him to love her from afar"

"then he could've stayed on his fucking side of the lake" you argued "instead he threw these gigantic parties, just hoping for one single person to show up. is that what it is to you? having an unhealthy obsession with something that could lead to your death and calling it love?"

theo's chair scrapped over the floor when he stood up. you could see the anger in his eyes and stood up from your chair as well.

"you don't know what you're talking about" theo was not far from screaming "he loved her because she wasn't easy. he loved because being with her meant not knowing what's to come, because being with her meant to never grow bored"

"that's what you took from this story?" you laughed in disbelief "did we read the same book?" you caught blaise and draco hecticly turning pages as if they were asking themselves the same thing. enzo and april exchanged glances and the smirk on mattheo's face died.

"because i read a book in which a foolish man spends his entire time obsessing over a woman who doesn't love him, atleast not as much as he loves her and later he dies, because he wants to save her and she doesn't even bat an eye, before she goes back to her husband"

"she had no other choice" theo screamed.

"she had plenty of choices, theo" you screamed back.

"stop! the both of you!" mrs walker screamed.

all eyes turned to her. theo and you sank down in your seats defeated.

"both of you, detention" mrs walker said, right before the bell rang out.

you sighed as you packed up your things and grabbed the detention slip from her, before you left the room.

✦•〰〰〰〰〰★🎸☆⋆｡𖦹°‧★〰〰〰〰〰〰•✦

detention was not the kind of activity you would normally choose to do during your day, but here you were, holding a cleaning cloth and a bucket, while theo was holding the broom. you were standing in one of the classrooms, that hadn’t been used for these past few years.

"alright" mr platt clapped his hands. he was a bit too excited about your detention, particulary because he had a one sided feud with theo, who was always a bit too sassy in the janitors eyes. "you're gonna clean this entire room. you have two hours-" he was interrupted by his ringing phone, which he picked up as he walked away from the both of you.

"this is all your fault" you whispered.

theo huffed. “that’s rich”

“is it?” you wondered “because it’s always you that has to ruin everything”

“calm down, pixie” theo shook his head “i thought you were smarter than this”

“i have to admit i thought you were too, but then you proved me wrong in english and here we are”

“shut the fuck-“

mr platt turned back around and both you and theo put on an innocent smile.

“i have to get a few things for the school banket next week. do you think you’ll be fine on your own?” he looked more in your direction than in theo’s.

“of course, don’t worry, mr platt” you smiled and the janitor nodded relieved.

“alright, i will be back in two hours” he walked out of the room and theo turned his head to you.

“don’t worry, mr platt” he mocked in a high pitched voice. you rolled your eyes, before you slapped him with your cloth.

“come on, just start sweeping already”

to your annoyance and ultimately not to your surprise, theo sat down on one of the tables. “i’m not cleaning anything”

“mr platt just said—“

“i don’t know if you’ve noticed, pixie” he smiled “but i don’t really listen to the things mr pratt says”

you were ready to start fighting, until you remembered how you had gotten into this situation in the first place. this was your first detention and you would make sure that it would also stay the last.

you mindlessly started cleaning the tables around the room. when you were done with that, you filled the bucket with fresh water and cleaned the cloth in the sink until it was spotless again. then you walked across the room to take the broom.

"what are you doing?" theo pulled the broom away from you, when you tried to grab it.

"i'm doing what you should've done" you crossed your arms "i'm not gonna get in more trouble, because of you"

"i'm not giving it to you" theo said and you raised your brows.

"why do you even care? you're not gonna do it? okay, fine" you shrugged "but someone has to"

"it's not your fucking problem, pixie" theo pulled the broom further back "you did your task"

"why are you always so stubborn?" you tried to reach around him, but he pushed you back with his other hand "just give it to me"

"no" the bratty smile on his face made your blood boil.

in a few seconds of uncontrollable anger, you took the bucket, ready to drench him in the cold water you had just filled it up with. "give me the broom" you said once again, as if to give him a last chance.

"you wouldn't dare"

"oh i would" you nodded.

theo stayed unmoving and you raised the bucket from the ground, so that it was now hanging in the air between you. but theo was faster than you. he let go of the broom (which fell to the ground with a thud) before he ripped the bucket out of your hands, making water slip over the edge and directly onto your shirt.

"you fucking idiot!" you screamed, and turned away from the boy, once theo had put the bucket down on the table behind him.

"i actually did not mean to do that" he laughed "but it's pretty fucking funny"

"shut up" you started patting your chest with the cloth in an attempt to dry the water stain on your shirt. you did only make it worse.

you could hear theo giggle behind your back and swerved around, before you threw the cloth in his face. he was not as happy anymore when he took the cloth off his face and let it fall to the ground.

"what did you just do?"

you shrugged your shoulders "not like you didn't deserve that"

he stepped slowly closer "repeat that. i dare you"

you stepped back and he followed. your back hit the wall and he came closer.

"you deserved that" you muttered as you looked up at him. you could feel his hot breath on your cheek and thought about just pushing him back and slipping away, but you honestly doubted that you were stronger than him.

"you're very brave sweetheart" he smiled sarcastically.

you laughed humorless. "i fucking hate you"

theo smiled and the eye contact intensified.

"looks like you're having the hots for me now"

"fuck you, theo"

your breath hitched when he quickly pushed his lips against yours. it took you a second, but then you pulled him closer by his shirt, deepening the kiss.

theo's lips brushed against yours and you melted into his kiss, surrendering to the passion that consumed you both.

the kiss was like a storm, fierce and consuming, yet filled with a tenderness that left you breathless.

you had only kissed him once before, back when you were children. back when kissing was something disgusting and didn't make you feel the things you were feeling right now.

you whimpered when he pulled your head to the side with his hand and started kissing your neck.

"i loathe you" he muttered between kisses "but you look so fucking hot in that wet shirt"

you smiled triumphantly and saw your opportunity to push him backwards, away from the wall and to the teachers table. you connected your lips again, as you turned around and climbed on to the table. he stepped between your opened legs and rested his hands on your thighs as he moaned.

you gripped the hem of his shirt, he stepped back and helped you to pull it off, before you repeated the same process with your shirt. your hands pressed to his chest, while he kissed you and unhooked your bra.

you weren't proud of the things that happened next. and especially not of where it had happened.

when it was over, theo looked almost as regretful as you did.

"this was a mistake" you muttered, as he pulled down your shirt and gently fixed your hair. you weren't used to this side of him, not anymore. but even if you said the exact opposite, your were yearning for him.

"yeah" he nodded and then he frowned "i'm sorry, i shouldn't have-"

"-no, it's alright" you shook your head. this was worse than before, it was uncomfortable and awkward. you would've preferred him yelling at you, but the room grew silent as neither o you said a word.

"we can never do this again" he whispered, but it sounded more like he was telling it to himself.

"i know"

"and we can't tell anyone about this"

"i know"

"we're not good for each other" he said finally.

you wanted to say something, anything. it was like everything between you had just died with a simple touch. you almost missed the tension, because now there was just nothing. you tried to reach for his arm, but before you could do or say anything else, the door opened and theo stepped back from you.

"looks alright" mr platt nodded, once he had given the room a look. "you can go" he held the door open so you could walk through.

"bye" you said and mr platt nodded. "theo" you called, but the boy only quickened his step and left you standing alone in the entryhall of the school.

you sighed, before you decided that theo was right, you should just forget about everything that had happened. your relationship with him had not been anything else than hate lately and you had to admit he was right, it would never work, you weren't good for each other.

✦•〰〰〰〰〰★🎸☆⋆｡𖦹°‧★〰〰〰〰〰〰•✦

the shift in atmosphere did not go unnoticed by april or the rest of the boys. atleast not until the next saturday when she was spending the day with enzo and matt, chilling in their parent's basement before they head to the rehearsal later.

"have you noticed that theo and y/n have been acting weird lately?" april asked "i mean y/n's been totally denying it, but it's weird right?"

"for sure" mattheo nodded with big eyes "i'm glad you said something, i was dying to ask you"

"isn't that kind of normal?" enzo wondered "i mean for them to be weird?"

"you're not getting it the way we are!" mattheo criticized.

"okay, sorry" enzo raised his hands laughing until mattheo and april send him a look.

"i honestly always thought they would end up together" april admitted "and of course i hated the way their friendship evolved to constantly fighting with each other, but at least that was something. now they aren't even talking to each other"

"right?" mattheo pointed at the red-head "i always thought they were in love with each other, but then she dated that scumbag and leo, well" he left the sentence unfinished and the mood shifted.

"i thought the same" april patted mattheos shoulder. “i think what they have yet to realize is that everything that is between them is not hate, it’s sadness”

mattheo nodded and april could see that he was getting sad too. they both felt helpless, like they couldn’t do what they were supposed to do as best friends to theo and you.

all while enzo found it a bit weird how serious mattheo and april were talking about your relationship with theo. it didn't even concern them, yet they were so... concerned.

"it's not really our problem is it?" enzo tried gently.

the looks he received made him shut up immediately.

"they belong together, enz" his brother exclaimed with a roll of his eyes "they just don't know it yet"

"yeah" april nodded "that's what they have us for" she pointed between her and mattheo.

"but you still like me more than him, right?" enzo joked.

april and mattheo started laughing and enzo joined in hesitantly. "not right now, though"

enzo's laughter died down as he send his soon-to-be-girlfriend a betrayed look.

✦•〰〰〰〰〰★🎸☆⋆｡𖦹°‧★〰〰〰〰〰〰•✦

when the three arrived at the rehearsal, theo and you were already there, setting up the instrument and sorting notes.

"woah" blaise said when he and draco entered the garage after mattheo, april and enzo. "it's cold in here"

you send him an aggravated look, before you just rolled your eyes and continued to turn the pages of your notes.

"did something happen?" draco whispered in the direction of april.

the girl shook her head, before mattheo took it upon himself to inform draco about the newest form of relationship between theo and you.

"haven't you noticed?" he muttered not exactly quiet, but you acted like you couldn't hear him. "they've been acting like this all week"

"really?" blaise asked surprised, before he thought for a second "wait, no, now that you say it, it has been a really peaceful week." his eyes fell upon you "too peaceful"

"hey, y/n" draco called and you looked up "i think theo put down the wrong cable for you again"

"oh" you looked down to confirm that he was right "that not a problem, i'll just quickly change it" you walked around theo, without even acknowledging him and draco looked like he had lost his mind.

april elbowed enzo, who shrieked, but then quickly caught the hint. "theo, ehh" he thought for a second "did you talk to y/n about those notes she needs to play differently in cheap wine?"

theo shook his head, before he turned around to look at you. "you have to play two c-chords and then the a-chord"

"got it" you nodded.

enzo and april exchanged a look. enzo looked to his older brother helplessly, who looked as lost as he rest of his friends. he had no idea what else to say, before it quickly dawned on him. he had to force a reaction out of theo and what better way to do that than compliment you? an insult from theo wouldn't be far.

"you look really good today" mattheo said "i like the way you styles your hair"

"thank you" you smiled.

"theo?" blaise asked as the boy didn't react.

"huh?" theo looked up from the cables he had been sorting "eh, yeah i agree"

both you and theo returned to your respective work while the rest of your friends exchanged looks without you noticing.

"theo, i said y/n looks good today"

"i'm aware" theo nodded "i can hear you, you know?"

"we would love to hear your input" mattheo further encouraged.

"you're acting fucking weird today" and to all their shock, you and theo were now exchanging glances as if they were the ones behaving weirdly.

blaise huffed and mattheo and april crossed their arms silmutaneously.

draco seemed to have had enough of the way you were acting. "stop fucking acting this way! can't you just make up or something? or at least get back to hating each other?" he was close to tears.

blaise rubbed draco's shoulder. "see, what you're doing to him. his parents are divorced"

"okay?" you asked confused "i don't see what that has to do with us, though"

"what's going on?" april asked gently "did something happen? you had this until someone cries mentally, well, did someone cry?"

"no" you shook your head "theo and i are just mature enough, that we decided to stop fighting"

"bullshit" draco screamed from blaise's arms. "you're always fighting, even before you hated each other."

you looked in the direction of theo and thought about what he had said to you in that classroom. he had been right, you weren't good to each other, even before you had been at each other's throats constantly. all of it had been so obvious that even your friends had noticed it.

"would you rather have us fighting again?" theo asked with raised brows "we were going nowhere with this"

"you're not even talking to each other" mattheo muttered.

"we are" you shook your head as if you couldn't believe what he was saying "we just did it like a minute ago"

"can we please start rehearsing now?" theo asked and all of you could feel the annoyance radiating off his body. the boys nodded, giving in without further discussion.

you could still feel april's eyes lingering on you. she didn't believe a word you had said.

even if you tried to ignore it, what your friends had said stuck with you. you knew that theo was thinking about it too.

after the rehearsal you stayed longer.

"we have to stop acting his way" you said as soon as the two of you were alone. "they will find out if we don't"

"i know" theo sighed and it was the biggest reaction you had gotten from him all week. it kind of pained you to admit that you missed your fighting, but something in you clearly did.

"can't you just fight with me? just do something so we go back to normal"

"i can't" theo admitted "i can still scream at you, after-"

"after we had sex" you interrupted. he had been dancing around what happened all week, you were tired of not calling it what it was.

"it should've never happened"

"i know!" you said loudly "and i agree, but this is not the solution we need. we can't go back in time, theo, we can do nothing to change it."

"yeah, but i can do as much as possible to make sure it won't ever happen again"

"why are you so bothered by all of this?" you asked frustrated "it was just sex, it was a one time thing, what makes it different? it's just like any other one night stand"

"no it's not"

"then tell me what it is!" you were screaming now "because i'm tired of playing a game i don't want to be a part of! you confuse me"

"can i kiss you?" theo asked and you had almost screamed from shock.

"what?" you asked instead. "theo!"

"i'm- sorry, i just-"

"okay, kiss me" he did not wait for you to tell him twice, before he had already walked closer and pressed his lips against yours.

you really had to stop doing this. well, after this time.

✦•〰〰〰〰〰★🎸☆⋆｡𖦹°‧★〰〰〰〰〰〰•✦

you continued to come to the rehearsal three times a week over the following weeks. the more time you spent in the old loft, the more it felt like everything was slowly going back to normal.

your friends couldn't explain what had happened, but theo and you had started interacting normally again, having your occasional fight, but being friendlier than ever.

even if they found it weird, they accepted it. they were just happy you were talking to each other again.

april had tried to find out what had been going and between you and the boy, but you had stayed strong, not revealing your secret to her, even if she was your best friend.

you were joking with the boys, the forced friendly gestures you used to exchange were long gone and it was no longer uncomfortable to just sit around when you were taking a break.

mattheo told stories of enzo and their vacation in spain, how they had gone snorkeling and how enzo had lost his trunks in the water, making all of you break out into loud laughter.

each of you shared memories of a time where you had not spoken to the others, as if you had to catch up. and it felt good.

even theo had to admit it did. it had been easier than he thought to be civil. he had been sure he was having a stroke, but as soon as he started to act nice, you did too and after everything that had happened between you both these past few days he was honestly just glad.

it was another saturday when you were once again rehearsing. you had gone through the entire setlist (except for daddy issues, theo had said that it was way too slow to play) and now only had to play eight pack of cigarettes, which was one of your favorite tracks to play, especially because it had a guitar solo in it.

you had spent much time learning the solo and enzo had been of great help, teaching you like a proud parent, even if he was younger than you.

the song began slow, theo started singing as the guitar played slow, while the other instruments stayed silent.

in the glow of street lights, underneath the city's haze, you found me in the darkest nights, lost in a nicotine haze.

the drums set in just a second after, making the heavy rock of the song shine through clearly. shortly after that followed mattheo, strumming the bass. draco only joined at the chorus.

eight packs of cigarettes, burned through these lonely nights, trying to drown out regrets, but you're still in my head.

the solo came just after the brige and both enzo and april watches excitedly how you plaed it so effortlessly. theo watched you and he couldn't help the proud smile settling on his face.

in the haze of smoke and dreams, i'll keep searching for some reprieve, but until then, I'll keep the smoke, eight packs of cigarettes full of hope.

the song ended with the last note of draco's keyboard. you admired how they could go from a full on rock song, to a slow and almost sad outro.

you helped theo to unplug the instruments. draco and blaise said their goodbyes pretty soon, walking out of the garage mumbling something about a new videogame, mattheo was close behind them.

enzo and april exchanged a look, before he threw his not broken arm around her shoulder.

"we're going to the cinema" enzo exclaimed when he noticed your questioning gaze.

"okay" you smiled as you send april a look. 'call me later' you mouthed, before you watched them walk out to april's car.

"y/n" theo said to gain your attention "thank you for helping us, really, i appreciate it"

"it's not a problem" you smiled "just, why did you ask me? i know that you can play, you didn't need me"

"you're way better" he smiled "my heart also belongs to the acoustic guitar and it's way more fun to move freely on stage"

you rolled your eyes laughing at his dumb reasons, but nodded understandingly anyway. "can i also ask you something?"

theo raised his brows "sure"

"did you write daddy issues to hurt me?"

"i understand why you might think i did" theo muttered "but back then, no" he admitted "i wrote it for you to listen to whenever you felt like that. i thought about not putting it on the album after everything that happened, but i wrote it for both of you and leo had made me promise"

"typical" you laughed "he demands something and once he leaves everything goes to shit"

"i'm sorry i made you play it" theo muttered.

"it's alright" you took the acoustic guitar from the couch and held it in his direction. "can you do something else for me? could you play it for me? the way you intended it to be played?"

he nodded and took the guitar from your hand before he sat down across from you. he softly stroked the chords and the words that were coming out of his mouth didn't feel like they were supposed to hurt you, they felt gentle, like a hug.

gentle, like the days you had spent up in the treehouse, crying in his lap as he stroked your hair the same way he was now stroking the chords.

go ahead and cry, little girl nobody does it like you do i know how much it matters to you i know that you got daddy issues and if you were my little girl i'd do whatever I could do i'd run away and hide with you i know that you got daddy issues

he played softly, almost cautious, as if he wanted to fix you with his singing alone. he ended the song and you couldn't help but smile at him, even if tears were running over yours cheeks. he put the guitar down and sat next to you on the couch.

"why did you ask me to do that?"

"because i don't want to think of the song as something bad…not anymore" you explained as you wiped your tears away. "not when leo didn't intend it to be"

"he loved it" theo said softly "made him cry like a baby"

"because you're so good at writing" you laughed.

"no" theo shook his head "he cried because of you, because i think for the first time he could really understand how you felt"

"thank you" you said.

"nothing to thank me for" theo smiled softly.

"do you want to hear a secret?" you asked. you knew not everything between you was normal again, but you trusted him enough and right now, there in the garage, was a time where safety was all around you.

"sure" theo nodded and watched you expectingly. you turned your head to look at him.

"i haven't spoken to my dad in a year" you admitted.

"oh" theo breathed surprised. "why not?"

"i don't really know" you shrugged, it wasn't the whole truth, but you were not at the point of telling whole truths yet "but i think it's alright, i don't think there's anything we could still say to each other"

"i'm sorry"

you shrugged "it is what it is, right?" you tried to smile, but theo shook his head.

"it shouldn't be like this"

"it's not like i can miss anything" you shrugged and theo frowned.

"it's just unfair. i'm sorry, y/n"

"where did pixie go?"

"i thought you hated when i called you that"

"i did" you smiled lopsided "but now i kinda miss her"

"do you ever know what you want?" theo laughed and you shrugged, while you shook your head. he looked at his phone, to check the time. "are you free tonight?"

"sure, why?"

"a friend of mine is throwing a party and his band is playing, i promised to come, do you maybe want to accompany me?"

you shrugged "it's not like i have anything better to do, so why not?"

"i feel honored that you spend time with me nonetheless, pixie" theo smiled and you mirrored his expression. for the first time in a while his nickname for you did not sound malicious.

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neiveel3llson · 3 months

Text

Lost Loves

Reunited in Hell.

You didn't expect to end up in Hell. It's something that just never occurred to you, that despite your praying, begging for forgiveness, youd still end up rotting with everyone else. You'd helped your husband in his murders, you'd still help him, have he not been shot.

You wandered curiously through Hell, looking at a porn store, an already mugged store and weapons store that crossed your way while you walked through the streets like it were normal. There was chaos all around you, it felt like every two seconds someone's head was lobbed off in a gruesome way. You continued to walk through the crimson streets of Hell before something caught your eye, a small group of sinners all huddled up around a smaller store, or what looked like a store.

Your curiosity got the best of you, dragging you into the front of the small group, murmuring apologies or simply pushing past those who chose to ignore you. It was a radio, a modern looking one at that, similar to one you had in your own home, which you'd always listen to your husbands radio show on. Then something struck you, the radio wasn't the only familiar thing about this scene. The voice, the grating, static-filled voice. Youd recognise it anywhere. Alastor..

You listened in intently, rudely sushing any murmur or whisper among the crowd you'd trudged your way into. You smiled manically upon just listening to his voice for more than two minutes. Frantically, you grasped onto the shoulders of the hell-goer closes to you, a gatsby woman. She was short and pudgy, but undeniably pretty.

"Where does he live?" You asked with the most amount of kindness you could muster, despite your excitement.

"The radio demon? He's residin' at his radio hut, why?" The woman asked, hands on her hips. You bit a scowl at hearing the woman refer to your deceased husband as a demon, but you kept your composure.

"Take me there!" You said breathlessly with a grin, gripping the short woman's shoulders harshly, making her shrug them off.

"And what's in it fa' me?" She asks, looking at you from the side of her eye, tilting her head slightly with a bored look on her face.

"I'll put in a good word for you." The first offer, and undeniably the best. A cocky grin came to her face as she took you hand, shaking it slowly, beginning to drag you down the street. You saw a small lodge at the end of the street, decrepit but sturdy. Minimalistic. It came closer with every long stride, making you grin. You were so close to seeing your husband again, a mere stride away.

You missed the next few seconds of your life- well, death, only truly in your own mind again when you were face-to-face with your husband, his hands gripping your arms tightly. He was scared of leaving you, again. You looked into his newly red eyes, his paler skin, his red hair, everything about him. Even his new features. His deer ones, fitting.

"I've missed you, love.." You murmured breathlessly, a small, teary smile on your face. The small woman had gone, leaving nothing in her wake. It was just you and your husband, the hotel was silent, apart from your small sniffles and the static coming from your husband. Your husband.

"Oh my darling.. I never meant to leave you.." He cooes with a large grin on his face, bearing his sharp, yellow teeth.

Both of you leaned into one another, soft bleating coming from Alastor's throat as your lips connected for what felt like the first time in a millenia.

You held his hand in yours desperately, feeling a cold metal on your finger. His wedding ring, he never took it off. It didn't fit his aesthetic, the silver contrasting his outside drastically, but he'd kept it on.

"You kept it on.." You murmured against his lips happily, feeling him cup your face.

"I was waiting for you, darling.." He cooed yet again, leaning down with a large grin but, it was comforting. Soft.

"I love you.." A chorus of two voices, filled with a heavenly love and devotion to one another, pure love.

This belongs to @nieveel not you

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chronic-cynic · 6 months

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"'You're so different,' he says, shaking his head and squinting at me.

'I may have grown a few centimetres since I was eleven.'

'No, it's—' He stops himself.

I put down my phone. 'What? It's what?'

'You're more serious.'

I don't remember not being serious. As far as I'm concerened, I came out of the womb spouting cynicism and wishing for rain." (Oseman 73)

This is an analysis of Tori Spring and her unreliability as a narrator. It will be incredibly long, so I hope I do not bore anyone.

Lucas, as we know, had been Tori's best friend throughout elementary school. He had a dream, to chase after his childhood best friend and start a beautiful romance—which was nicely foreshadowed by the line: "'[The Great Gatsby is] about...' He pauses to think. 'It's about someone who's in love with a dream'" (72). However, he realizes that she wasn't the person he thought she was. Or rather, she isn't the person she used to be.

Alongside Lucas, there are two other characters that hint at the fact that Tori was never this pessimistic: Mr. Kent and Becky.

Near the beginning of the novel, Tori mentions how she and Kent know each other quite well because he has been her teacher for over five years. And, throughout the novel, Kent continuously shows his concern for Tori and her attitude towards life. It would make a lot of sense for him to be this concerned if he had actually seen life in Tori to begin with. Along with that, it is very clear that Tori is liked by the teachers, as stated by Becky on page 79. Again, it would make more sense for this to be the case if she was a different person when she was younger.

Finally: Becky. Throughout the novel, Tori feels incredibly jealous towards her best friend, and she feels the gap between them comes from the fact that Becky moved on while she stayed exactly where she was. However, during their argument after the Solitaire party, Becky says, "you've changed. I might have changed too, but you definitely have. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's true" (310). This completely contradicts everything Tori has told the reader.

The scene in which Tori reads her old diary illustrates my point perfectly.

"Up at the crack of 10:30am. Becky et moi went to the cinema today and saw Pirates of the Carribean (is that how you spell it???) 2 and OMG it was SO GOOD. Becky thinks Orlando Bloom is the fittest. Then we went to get pizza in the high street she had Hawaiian but obviously mine was plain cheese. YUM! She's coming round next week for a sleepover too. She says she needs to tell me about a boy that she likes!! And we're going to eat so much food and stay up all night and watch films!!!!!" (274)

It's very clear with the exclamation marks and enthusiasm in her tone that no, she was not born serious. Unlike now, Tori used to be genuinely happy to listen to Becky's relationships with boys. And—my favourite detail—the use of French in the second sentence. The word "moi" was almost always used by tweens as a quirky replacement for "me" (source: me. I used to use that word all of the time because I thought it was cute and silly. Gross). This is my favourite detail because of an earlier scene with Oliver when Tori says, "Are you suggesting that Charlie is better at Mario Kart than moi?" (63). Now, this could just be a coincidence, but I like to think that this is Tori's inner child being revealed to her little brother, especially because she would never speak to anyone else in that way. But, I digress.

So, I have now established how Tori has been unreliable with the way she describes herself, but what else has she been lying about? I think the most obvious answer is her hatred and lack of knowledge about literature.

Unlike everything I explained above, Tori does admit to lying near the end of the book, saying that books scare her because of how personal they feel. However, there are many things that contradicted her prior to this reveal. For example, her grades in her previous English class—as mentioned by Kent—and the way she used to read with Lucas.

After Lucas speaks about the books he is currently reading, Tori tells the reader, "I nod as if I understand. I don't. I don't know a single thing about literature despite studying it for A level" (72). Yet when Michael tests her on famous literary works, she is able to answer every question correctly, once again contradicting everything she has said.

Her unreliability is not deliberate, it comes from lies she tells herself. However, it seems like she knows the truth deep down. But I guess she is justified. After all, it feels better to say you were born serious than to admit to the damage the world has done to you.

#i hope this is worth something to someone #oh god this is quite long #nobody would want to read such an essay #i hope it does not seem like i am grasping at straws this #these are just things that i noticed #i tried to follow mla quotation rules but i know i broke them in many different places #because i am not actually writing an essay #forgive me #tori spring #solitaire alice oseman #becky allen #lucas ryan #michael holden #solitaire analysis #cynic.txt

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urlocalnonbinarybastardwrites · 1 month

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Could you do school with the greasers POV soda, (if he hadn’t dropped out) centering mostly on soda, steve and two?

I decided to do headcanons and then a fic for this one fam but yes ofc pookie also love ur account btw @sodapopprotectionsociety is freakin gold (natures hardest hue to hold) ((sorry I couldn’t help myself))

———————————————————————————

-their dynamic during school

-it’s fuckin comical

-I mean, the pretty boy, the class clown, and the mechanic? It’s a combo alright

-always goofing off in class

-I think that the teachers hate Sodapop more than Two Bit 💀💅😭

-because they think he doesn’t care when really he’s just a lil slow

-they think he’s such a himbo 💀💀

-and I feel like the teachers hate having them in class together 💀💀

Mini Fic incoming !!!!

“Oh, look, it’s the Golden Trio. Better have my damn coffee this morning.” That’s the sentence I was greeted with whenever I walked in the classroom with my best buddies, Steve n’ Two Bit. “Boy, Mrs. Brown sure does hate us.” Two Bit said with a teasing smile. I grin, winking at Two Bit. “I ain’t know why. We ain’t nothin less of angelic.” Two Bit laughs loudly, walking over to Steve as we take our usual seats by the window. Not too far up front, not too far behind, and close enough to the window we get free entertainment whenever class gets boring. And it almost always does. I mean, I ain’t stupid. Well, maybe I am. Just a bit. I guess I sorta gave up tryin’. I mean, I tried at first, listenin’ to the teachers and such but the words always kinda blended into each other, always too slow or fast. No one ever really gets it. But, if I’m forced to be in this classroom that ain’t mean I can’t have fun. The teacher is ranting on about The Great Gatsby or somethin’ like that, meanwhile I practice my shooting skills on a cute girl sitting on the other end of the room, grabbing a white sheet of paper and crumpling it, and chucking it at her with Two Bit. She gives us an irritated look, giving us a lovely finger gesture as we cackle, and before I know it the very familiar sound of Mrs. Browns footsteps make their way to the front of my desk. I give her my most charming grin, which usually works in my favor, but apparently not for her as she gives me a pointer finger towards the outside of her classroom, only spitting out two words: “Principal, now.” “Whoa Whoa Whoa Mrs. B, we was only havin some fun!” Two Bit exclaims with a grin a little too smug. “Now!” She repeats impatiently, and I give her a nonchalant grin and finger guns, swaggering out of the classroom with Two and Steve, wincing as I try not to think of the lecture i’m surely going to get from Darry as soon as my ass is home. I give Two and Steve a knowing smile “You two really feel like going to the principals?” I ask as they shake their heads. “Why don’t we go treat ourselves to a coke for our… outstanding behavior?” Steve quipped with a smug grin as me and Two began walking out the front doors of the school. “Y’know, I think that may just be the best idea you’ve had in a while, Stevie.”

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t00thpasteface · 3 months

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I forgot if I've already asked you this question, but who is your number one favorite Fictional Antagonist from Media? Rules are as follows; feel free to ignore:

If you want to choose a recurring villain like Bowser or The Joker, you have to choose a particular incarnation of this character. Like Alan Moore's Joker or Paper Mario 64's Bowser.

Specific Characters/Entities Only. You can't say, "Haunted Houses that aren't haunted by, like, a single ghost or anything in particular" like my mom wanted to. She settled firmly on "The Overlook Hotel" and she's a stronger person for it.

Villainous Duos like Boris & Natasha are accepted.

People have a hard time picking a #1, so you're allowed to list as many runner-ups as you like. Listen to your heart.

Protagonists who are their own worst enemies don't count!

Villainous characters who are protagonists in their story are very begrudgingly accepted. Whether or not George Costanza (A Villainous Protagonist) or Detective Columbo (A Heroic Antagonist) count is beyond the scope of this paper.

Thank you for your time!

hmmmm!! that's a really interesting question to chew on actually.

i'm not usually drawn to villains or villain-driven stories, outside of games that necessitate it as a gameplay mechanic or genre staple a la mario games or your standard JRPGs. and i wouldn't call a glorified game mechanic a character if they really don't do much besides throw barrels at the player to jump over. porky and giygas are exceptions but honestly not much; they aren't very complicated characters, even though they're snappily written, and most of where they shine is just the fact that they're one well-placed load-bearing piece in a larger cohesive narrative. they don't really capture my attention outside of their gameplay role.

i'm overall much more compelled by Romantic with a capital R stories about internal, oftentimes more abstracted struggles. i mean, i don't have to tell you that my favorite books EVER are "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" and "The Great Gatsby," both of which play with deuteragonists as foils to the narrator that inevitably spiral and leave the reader with something of a thought exercise regarding the intersection of nature versus nurture, intent versus action, past versus future, et cetera. the characters themselves are symbolic of sociological concepts so much larger than themselves, and because of that, they can't truly be classified into "hero" or "villian", because the topics those books grapple with are so incredibly messy and morally-fuzzy that the characters who exemplify them must reflect that same complexity and nuance.

as soon as a story starts to veer towards "all our problems are caused by One Guy who we can remove from the equation forever," it usually loses me, or if nothing else it just makes me zone out when the villain and his evil army of doom is on screen until we're back to introspective character-building moments between the protags, deuterags, etc. i'm the boring guy who likes slow, dialogue-driven things more than flashy show tunes.

ALL THAT BEING SAID......

villains really only shine (for me) if they're funny as fuck. that's the one way they can really get my attention as a character that has, by definition, been written into a unilaterally negative role that must be booed. they get to be FUNNY! and they get to be my favorite kind of funny: insane slapstick funny. i like seeing cartoony villains get absolutely pulverized, thrown around like wet dishrags, set on fire, flung off cliffs, you name it. the zanier the better. so here's my own elite 4 in ascending order:

fourth is 2012 avengers movie Loki. very hammy, very showy, extremely puncheable face, and he takes SO much physical punishment and writhes like a worm the whole time. super fun.

third is pokemon's Archie. emerald is my favorite game but archie SHINES in alpha sapphire. he's such a huge personality and he takes hits with a smile. and then he gets a big fuzzy redemption at the end because this is a game for kids, but even that is so over-the-top cornball that i just laugh and smile the whole time instead of rolling my eyes. a good wholesome time was had by all.

second is Mr. Burns in the simpsons. let me preface this by saying i really don't watch anything after, ehhhh, i'd say season 8 or 9, because that's about where my box sets ended growing up. any episode where Mr. Burns gets some slapstick gags about his incredibly frail body that runs on pure evil is a good episode. i especially love "the springfield files," "homer the smithers," "homer at the bat," and "who shot mr burns" parts 1 and 2.

and my favorite is undoubtedly Sheldon J. Plankton. similar situation as simpsons; i don't watch anything after seasons 1-3 and the first movie. he commands every single scene he's in, which is especially impressive given that he's literally just a single tiny copepod. he's got the best villain laugh EVER. he's even a delight in the game "battle for bikini bottom"... you GOTTA check out BFBB Rehydrated if you like the spirit and snark of the early seasons. i love him in "walking small," "F.U.N.," "the algae's always greener," and of course, the movie. he's evil! he's diabolical!! he's LEMON SCENTED!!!!

#i'm not sorry i wrote a fucking essay. if you get me talking about Art Analysis you will never hear the fucking end of it!!!!#shebbz shoutz #ask

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thelonechaosgoose · 4 months

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I have recently learned that I like pretty much every book I have to read in English class so have this short long rambling essay on The Great Gatsby.

The whole story makes me sad. It is full of missed opportunities and greed and rich people who have no concern for other people. It's about hope and dreams and a false sense of happiness. Gatsby throws these elaborate parties for one person who doesn't even know he's there. He invites important people to try and get the attention of one girl. When that girl finally sees him, everything begins to fall apart. There is a short period of happiness and hope and light. But that ends almost as quickly as it began. Daisy and Tom's marriage was never real. It was never full of equally returned love. Tom was always with someone else. Even if Daisy said she loved Tom, it wasn't always sincere. Things could've been so good. But the morals of all of these people messed things up. Nick being caught up in all of this made things even sadder. He just wanted to get away from the boring life he had and sell bonds. He didn't deserve any of this. He was stuck inbetween people's secrets and messy lives. It's no wonder he wanted to leave New York and all of them behind. They're all terrible. I mean Gatsby wasn't awful but his obliviousness to the situation and his endless hope and belief that Daisy would go with him after the fight made him a frustrating character. Especially to Nick. The way Gatsby made his money wasn't entirely lawful but I know for a fact he wasnt as bad as Tom. Nick tried to help Gatsby but in the end he gave up. Another point is that if Daisy had waited just a little longer, she could've had a happier life. Even if Gatsby made his money in an unlawful way, they probably would've been happier than she was with Tom. Her happiness was a mask to how she really felt. We only really get glimpses of this but when she talks to Nick about the birth of Pammy, Daisy's daughter, she wants her to be a fool. She wants her to be a fool so that she won't have to deal with the terrible-ness of the outside world. Daisy also was involved in 2 (two) murders! The obvious one being Myrtle. The irony of this is that she kills the woman her husband is having an affair while she's having an affair. The other possibly less obvious one is of course Gatsby. Since she hit Myrtle, she caused Wilson to go to Tom who told him it was Gatsby which then gives Wilson the ammo to shoot Gatsby in his pool. Tom could've told Wilson that it was Gatsby for two reasons. One, he actually thought it was Gatsby. Or, two, he said it was Gatsby to protect Daisy. I think it was the second one. After the fight, Tom knows that Gatsby has lost and he has won. He wants everything to go back to how things were. When he had control over his life. He probably figured out it was Daisy and threw Gatsby under that bus so that they could leave and start over again. Moving on from that mess, I want to talk about Jordan and how awful she is. She was not phased about anything that happened. After the fight and the accident she asked Nick if he wanted to come inside for dinner and hang out after they had literally just seen a dead body. It definitely helps to show that the only people effected by any of this are Nick, Gatsby, and Wilson. Two of which are dead. Gatsby spent the past five years of his life trying to get Daisy back for it only to end in his premature death. Also the fact that Nick was all Gatsby had makes this even more tragic. Even After all the parties and all the business associates, he is still alone and nobody cared about him. He dedicated his life to Daisy and all he got in return was a tiny sliver of happiness.

thank you for coming to my super long Ted talk <3

#the great gatsby #jay gatsby #nick carraway #jordan baker #tom buchanan #daisy buchanan

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more-than-tender-curiosity · 2 months

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Jordan baker for 002 for the character ask game?

1. That is the scariest woman I have ever met and I love her like she’s half of my soul

2. No one in the book really, but I think you’ve read Fugue for a Flapper, so you’ll understand when I say Maggie all the way.

3. Nick. Oh god. These two are two sides of the same lying ass bitch coin and I love them for it and that’s also WHY they don’t work romantically (besides yknow. Them being queer in my head). They would work SOOOO much better without comp-het in the way. I would listen to them bicker all day and then still grumble ‘I love you’ every time one of them has to leave so they know they’ve still got each other’s backs. I won’t say siblings because that’s also extremely Not It but Prickly Beloved is the only way I can describe it.

4. This is more in general but yall gotta stop with the step on me mommy type shit every time you see a female character who isn’t wilting in a milkbath. Youre weird being about women and you need to stop it. I see it in the comments of like gifsets of Jordan and I think you all need your keyboards taken away for two weeks

5. Goddamn give her a better ending. F scott Fitzgerald couldn’t help a woman finish if he tried and Jordan Baker is no different. She gets what ? A boring ass phone call from nick? Girl………..get a grip. She’s more than nick’s fuckin summer fling.

6. Again it’s maggie. I’m sorry jordaisy shippers I dont think daisy’s really after anybody

7. You know I think a better question would be who would you affront miss jordan baker with. What sort of individual would you pluck out of a whole nother universe and place before her. Like a cat with a lizard. Do you think she’s not eating? Do you think you have to warp somebody in from another world for her? Get real……..

8. Jordan’s tall. It never says this in the book. Not even once. But somehow we have all communicated through the gatsby mycelium network that jordan’s dresses are never quite long enough and I think that’s beautiful <3

#the great gatsby #jordan baker

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that-nerd-who-writes-fanfiction · 2 months

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Hello....If you don't mind, can I ask, what are your top 10 (or top 7) favorite media (can be books/ manga/ anime/movies/tv series)? Why do you love them? Sorry if you've answered this question before......Thanks....

I can’t remember if I’ve done this before but it’s changed again recently. Most of these are gonna be books because I’ve had way too much time sitting around lately so I’ve had enough time to actually enjoy books without destroying my sleep schedule for it.

1. BBC Merlin is my all time favourite, I don’t feel like I need to elaborate, it’s pretty much all I post about on here.

2. Song of Achilles is still my all time favourite book and number 2 behind Merlin. I think I’m nearing 20 rereads total for it by now. It’s never boring and keeps me interested every time. Cannot recommend enough. I’d give anything to be able to read it again for the first time.

3. I’ve been reading quite a few classics recently, I had a lot of free time. I met another Greek mythology nerd so Iliad and Odyssey make my top ten again because they’ve been on my mind a lot more than I care to admit. (I know it’s technically two books but I always read them together)

4. And I finally got around to reading Iron Heart (sequel to Crier’s war) and it’s amazing. One of the best books I’ve read recently. I’m gonna leave it at that or I’ll start ranting but I can’t recommend it enough so definitely go read that if you get a chance.

5. BBC Musketeers is also really good, I started watching that recently. I’m only on episode 6 but it’s great so far. Santiago Cabrera’s hair is fucking gender. Also the show got me researching 17th century weapons and now I know a fair amount about capes so that’s fun. BBC is still shit at historical accuracy, but no surprise there.

6. The Great Gatsby because I’m that kind of nerd and I’ve been mostly rereading recently. Everyone is such an arsehole in that book but it’s so interesting to analyse and annotate. I read it in year 7 and hated it, then again in college and it wasn’t bad but 3rd times a charm I guess. I found it really interesting from an analytical perspective, but I wouldn’t read it for light reading or fun.

7. I’ve been avoiding anything new other than musketeers, just because I haven’t felt like getting to know a new set of characters and a new world. That being said, I rewatched the first season of Good Omens, Crowleys still one of my all time favourite characters and the show is great.

8. I rewatched Stars Align, always a fun one. It’s a great show and the art style is really cool.

9. Seraph of the end because I love vampire stories. The plot is really interesting, I still need to read the manga but the anime is brilliant so I want to read that soon. Also no romance (ignoring shipping) which my aroace self appreciates.

10. The Tempest because my cousin was studying it in school and asked for help so I reread it for her and got a little bit hyper-fixated for a few days, now it’s still just sort of in the back of my mind and I’m a Shakespeare nerd so might as well add it.

Thanks for the ask!

#asks #bbc merlin #the song of achilles #the iliad #the odyssey #iron heart #criers war #bbc musketeers #great gatsby #good omens #stars align #seraph of the end #the tempest #shakespeare #books #i’m bad at tagging

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royalwilmon · 6 days

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here are so many fun little ally life updates since my Disappearance

my best friend had a baby!!!!!! auntie ally mode activated!!!!!!

one of my roommate's guinea pigs passed away but she got a new one! very sad but very happy

the cast album for the notebook musical came out and i haven't been the same person since

i binged the newest season of the circle and it became my entire personality for a good three days but now i forget most of what happened

i was mostly all caught up with fantasy high junior year as it was airing but now i refuse to watch the last episode because i refuse to acknowledge that its over

i signed up to do a lot of volunteer ushering for a bunch of different regional theatres in boston!!!! i'm ushering one of the preview performances of the new A.R.T. gatsby musical on friday!!!!!!!!

i saw wasia project and laufey in concert and Died i died i am dead. its so wild that i saw laufey at this tiny venue in cambridge just a few years ago and now she sold out the wang??!!!! proud of her :')))

i saw regional productions of a strange loop (michael r jackson was there and surprised the cast onstage at the end of the show!!!!! i WEPT) and spring awakening (hated it!!!!!!! they gave every character smartphones!!!!! mama who bore me was done with selfie sticks!!!!!! hated it!!!!!!!)

got invited to my ten year high school reunion. HATED that.

was in NYC last weekend!!! drove all the way in there myself!!! only cried once!!!! i did hit a bus but y'know what i reached my destination!!!! central park picnic and then I SAW DAVE MALLOY'S NEW SHOW!!!!!! i have so many thoughts and feelings that i might make a whole post about soon-ish

and last but not least i went to boston calling on sunday! i saw chappell roan and megan thee stallion and hozier and i am fully dead. but like. yeah if any of you have seen the posts about it, the event was MASSIVELY oversold and the crowds were fully Dangerous and it was super stressful and super scary. i had fun and im grateful i got to go (for free!! its cool to have connections!!) but holy yikes. had to leave hozier's set early because i almost passed out. probably won't go again unless its like. omar. lol

okay that was so much i guess i did have a busy month ??!! if you are reading this pls tell me something fun you did in may!!!! chit chat with me ok my social battery is fully recharged

#personal #ally.txt

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stellaluna33 · 3 months

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13. My favorite line of dialogue from this fic was [xyz]. What inspired it?

14. My favorite line from this fic was [xyz]. What inspired it?

Ngl - I've never read any of your stuff, because I've never actually WATCHED Gilmore Girls (i know... I'll see myself out).

BUT. Whats YOUR favourite lines of dialogue, or lines you've written from anything you've written, and why?

Aw, you're so sweet for asking! 😅

You're going to make me compliment myself, huh? Well, ok, haha. I'll be pulling stuff from my multi-chapter fic, The Long and Winding Road.

13. Favorite line of dialogue? This was hard for me, because even though I feel like I'm pretty good at writing dialogue for these characters, everything seemed kind of lackluster to me in isolation. But this is one I've always chuckled over even though absolutely nobody else has ever mentioned it to me. 😂 "Well, I was kind of in the mood for 'the Great Gatsby' today. You know, I can enjoy the fact that Leonardo DiCaprio finally looks like a grown man, and you can enjoy telling me how 50 Cent really captures the decadence of the Lost Generation…"

This line of dialogue was inspired by... my own feelings about Leonardo Di Caprio (I NEVER got the attraction back in his heartthrob days, haha) and Baz Luhrman's the Great Gatsby, and which of these characters I thought would agree with these opinions. I don't know, I just thought it seemed like something they would say. 😂

14. Favorite line? I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this one before, so people are probably bored of hearing it, but it's: Everything about him was uncontrolled and wild, and so were her feelings about him, and she was never entirely comfortable with that. Falling in love with Jess had been like being caught in a riptide and dragged out to sea. Dean had been the slippery rock she tried desperately to cling to, but her strength just gave out in the end. She could do nothing but drown.

I don't know, I just really like it, haha. I'm a visual artist first, a poet second, and a fiction writer only third, so I tend to think in images, symbolism, and metaphor a lot. I like it. And I have a longtime obsession with the sea, so I love a good maritime metaphor. I just think the ocean (something so huge, beautiful, powerful, and life giving, but also brutal and terrifying) and the way humans interact with it make for some really vivid comparisons to powerful human emotions. And it seemed like a good metaphor for what happened to these characters, that this was a character who liked being able to plan and control her own life, and this love was too inconvenient and too overpowering to allow her to do either of those things. And accepting it felt more like losing a fight than receiving a gift. Like, she wasn't happy about it, more exhausted and resigned. (And if you're thinking that's not a great setup for a healthy relationship, you'd be right! 😅)

(The questions are here if anyone wants to ask)

#Writing #The Long and Winding Road

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hellsite-library · 1 month

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The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald) - 1/3

Chapter 1

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.

"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."

He didn't say any more but we've always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence I'm inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought—frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon—for the intimate revelations of young men or at least the terms in which they express them are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.

And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes but after a certain point I don't care what it's founded on. When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction—Gatsby who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the "creative temperament"—it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No—Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.

My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this middle-western city for three generations. The Carraways are something of a clan and we have a tradition that we're descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather's brother who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War and started the wholesale hardware business that my father carries on today.

I never saw this great-uncle but I'm supposed to look like him—with special reference to the rather hard-boiled painting that hangs in Father's office. I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of a century after my father, and a little later I participated in that delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War. I enjoyed the counter-raid so thoroughly that I came back restless. Instead of being the warm center of the world the middle-west now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe—so I decided to go east and learn the bond business. Everybody I knew was in the bond business so I supposed it could support one more single man. All my aunts and uncles talked it over as if they were choosing a prep-school for me and finally said, "Why—ye-es" with very grave, hesitant faces. Father agreed to finance me for a year and after various delays I came east, permanently, I thought, in the spring of twenty-two.

The practical thing was to find rooms in the city but it was a warm season and I had just left a country of wide lawns and friendly trees, so when a young man at the office suggested that we take a house together in a commuting town it sounded like a great idea. He found the house, a weather beaten cardboard bungalow at eighty a month, but at the last minute the firm ordered him to Washington and I went out to the country alone. I had a dog, at least I had him for a few days until he ran away, and an old Dodge and a Finnish woman who made my bed and cooked breakfast and muttered Finnish wisdom to herself over the electric stove.

It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man, more recently arrived than I, stopped me on the road.

"How do you get to West Egg village?" he asked helplessly.

I told him. And as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler. He had casually conferred on me the freedom of the neighborhood.

And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees—just as things grow in fast movies—I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.

There was so much to read for one thing and so much fine health to be pulled down out of the young breath-giving air. I bought a dozen volumes on banking and credit and investment securities and they stood on my shelf in red and gold like new money from the mint, promising to unfold the shining secrets that only Midas and Morgan and Maecenas knew. And I had the high intention of reading many other books besides. I was rather literary in college—one year I wrote a series of very solemn and obvious editorials for the "Yale News"—and now I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most limited of all specialists, the "well-rounded man." This isn't just an epigram—life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.

It was a matter of chance that I should have rented a house in one of the strangest communities in North America. It was on that slender riotous island which extends itself due east of New York and where there are, among other natural curiosities, two unusual formations of land. Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous eggs, identical in contour and separated only by a courtesy bay, jut out into the most domesticated body of salt water in the Western Hemisphere, the great wet barnyard of Long Island Sound. They are not perfect ovals—like the egg in the Columbus story they are both crushed flat at the contact end—but their physical resemblance must be a source of perpetual confusion to the gulls that fly overhead. To the wingless a more arresting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every particular except shape and size.

I lived at West Egg, the—well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them. My house was at the very tip of the egg, only fifty yards from the Sound, and squeezed between two huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season. The one on my right was a colossal affair by any standard—it was a factual imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. It was Gatsby's mansion. Or rather, as I didn't know Mr. Gatsby it was a mansion inhabited by a gentleman of that name. My own house was an eye-sore, but it was a small eye-sore, and it had been overlooked, so I had a view of the water, a partial view of my neighbor's lawn, and the consoling proximity of millionaires—all for eighty dollars a month.

Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom Buchanans. Daisy was my second cousin once removed and I'd known Tom in college. And just after the war I spent two days with them in Chicago.

Her husband, among various physical accomplishments, had been one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven—a national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savors of anti-climax. His family were enormously wealthy—even in college his freedom with money was a matter for reproach—but now he'd left Chicago and come east in a fashion that rather took your breath away: for instance he'd brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake Forest. It was hard to realize that a man in my own generation was wealthy enough to do that.

Why they came east I don't know. They had spent a year in France, for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together. This was a permanent move, said Daisy over the telephone, but I didn't believe it—I had no sight into Daisy's heart but I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking a little wistfully for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game.

And so it happened that on a warm windy evening I drove over to East Egg to see two old friends whom I scarcely knew at all. Their house was even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red and white Georgian Colonial mansion overlooking the bay. The lawn started at the beach and ran toward the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sun-dials and brick walks and burning gardens—finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run. The front was broken by a line of French windows, glowing now with reflected gold, and wide open to the warm windy afternoon, and Tom Buchanan in riding clothes was standing with his legs apart on the front porch.

He had changed since his New Haven years. Now he was a sturdy, straw haired man of thirty with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner. Two shining, arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward. Not even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could hide the enormous power of that body—he seemed to fill those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing and you could see a great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body capable of enormous leverage—a cruel body.

His speaking voice, a gruff husky tenor, added to the impression of fractiousness he conveyed. There was a touch of paternal contempt in it, even toward people he liked—and there were men at New Haven who had hated his guts.

"Now, don't think my opinion on these matters is final," he seemed to say, "just because I'm stronger and more of a man than you are." We were in the same Senior Society, and while we were never intimate I always had the impression that he approved of me and wanted me to like him with some harsh, defiant wistfulness of his own.

We talked for a few minutes on the sunny porch.

"I've got a nice place here," he said, his eyes flashing about restlessly.

Turning me around by one arm he moved a broad flat hand along the front vista, including in its sweep a sunken Italian garden, a half acre of deep pungent roses and a snub-nosed motor boat that bumped the tide off shore.

"It belonged to Demaine the oil man." He turned me around again, politely and abruptly. "We'll go inside."

We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-colored space, fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end. The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding cake of the ceiling—and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.

The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor.

The younger of the two was a stranger to me. She was extended full length at her end of the divan, completely motionless and with her chin raised a little as if she were balancing something on it which was quite likely to fall. If she saw me out of the corner of her eyes she gave no hint of it—indeed, I was almost surprised into murmuring an apology for having disturbed her by coming in.

The other girl, Daisy, made an attempt to rise—she leaned slightly forward with a conscientious expression—then she laughed, an absurd, charming little laugh, and I laughed too and came forward into the room.

"I'm p-paralyzed with happiness."

She laughed again, as if she said something very witty, and held my hand for a moment, looking up into my face, promising that there was no one in the world she so much wanted to see. That was a way she had. She hinted in a murmur that the surname of the balancing girl was Baker. (I've heard it said that Daisy's murmur was only to make people lean toward her; an irrelevant criticism that made it no less charming.)

At any rate Miss Baker's lips fluttered, she nodded at me almost imperceptibly and then quickly tipped her head back again—the object she was balancing had obviously tottered a little and given her something of a fright. Again a sort of apology arose to my lips. Almost any exhibition of complete self sufficiency draws a stunned tribute from me.

I looked back at my cousin who began to ask me questions in her low, thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth—but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered "Listen," a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour.

I told her how I had stopped off in Chicago for a day on my way east and how a dozen people had sent their love through me.

"Do they miss me?" she cried ecstatically.

"The whole town is desolate. All the cars have the left rear wheel painted black as a mourning wreath and there's a persistent wail all night along the North Shore."

"How gorgeous! Let's go back, Tom. Tomorrow!" Then she added irrelevantly, "You ought to see the baby."

"I'd like to."

"She's asleep. She's two years old. Haven't you ever seen her?"

"Never."

"Well, you ought to see her. She's—"

Tom Buchanan who had been hovering restlessly about the room stopped and rested his hand on my shoulder.

"What you doing, Nick?"

"I'm a bond man."

"Who with?"

I told him.

"Never heard of them," he remarked decisively.

This annoyed me.

"You will," I answered shortly. "You will if you stay in the East."

"Oh, I'll stay in the East, don't you worry," he said, glancing at Daisy and then back at me, as if he were alert for something more. "I'd be a God Damned fool to live anywhere else."

At this point Miss Baker said "Absolutely!" with such suddenness that I started—it was the first word she uttered since I came into the room. Evidently it surprised her as much as it did me, for she yawned and with a series of rapid, deft movements stood up into the room.

"I'm stiff," she complained, "I've been lying on that sofa for as long as I can remember."

"Don't look at me," Daisy retorted. "I've been trying to get you to New York all afternoon."

"No, thanks," said Miss Baker to the four cocktails just in from the pantry, "I'm absolutely in training."

Her host looked at her incredulously.

"You are!" He took down his drink as if it were a drop in the bottom of a glass. "How you ever get anything done is beyond me."

I looked at Miss Baker wondering what it was she "got done." I enjoyed looking at her. She was a slender, small-breasted girl, with an erect carriage which she accentuated by throwing her body backward at the shoulders like a young cadet. Her grey sun-strained eyes looked back at me with polite reciprocal curiosity out of a wan, charming discontented face. It occurred to me now that I had seen her, or a picture of her, somewhere before.

"You live in West Egg," she remarked contemptuously. "I know somebody there."

"I don't know a single—"

"You must know Gatsby."

"Gatsby?" demanded Daisy. "What Gatsby?"

Before I could reply that he was my neighbor dinner was announced; wedging his tense arm imperatively under mine Tom Buchanan compelled me from the room as though he were moving a checker to another square.

Slenderly, languidly, their hands set lightly on their hips the two young women preceded us out onto a rosy-colored porch open toward the sunset where four candles flickered on the table in the diminished wind.

"Why candles?" objected Daisy, frowning. She snapped them out with her fingers. "In two weeks it'll be the longest day in the year." She looked at us all radiantly. "Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it."

"We ought to plan something," yawned Miss Baker, sitting down at the table as if she were getting into bed.

"All right," said Daisy. "What'll we plan?" She turned to me helplessly. "What do people plan?"

Before I could answer her eyes fastened with an awed expression on her little finger.

"Look!" she complained. "I hurt it."

We all looked—the knuckle was black and blue.

"You did it, Tom," she said accusingly. "I know you didn't mean to but you did do it. That's what I get for marrying a brute of a man, a great big hulking physical specimen of a—"

"I hate that word hulking," objected Tom crossly, "even in kidding."

"Hulking," insisted Daisy.

Sometimes she and Miss Baker talked at once, unobtrusively and with a bantering inconsequence that was never quite chatter, that was as cool as their white dresses and their impersonal eyes in the absence of all desire. They were here—and they accepted Tom and me, making only a polite pleasant effort to entertain or to be entertained. They knew that presently dinner would be over and a little later the evening too would be over and casually put away. It was sharply different from the West where an evening was hurried from phase to phase toward its close in a continually disappointed anticipation or else in sheer nervous dread of the moment itself.

"You make me feel uncivilized, Daisy," I confessed on my second glass of corky but rather impressive claret. "Can't you talk about crops or something?"

I meant nothing in particular by this remark but it was taken up in an unexpected way.

"Civilization's going to pieces," broke out Tom violently. "I've gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read 'The Rise of the Coloured Empires' by this man Goddard?"

"Why, no," I answered, rather surprised by his tone.

"Well, it's a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we don't look out the white race will be—will be utterly submerged. It's all scientific stuff; it's been proved."

"Tom's getting very profound," said Daisy with an expression of unthoughtful sadness. "He reads deep books with long words in them. What was that word we—"

"Well, these books are all scientific," insisted Tom, glancing at her impatiently. "This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It's up to us who are the dominant race to watch out or these other races will have control of things."

"We've got to beat them down," whispered Daisy, winking ferociously toward the fervent sun.

"You ought to live in California—" began Miss Baker but Tom interrupted her by shifting heavily in his chair.

"This idea is that we're Nordics. I am, and you are and you are and—" After an infinitesimal hesitation he included Daisy with a slight nod and she winked at me again. "—and we've produced all the things that go to make civilization—oh, science and art and all that. Do you see?"

There was something pathetic in his concentration as if his complacency, more acute than of old, was not enough to him any more. When, almost immediately, the telephone rang inside and the butler left the porch Daisy seized upon the momentary interruption and leaned toward me.

"I'll tell you a family secret," she whispered enthusiastically. "It's about the butler's nose. Do you want to hear about the butler's nose?"

"That's why I came over tonight."

"Well, he wasn't always a butler; he used to be the silver polisher for some people in New York that had a silver service for two hundred people. He had to polish it from morning till night until finally it began to affect his nose—"

"Things went from bad to worse," suggested Miss Baker.

"Yes. Things went from bad to worse until finally he had to give up his position."

For a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as I listened—then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk.

The butler came back and murmured something close to Tom's ear whereupon Tom frowned, pushed back his chair and without a word went inside. As if his absence quickened something within her Daisy leaned forward again, her voice glowing and singing.

"I love to see you at my table, Nick. You remind me of a—of a rose, an absolute rose. Doesn't he?" She turned to Miss Baker for confirmation. "An absolute rose?"

This was untrue. I am not even faintly like a rose. She was only extemporizing but a stirring warmth flowed from her as if her heart was trying to come out to you concealed in one of those breathless, thrilling words. Then suddenly she threw her napkin on the table and excused herself and went into the house.

Miss Baker and I exchanged a short glance consciously devoid of meaning. I was about to speak when she sat up alertly and said "Sh!" in a warning voice. A subdued impassioned murmur was audible in the room beyond and Miss Baker leaned forward, unashamed, trying to hear. The murmur trembled on the verge of coherence, sank down, mounted excitedly, and then ceased altogether.

"This Mr. Gatsby you spoke of is my neighbor—" I said.

"Don't talk. I want to hear what happens."

"Is something happening?" I inquired innocently.

"You mean to say you don't know?" said Miss Baker, honestly surprised. "I thought everybody knew."

"I don't."

"Why—" she said hesitantly, "Tom's got some woman in New York."

"Got some woman?" I repeated blankly.

Miss Baker nodded.

"She might have the decency not to telephone him at dinner-time. Don't you think?"

Almost before I had grasped her meaning there was the flutter of a dress and the crunch of leather boots and Tom and Daisy were back at the table.

"It couldn't be helped!" cried Daisy with tense gayety.

She sat down, glanced searchingly at Miss Baker and then at me and continued: "I looked outdoors for a minute and it's very romantic outdoors. There's a bird on the lawn that I think must be a nightingale come over on the Cunard or White Star Line. He's singing away—" her voice sang "—It's romantic, isn't it, Tom?"

"Very romantic," he said, and then miserably to me: "If it's light enough after dinner I want to take you down to the stables."

The telephone rang inside, startlingly, and as Daisy shook her head decisively at Tom the subject of the stables, in fact all subjects, vanished into air. Among the broken fragments of the last five minutes at table I remember the candles being lit again, pointlessly, and I was conscious of wanting to look squarely at every one and yet to avoid all eyes. I couldn't guess what Daisy and Tom were thinking but I doubt if even Miss Baker who seemed to have mastered a certain hardy skepticism was able utterly to put this fifth guest's shrill metallic urgency out of mind. To a certain temperament the situation might have seemed intriguing—my own instinct was to telephone immediately for the police.

The horses, needless to say, were not mentioned again. Tom and Miss Baker, with several feet of twilight between them strolled back into the library, as if to a vigil beside a perfectly tangible body, while trying to look pleasantly interested and a little deaf I followed Daisy around a chain of connecting verandas to the porch in front. In its deep gloom we sat down side by side on a wicker settee.

Daisy took her face in her hands, as if feeling its lovely shape, and her eyes moved gradually out into the velvet dusk. I saw that turbulent emotions possessed her, so I asked what I thought would be some sedative questions about her little girl.

"We don't know each other very well, Nick," she said suddenly. "Even if we are cousins. You didn't come to my wedding."

"I wasn't back from the war."

"That's true." She hesitated. "Well, I've had a very bad time, Nick, and I'm pretty cynical about everything."

Evidently she had reason to be. I waited but she didn't say any more, and after a moment I returned rather feebly to the subject of her daughter.

"I suppose she talks, and—eats, and everything."

"Oh, yes." She looked at me absently. "Listen, Nick; let me tell you what I said when she was born. Would you like to hear?"

"Very much."

"It'll show you how I've gotten to feel about—things. Well, she was less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. 'All right,' I said, 'I'm glad it's a girl. And I hope she'll be a fool—that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool."

"You see I think everything's terrible anyhow," she went on in a convinced way. "Everybody thinks so—the most advanced people. And I know. I've been everywhere and seen everything and done everything." Her eyes flashed around her in a defiant way, rather like Tom's, and she laughed with thrilling scorn. "Sophisticated—God, I'm sophisticated!"

The instant her voice broke off, ceasing to compel my attention, my belief, I felt the basic insincerity of what she had said. It made me uneasy, as though the whole evening had been a trick of some sort to exact a contributory emotion from me. I waited, and sure enough, in a moment she looked at me with an absolute smirk on her lovely face as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged.

Inside, the crimson room bloomed with light. Tom and Miss Baker sat at either end of the long couch and she read aloud to him from the "Saturday Evening Post"—the words, murmurous and uninflected, running together in a soothing tune. The lamp-light, bright on his boots and dull on the autumn-leaf yellow of her hair, glinted along the paper as she turned a page with a flutter of slender muscles in her arms.

When we came in she held us silent for a moment with a lifted hand.

"To be continued," she said, tossing the magazine on the table, "in our very next issue."

Her body asserted itself with a restless movement of her knee, and she stood up.

"Ten o'clock," she remarked, apparently finding the time on the ceiling. "Time for this good girl to go to bed."

"Jordan's going to play in the tournament tomorrow," explained Daisy, "over at Westchester."

"Oh,—you're Jordan Baker."

I knew now why her face was familiar—its pleasing contemptuous expression had looked out at me from many rotogravure pictures of the sporting life at Asheville and Hot Springs and Palm Beach. I had heard some story of her too, a critical, unpleasant story, but what it was I had forgotten long ago.

"Good night," she said softly. "Wake me at eight, won't you."

"If you'll get up."

"I will. Good night, Mr. Carraway. See you anon."

"Of course you will," confirmed Daisy. "In fact I think I'll arrange a marriage. Come over often, Nick, and I'll sort of—oh—fling you together. You know—lock you up accidentally in linen closets and push you out to sea in a boat, and all that sort of thing—"

"Good night," called Miss Baker from the stairs. "I haven't heard a word."

"She's a nice girl," said Tom after a moment. "They oughtn't to let her run around the country this way."

"Who oughtn't to?" inquired Daisy coldly.

"Her family."

"Her family is one aunt about a thousand years old. Besides, Nick's going to look after her, aren't you, Nick? She's going to spend lots of week-ends out here this summer. I think the home influence will be very good for her."

Daisy and Tom looked at each other for a moment in silence.

"Is she from New York?" I asked quickly.

"From Louisville. Our white girlhood was passed together there. Our beautiful white—"

"Did you give Nick a little heart to heart talk on the veranda?" demanded Tom suddenly.

"Did I?" She looked at me. "I can't seem to remember, but I think we talked about the Nordic race. Yes, I'm sure we did. It sort of crept up on us and first thing you know—"

"Don't believe everything you hear, Nick," he advised me.

I said lightly that I had heard nothing at all, and a few minutes later I got up to go home. They came to the door with me and stood side by side in a cheerful square of light. As I started my motor Daisy peremptorily called "Wait!

"I forgot to ask you something, and it's important. We heard you were engaged to a girl out West."

"That's right," corroborated Tom kindly. "We heard that you were engaged."

"It's libel. I'm too poor."

"But we heard it," insisted Daisy, surprising me by opening up again in a flower-like way. "We heard it from three people so it must be true."

Of course I knew what they were referring to, but I wasn't even vaguely engaged. The fact that gossip had published the banns was one of the reasons I had come east. You can't stop going with an old friend on account of rumors and on the other hand I had no intention of being rumored into marriage.

Their interest rather touched me and made them less remotely rich—nevertheless, I was confused and a little disgusted as I drove away. It seemed to me that the thing for Daisy to do was to rush out of the house, child in arms—but apparently there were no such intentions in her head. As for Tom, the fact that he "had some woman in New York" was really less surprising than that he had been depressed by a book. Something was making him nibble at the edge of stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his peremptory heart.

Already it was deep summer on roadhouse roofs and in front of wayside garages, where new red gas-pumps sat out in pools of light, and when I reached my estate at West Egg I ran the car under its shed and sat for a while on an abandoned grass roller in the yard. The wind had blown off, leaving a loud bright night with wings beating in the trees and a persistent organ sound as the full bellows of the earth blew the frogs full of life. The silhouette of a moving cat wavered across the moonlight and turning my head to watch it I saw that I was not alone—fifty feet away a figure had emerged from the shadow of my neighbor's mansion and was standing with his hands in his pockets regarding the silver pepper of the stars. Something in his leisurely movements and the secure position of his feet upon the lawn suggested that it was Mr. Gatsby himself, come out to determine what share was his of our local heavens.

I decided to call to him. Miss Baker had mentioned him at dinner, and that would do for an introduction. But I didn't call to him for he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone—he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and far as I was from him I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock. When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness.

Chapter 2

About half way between West Egg and New York the motor-road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud which screens their obscure operations from your sight.

But above the grey land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic—their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose. Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness or forgot them and moved away. But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days under sun and rain, brood on over the solemn dumping ground.

The valley of ashes is bounded on one side by a small foul river, and when the drawbridge is up to let barges through, the passengers on waiting trains can stare at the dismal scene for as long as half an hour. There is always a halt there of at least a minute and it was because of this that I first met Tom Buchanan's mistress.

The fact that he had one was insisted upon wherever he was known. His acquaintances resented the fact that he turned up in popular restaurants with her and, leaving her at a table, sauntered about, chatting with whomsoever he knew. Though I was curious to see her I had no desire to meet her—but I did. I went up to New York with Tom on the train one afternoon and when we stopped by the ashheaps he jumped to his feet and taking hold of my elbow literally forced me from the car.

"We're getting off!" he insisted. "I want you to meet my girl."

I think he'd tanked up a good deal at luncheon and his determination to have my company bordered on violence. The supercilious assumption was that on Sunday afternoon I had nothing better to do.

I followed him over a low white-washed railroad fence and we walked back a hundred yards along the road under Doctor Eckleburg's persistent stare. The only building in sight was a small block of yellow brick sitting on the edge of the waste land, a sort of compact Main Street ministering to it and contiguous to absolutely nothing. One of the three shops it contained was for rent and another was an all-night restaurant approached by a trail of ashes; the third was a garage—Repairs. GEORGE B. WILSON. Cars Bought and Sold—and I followed Tom inside.

The interior was unprosperous and bare; the only car visible was the dust-covered wreck of a Ford which crouched in a dim corner. It had occurred to me that this shadow of a garage must be a blind and that sumptuous and romantic apartments were concealed overhead when the proprietor himself appeared in the door of an office, wiping his hands on a piece of waste. He was a blonde, spiritless man, anaemic, and faintly handsome. When he saw us a damp gleam of hope sprang into his light blue eyes.

"Hello, Wilson, old man," said Tom, slapping him jovially on the shoulder. "How's business?"

"I can't complain," answered Wilson unconvincingly. "When are you going to sell me that car?"

"Next week; I've got my man working on it now."

"Works pretty slow, don't he?"

"No, he doesn't," said Tom coldly. "And if you feel that way about it, maybe I'd better sell it somewhere else after all."

"I don't mean that," explained Wilson quickly. "I just meant—"

His voice faded off and Tom glanced impatiently around the garage. Then I heard footsteps on a stairs and in a moment the thickish figure of a woman blocked out the light from the office door. She was in the middle thirties, and faintly stout, but she carried her surplus flesh sensuously as some women can. Her face, above a spotted dress of dark blue crepe-de-chine, contained no facet or gleam of beauty but there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smouldering. She smiled slowly and walking through her husband as if he were a ghost shook hands with Tom, looking him flush in the eye. Then she wet her lips and without turning around spoke to her husband in a soft, coarse voice:

"Get some chairs, why don't you, so somebody can sit down."

"Oh, sure," agreed Wilson hurriedly and went toward the little office, mingling immediately with the cement color of the walls. A white ashen dust veiled his dark suit and his pale hair as it veiled everything in the vicinity—except his wife, who moved close to Tom.

"I want to see you," said Tom intently. "Get on the next train."

"All right."

"I'll meet you by the news-stand on the lower level."

She nodded and moved away from him just as George Wilson emerged with two chairs from his office door.

We waited for her down the road and out of sight. It was a few days before the Fourth of July, and a grey, scrawny Italian child was setting torpedoes in a row along the railroad track.

"Terrible place, isn't it," said Tom, exchanging a frown with Doctor Eckleburg.

"Awful."

"It does her good to get away."

"Doesn't her husband object?"

"Wilson? He thinks she goes to see her sister in New York. He's so dumb he doesn't know he's alive."

So Tom Buchanan and his girl and I went up together to New York—or not quite together, for Mrs. Wilson sat discreetly in another car. Tom deferred that much to the sensibilities of those East Eggers who might be on the train.

She had changed her dress to a brown figured muslin which stretched tight over her rather wide hips as Tom helped her to the platform in New York. At the news-stand she bought a copy of "Town Tattle" and a moving-picture magazine and, in the station drug store, some cold cream and a small flask of perfume. Upstairs, in the solemn echoing drive she let four taxi cabs drive away before she selected a new one, lavender-colored with grey upholstery, and in this we slid out from the mass of the station into the glowing sunshine. But immediately she turned sharply from the window and leaning forward tapped on the front glass.

"I want to get one of those dogs," she said earnestly. "I want to get one for the apartment. They're nice to have—a dog."

We backed up to a grey old man who bore an absurd resemblance to John D. Rockefeller. In a basket, swung from his neck, cowered a dozen very recent puppies of an indeterminate breed.

"What kind are they?" asked Mrs. Wilson eagerly as he came to the taxi-window.

"All kinds. What kind do you want, lady?"

"I'd like to get one of those police dogs; I don't suppose you got that kind?"

The man peered doubtfully into the basket, plunged in his hand and drew one up, wriggling, by the back of the neck.

"That's no police dog," said Tom.

"No, it's not exactly a police dog," said the man with disappointment in his voice. "It's more of an airedale." He passed his hand over the brown wash-rag of a back. "Look at that coat. Some coat. That's a dog that'll never bother you with catching cold."

"I think it's cute," said Mrs. Wilson enthusiastically. "How much is it?"

"That dog?" He looked at it admiringly. "That dog will cost you ten dollars."

The airedale—undoubtedly there was an airedale concerned in it somewhere though its feet were startlingly white—changed hands and settled down into Mrs. Wilson's lap, where she fondled the weather-proof coat with rapture.

"Is it a boy or a girl?" she asked delicately.

"That dog? That dog's a boy."

"It's a bitch," said Tom decisively. "Here's your money. Go and buy ten more dogs with it."

We drove over to Fifth Avenue, so warm and soft, almost pastoral, on the summer Sunday afternoon that I wouldn't have been surprised to see a great flock of white sheep turn the corner.

"Hold on," I said, "I have to leave you here."

"No, you don't," interposed Tom quickly. "Myrtle'll be hurt if you don't come up to the apartment. Won't you, Myrtle?"

"Come on," she urged. "I'll telephone my sister Catherine. She's said to be very beautiful by people who ought to know."

"Well, I'd like to, but—"

We went on, cutting back again over the Park toward the West Hundreds. At 158th Street the cab stopped at one slice in a long white cake of apartment houses. Throwing a regal homecoming glance around the neighborhood, Mrs. Wilson gathered up her dog and her other purchases and went haughtily in.

"I'm going to have the McKees come up," she announced as we rose in the elevator. "And of course I got to call up my sister, too."

The apartment was on the top floor—a small living room, a small dining room, a small bedroom and a bath. The living room was crowded to the doors with a set of tapestried furniture entirely too large for it so that to move about was to stumble continually over scenes of ladies swinging in the gardens of Versailles. The only picture was an over-enlarged photograph, apparently a hen sitting on a blurred rock. Looked at from a distance however the hen resolved itself into a bonnet and the countenance of a stout old lady beamed down into the room. Several old copies of "Town Tattle" lay on the table together with a copy of "Simon Called Peter" and some of the small scandal magazines of Broadway. Mrs. Wilson was first concerned with the dog. A reluctant elevator boy went for a box full of straw and some milk to which he added on his own initiative a tin of large hard dog biscuits—one of which decomposed apathetically in the saucer of milk all afternoon. Meanwhile Tom brought out a bottle of whiskey from a locked bureau door.

I have been drunk just twice in my life and the second time was that afternoon so everything that happened has a dim hazy cast over it although until after eight o'clock the apartment was full of cheerful sun. Sitting on Tom's lap Mrs. Wilson called up several people on the telephone; then there were no cigarettes and I went out to buy some at the drug store on the corner. When I came back they had disappeared so I sat down discreetly in the living room and read a chapter of "Simon Called Peter"—either it was terrible stuff or the whiskey distorted things because it didn't make any sense to me.

Just as Tom and Myrtle—after the first drink Mrs. Wilson and I called each other by our first names—reappeared, company commenced to arrive at the apartment door.

The sister, Catherine, was a slender, worldly girl of about thirty with a solid sticky bob of red hair and a complexion powdered milky white. Her eyebrows had been plucked and then drawn on again at a more rakish angle but the efforts of nature toward the restoration of the old alignment gave a blurred air to her face. When she moved about there was an incessant clicking as innumerable pottery bracelets jingled up and down upon her arms. She came in with such a proprietary haste and looked around so possessively at the furniture that I wondered if she lived here. But when I asked her she laughed immoderately, repeated my question aloud and told me she lived with a girl friend at a hotel.

Mr. McKee was a pale feminine man from the flat below. He had just shaved for there was a white spot of lather on his cheekbone and he was most respectful in his greeting to everyone in the room. He informed me that he was in the "artistic game" and I gathered later that he was a photographer and had made the dim enlargement of Mrs. Wilson's mother which hovered like an ectoplasm on the wall. His wife was shrill, languid, handsome and horrible. She told me with pride that her husband had photographed her a hundred and twenty-seven times since they had been married.

Mrs. Wilson had changed her costume some time before and was now attired in an elaborate afternoon dress of cream colored chiffon, which gave out a continual rustle as she swept about the room. With the influence of the dress her personality had also undergone a change. The intense vitality that had been so remarkable in the garage was converted into impressive hauteur. Her laughter, her gestures, her assertions became more violently affected moment by moment and as she expanded the room grew smaller around her until she seemed to be revolving on a noisy, creaking pivot through the smoky air.

"My dear," she told her sister in a high mincing shout, "most of these fellas will cheat you every time. All they think of is money. I had a woman up here last week to look at my feet and when she gave me the bill you'd of thought she had my appendicitus out."

"What was the name of the woman?" asked Mrs. McKee.

"Mrs. Eberhardt. She goes around looking at people's feet in their own homes."

"I like your dress," remarked Mrs. McKee, "I think it's adorable."

Mrs. Wilson rejected the compliment by raising her eyebrow in disdain.

"It's just a crazy old thing," she said. "I just slip it on sometimes when I don't care what I look like."

"But it looks wonderful on you, if you know what I mean," pursued Mrs. McKee. "If Chester could only get you in that pose I think he could make something of it."

We all looked in silence at Mrs. Wilson who removed a strand of hair from over her eyes and looked back at us with a brilliant smile. Mr. McKee regarded her intently with his head on one side and then moved his hand back and forth slowly in front of his face.

"I should change the light," he said after a moment. "I'd like to bring out the modelling of the features. And I'd try to get hold of all the back hair."

"I wouldn't think of changing the light," cried Mrs. McKee. "I think it's—"

Her husband said "Sh! " and we all looked at the subject again whereupon Tom Buchanan yawned audibly and got to his feet.

"You McKees have something to drink," he said. "Get some more ice and mineral water, Myrtle, before everybody goes to sleep."

"I told that boy about the ice." Myrtle raised her eyebrows in despair at the shiftlessness of the lower orders. "These people! You have to keep after them all the time."

She looked at me and laughed pointlessly. Then she flounced over to the dog, kissed it with ecstasy and swept into the kitchen, implying that a dozen chefs awaited her orders there.

"I've done some nice things out on Long Island," asserted Mr. McKee.

Tom looked at him blankly.

"Two of them we have framed downstairs."

"Two what? demanded Tom.

"Two studies. One of them I call 'Montauk Point—the Gulls,' and the other I call 'Montauk Point—the Sea.' "

The sister Catherine sat down beside me on the couch.

"Do you live down on Long Island, too?" she inquired.

"I live at West Egg."

"Really? I was down there at a party about a month ago. At a man named Gatsby's. Do you know him?"

"I live next door to him."

"Well, they say he's a nephew or a cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm's. That's where all his money comes from."

"Really?"

She nodded.

"I'm scared of him. I'd hate to have him get anything on me."

This absorbing information about my neighbor was interrupted by Mrs. McKee's pointing suddenly at Catherine:

"Chester, I think you could do something with her," she broke out, but Mr. McKee only nodded in a bored way and turned his attention to Tom.

"I'd like to do more work on Long Island if I could get the entry. All I ask is that they should give me a start."

"Ask Myrtle," said Tom, breaking into a short shout of laughter as Mrs. Wilson entered with a tray. "She'll give you a letter of introduction, won't you, Myrtle?"

"Do what?" she asked, startled.

"You'll give McKee a letter of introduction to your husband, so he can do some studies of him." His lips moved silently for a moment as he invented. " 'George B. Wilson at the Gasoline Pump,' or something like that."

Catherine leaned close to me and whispered in my ear: "Neither of them can stand the person they're married to."

"Can't they?"

"Can't stand them." She looked at Myrtle and then at Tom. "What I say is, why go on living with them if they can't stand them? If I was them I'd get a divorce and get married to each other right away."

"Doesn't she like Wilson either?"

The answer to this was unexpected. It came from Myrtle who had overheard the question and it was violent and obscene.

"You see?" cried Catherine triumphantly. She lowered her voice again. "It's really his wife that's keeping them apart. She's a Catholic and they don't believe in divorce."

Daisy was not a Catholic and I was a little shocked at the elaborateness of the lie.

"When they do get married," continued Catherine, "they're going west to live for a while until it blows over."

"It'd be more discreet to go to Europe."

"Oh, do you like Europe?" she exclaimed surprisingly. "I just got back from Monte Carlo."

"Really."

"Just last year. I went over there with another girl."

"Stay long?"

"No, we just went to Monte Carlo and back. We went by way of Marseilles. We had over twelve hundred dollars when we started but we got gypped out of it all in two days in the private rooms. We had an awful time getting back, I can tell you. God, how I hated that town!"

The late afternoon sky bloomed in the window for a moment like the blue honey of the Mediterranean—then the shrill voice of Mrs. McKee called me back into the room.

"I almost made a mistake, too," she declared vigorously. "I almost married a little kyke who'd been after me for years. I knew he was below me. Everybody kept saying to me: 'Lucille, that man's way below you!' But if I hadn't met Chester, he'd of got me sure."

"Yes, but listen," said Myrtle Wilson, nodding her head up and down, "at least you didn't marry him."

"I know I didn't."

"Well, I married him," said Myrtle, ambiguously. "And that's the difference between your case and mine."

"Why did you, Myrtle?" demanded Catherine. "Nobody forced you to."

Myrtle considered.

"I married him because I thought he was a gentleman," she said finally. "I thought he knew something about breeding, but he wasn't fit to lick my shoe."

"You were crazy about him for a while," said Catherine.

"Crazy about him!" cried Myrtle incredulously. "Who said I was crazy about him? I never was any more crazy about him than I was about that man there."

She pointed suddenly at me, and every one looked at me accusingly. I tried to show by my expression that I had played no part in her past.

"The only crazy I was was when I married him. I knew right away I made a mistake. He borrowed somebody's best suit to get married in and never even told me about it, and the man came after it one day when he was out. She looked around to see who was listening: "'Oh, is that your suit?' I said. 'This is the first I ever heard about it.' But I gave it to him and then I lay down and cried to beat the band all afternoon."

"She really ought to get away from him," resumed Catherine to me. "They've been living over that garage for eleven years. And Tom's the first sweetie she ever had.

The bottle of whiskey—a second one—was now in constant demand by all present, excepting Catherine who "felt just as good on nothing at all." Tom rang for the janitor and sent him for some celebrated sandwiches, which were a complete supper in themselves. I wanted to get out and walk eastward toward the park through the soft twilight but each time I tried to go I became entangled in some wild strident argument which pulled me back, as if with ropes, into my chair. Yet high over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening streets, and I was him too, looking up and wondering. I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.

Myrtle pulled her chair close to mine, and suddenly her warm breath poured over me the story of her first meeting with Tom.

"It was on the two little seats facing each other that are always the last ones left on the train. I was going up to New York to see my sister and spend the night. He had on a dress suit and patent leather shoes and I couldn't keep my eyes off him but every time he looked at me I had to pretend to be looking at the advertisement over his head. When we came into the station he was next to me and his white shirt-front pressed against my arm—and so I told him I'd have to call a policeman, but he knew I lied. I was so excited that when I got into a taxi with him I didn't hardly know I wasn't getting into a subway train. All I kept thinking about, over and over, was 'You can't live forever, you can't live forever.' "

She turned to Mrs. McKee and the room rang full of her artificial laughter.

"My dear," she cried, "I'm going to give you this dress as soon as I'm through with it. I've got to get another one tomorrow. I'm going to make a list of all the things I've got to get. A massage and a wave and a collar for the dog and one of those cute little ash-trays where you touch a spring, and a wreath with a black silk bow for mother's grave that'll last all summer. I got to write down a list so I won't forget all the things I got to do."

It was nine o'clock—almost immediately afterward I looked at my watch and found it was ten. Mr. McKee was asleep on a chair with his fists clenched in his lap, like a photograph of a man of action. Taking out my handkerchief I wiped from his cheek the remains of the spot of dried lather that had worried me all the afternoon.

The little dog was sitting on the table looking with blind eyes through the smoke and from time to time groaning faintly. People disappeared, reappeared, made plans to go somewhere, and then lost each other, searched for each other, found each other a few feet away. Some time toward midnight Tom Buchanan and Mrs. Wilson stood face to face discussing in impassioned voices whether Mrs. Wilson had any right to mention Daisy's name.

"Daisy! Daisy! Daisy!" shouted Mrs. Wilson. "I'll say it whenever I want to! Daisy! Dai—"

Making a short deft movement Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand.

Then there were bloody towels upon the bathroom floor, and women's voices scolding, and high over the confusion a long broken wail of pain. Mr. McKee awoke from his doze and started in a daze toward the door. When he had gone half way he turned around and stared at the scene—his wife and Catherine scolding and consoling as they stumbled here and there among the crowded furniture with articles of aid, and the despairing figure on the couch bleeding fluently and trying to spread a copy of "Town Tattle" over the tapestry scenes of Versailles. Then Mr. McKee turned and continued on out the door. Taking my hat from the chandelier I followed.

"Come to lunch some day," he suggested, as we groaned down in the elevator.

"Where?"

"Anywhere."

"Keep your hands off the lever," snapped the elevator boy.

"I beg your pardon," said Mr. McKee with dignity, "I didn't know I was touching it."

"All right," I agreed, "I'll be glad to."

...I was standing beside his bed and he was sitting up between the sheets, clad in his underwear, with a great portfolio in his hands.

"Beauty and the Beast...Loneliness...Old Grocery Horse ...Brook'n Bridge..."

Then I was lying half asleep in the cold lower level of the Pennsylvania Station, staring at the morning "Tribune" and waiting for the four o'clock train.

Chapter 3

There was music from my neighbor's house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motor-boats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam. On week-ends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city, between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants including an extra gardener toiled all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers and garden-shears, repairing the ravages of the night before.

Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer in New York—every Monday these same oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves. There was a machine in the kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour, if a little button was pressed two hundred times by a butler's thumb.

At least once a fortnight a corps of caterers came down with several hundred feet of canvas and enough colored lights to make a Christmas tree of Gatsby's enormous garden. On buffet tables, garnished with glistening hors-d'oeuvre, spiced baked hams crowded against salads of harlequin designs and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark gold. In the main hall a bar with a real brass rail was set up, and stocked with gins and liquors and with cordials so long forgotten that most of his female guests were too young to know one from another.

By seven o'clock the orchestra has arrived—no thin five-piece affair but a whole pitful of oboes and trombones and saxophones and viols and cornets and piccolos and low and high drums. The last swimmers have come in from the beach now and are dressing upstairs; the cars from New York are parked five deep in the drive, and already the halls and salons and verandas are gaudy with primary colors and hair shorn in strange new ways and shawls beyond the dreams of Castile. The bar is in full swing and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside until the air is alive with chatter and laughter and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other's names.

The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun and now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music and the opera of voices pitches a key higher. Laughter is easier, minute by minute, spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word. The groups change more swiftly, swell with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the same breath—already there are wanderers, confident girls who weave here and there among the stouter and more stable, become for a sharp, joyous moment the center of a group and then excited with triumph glide on through the sea-change of faces and voices and color under the constantly changing light.

Suddenly one of these gypsies in trembling opal, seizes a cocktail out of the air, dumps it down for courage and moving her hands like Frisco dances out alone on the canvas platform. A momentary hush; the orchestra leader varies his rhythm obligingly for her and there is a burst of chatter as the erroneous news goes around that she is Gilda Gray's understudy from the "Follies." The party has begun.

I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby's house I was one of the few guests who had actually been invited. People were not invited—they went there. They got into automobiles which bore them out to Long Island and somehow they ended up at Gatsby's door. Once there they were introduced by somebody who knew Gatsby and after that they conducted themselves according to the rules of behavior associated with amusement parks. Sometimes they came and went without having met Gatsby at all, came for the party with a simplicity of heart that was its own ticket of admission.

I had been actually invited. A chauffeur in a uniform of robin's egg blue crossed my lawn early that Saturday morning with a surprisingly formal note from his employer—the honor would be entirely Gatsby's, it said, if I would attend his "little party" that night. He had seen me several times and had intended to call on me long before but a peculiar combination of circumstances had prevented it—signed Jay Gatsby in a majestic hand.

Dressed up in white flannels I went over to his lawn a little after seven and wandered around rather ill-at-ease among swirls and eddies of people I didn't know—though here and there was a face I had noticed on the commuting train. I was immediately struck by the number of young Englishmen dotted about; all well dressed, all looking a little hungry and all talking in low earnest voices to solid and prosperous Americans. I was sure that they were selling something: bonds or insurance or automobiles. They were, at least, agonizingly aware of the easy money in the vicinity and convinced that it was theirs for a few words in the right key.

As soon as I arrived I made an attempt to find my host but the two or three people of whom I asked his whereabouts stared at me in such an amazed way and denied so vehemently any knowledge of his movements that I slunk off in the direction of the cocktail table—the only place in the garden where a single man could linger without looking purposeless and alone.

I was on my way to get roaring drunk from sheer embarrassment when Jordan Baker came out of the house and stood at the head of the marble steps, leaning a little backward and looking with contemptuous interest down into the garden.

Welcome or not, I found it necessary to attach myself to someone before I should begin to address cordial remarks to the passers-by.

"Hello!" I roared, advancing toward her. My voice seemed unnaturally loud across the garden.

"I thought you might be here," she responded absently as I came up. "I remembered you lived next door to—"

She held my hand impersonally, as a promise that she'd take care of me in a minute, and gave ear to two girls in twin yellow dresses who stopped at the foot of the steps.

"Hello!" they cried together. "Sorry you didn't win."

That was for the golf tournament. She had lost in the finals the week before.

"You don't know who we are," said one of the girls in yellow, "but we met you here about a month ago."

"You've dyed your hair since then," remarked Jordan, and I started but the girls had moved casually on and her remark was addressed to the premature moon, produced like the supper, no doubt, out of a caterer's basket. With Jordan's slender golden arm resting in mine we descended the steps and sauntered about the garden. A tray of cocktails floated at us through the twilight and we sat down at a table with the two girls in yellow and three men, each one introduced to us as Mr. Mumble.

"Do you come to these parties often?" inquired Jordan of the girl beside her.

"The last one was the one I met you at," answered the girl, in an alert, confident voice. She turned to her companion: "Wasn't it for you, Lucille?"

It was for Lucille, too.

"I like to come," Lucille said. "I never care what I do, so I always have a good time. When I was here last I tore my gown on a chair, and he asked me my name and address—inside of a week I got a package from Croirier's with a new evening gown in it."

"Did you keep it?" asked Jordan.

"Sure I did. I was going to wear it tonight, but it was too big in the bust and had to be altered. It was gas blue with lavender beads. Two hundred and sixty-five dollars."

"There's something funny about a fellow that'll do a thing like that," said the other girl eagerly. "He doesn't want any trouble with anybody."

"Who doesn't?" I inquired.

"Gatsby. Somebody told me—"

The two girls and Jordan leaned together confidentially.

"Somebody told me they thought he killed a man once."

A thrill passed over all of us. The three Mr. Mumbles bent forward and listened eagerly.

"I don't think it's so much that," argued Lucille skeptically; "it's more that he was a German spy during the war."

One of the men nodded in confirmation.

"I heard that from a man who knew all about him, grew up with him in Germany," he assured us positively.

"Oh, no," said the first girl, "it couldn't be that, because he was in the American army during the war." As our credulity switched back to her she leaned forward with enthusiasm. "You look at him sometimes when he thinks nobody's looking at him. I'll bet he killed a man."

She narrowed her eyes and shivered. Lucille shivered. We all turned and looked around for Gatsby. It was testimony to the romantic speculation he inspired that there were whispers about him from those who found little that it was necessary to whisper about in this world.

The first supper—there would be another one after midnight—was now being served, and Jordan invited me to join her own party who were spread around a table on the other side of the garden. There were three married couples and Jordan's escort, a persistent undergraduate given to violent innuendo and obviously under the impression that sooner or later Jordan was going to yield him up her person to a greater or lesser degree. Instead of rambling this party had preserved a dignified homogeneity, and assumed to itself the function of representing the staid nobility of the countryside—East Egg condescending to West Egg, and carefully on guard against its spectroscopic gayety.

"Let's get out," whispered Jordan, after a somehow wasteful and inappropriate half hour. "This is much too polite for me."

We got up, and she explained that we were going to find the host—I had never met him, she said, and it was making me uneasy. The undergraduate nodded in a cynical, melancholy way.

The bar, where we glanced first, was crowded but Gatsby was not there. She couldn't find him from the top of the steps, and he wasn't on the veranda. On a chance we tried an important-looking door, and walked into a high Gothic library, panelled with carved English oak, and probably transported complete from some ruin overseas.

A stout, middle-aged man with enormous owl-eyed spectacles was sitting somewhat drunk on the edge of a great table, staring with unsteady concentration at the shelves of books. As we entered he wheeled excitedly around and examined Jordan from head to foot.

"What do you think?" he demanded impetuously.

"About what?"

He waved his hand toward the book-shelves.

"About that. As a matter of fact you needn't bother to ascertain. I ascertained. They're real."

"The books?"

He nodded.

"Absolutely real—have pages and everything. I thought they'd be a nice durable cardboard. Matter of fact, they're absolutely real. Pages and—Here! Lemme show you."

Taking our skepticism for granted, he rushed to the bookcases and returned with Volume One of the "Stoddard Lectures."

"See!" he cried triumphantly. "It's a bona fide piece of printed matter. It fooled me. This fella's a regular Belasco. It's a triumph. What thoroughness! What realism! Knew when to stop too—didn't cut the pages. But what do you want? What do you expect?"

He snatched the book from me and replaced it hastily on its shelf muttering that if one brick was removed the whole library was liable to collapse.

"Who brought you?" he demanded. "Or did you just come? I was brought. Most people were brought."

Jordan looked at him alertly, cheerfully without answering.

"I was brought by a woman named Roosevelt," he continued. "Mrs. Claud Roosevelt. Do you know her? I met her somewhere last night. I've been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library."

"Has it?"

"A little bit, I think. I can't tell yet. I've only been here an hour. Did I tell you about the books? They're real. They're—"

"You told us."

We shook hands with him gravely and went back outdoors.

There was dancing now on the canvas in the garden, old men pushing young girls backward in eternal graceless circles, superior couples holding each other tortuously, fashionably and keeping in the corners—and a great number of single girls dancing individualistically or relieving the orchestra for a moment of the burden of the banjo or the traps. By midnight the hilarity had increased. A celebrated tenor had sung in Italian and a notorious contralto had sung in jazz and between the numbers people were doing "stunts" all over the garden, while happy vacuous bursts of laughter rose toward the summer sky. A pair of stage "twins"—who turned out to be the girls in yellow—did a baby act in costume and champagne was served in glasses bigger than finger bowls. The moon had risen higher, and floating in the Sound was a triangle of silver scales, trembling a little to the stiff, tinny drip of the banjoes on the lawn.

I was still with Jordan Baker. We were sitting at a table with a man of about my age and a rowdy little girl who gave way upon the slightest provocation to uncontrollable laughter. I was enjoying myself now. I had taken two finger bowls of champagne and the scene had changed before my eyes into something significant, elemental and profound.

At a lull in the entertainment the man looked at me and smiled.

"Your face is familiar," he said, politely. "Weren't you in the Third Division during the war?"

"Why, yes. I was in the Ninth Machine-Gun Battalion."

"I was in the Seventh Infantry until June nineteen-eighteen. I knew I'd seen you somewhere before."

We talked for a moment about some wet, grey little villages in France. Evidently he lived in this vicinity for he told me that he had just bought a hydroplane and was going to try it out in the morning.

"Want to go with me, old sport? Just near the shore along the Sound."

"What time?"

"Any time that suits you best."

It was on the tip of my tongue to ask his name when Jordan looked around and smiled.

"Having a gay time now?" she inquired.

"Much better." I turned again to my new acquaintance. "This is an unusual party for me. I haven't even seen the host. I live over there—" I waved my hand at the invisible hedge in the distance, "and this man Gatsby sent over his chauffeur with an invitation."

For a moment he looked at me as if he failed to understand.

"I'm Gatsby," he said suddenly.

"What!" I exclaimed. "Oh, I beg your pardon."

"I thought you knew, old sport. I'm afraid I'm not a very good host."

He smiled understandingly—much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced—or seemed to face—the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey. Precisely at that point it vanished—and I was looking at an elegant young rough-neck, a year or two over thirty, whose elaborate formality of speech just missed being absurd. Some time before he introduced himself I'd got a strong impression that he was picking his words with care.

Almost at the moment when Mr. Gatsby identified himself a butler hurried toward him with the information that Chicago was calling him on the wire. He excused himself with a small bow that included each of us in turn.

"If you want anything just ask for it, old sport," he urged me. "Excuse me. I will rejoin you later."

When he was gone I turned immediately to Jordan—constrained to assure her of my surprise. I had expected that Mr. Gatsby would be a florid and corpulent person in his middle years.

"Who is he?" I demanded. "Do you know?"

"He's just a man named Gatsby."

"Where is he from, I mean? And what does he do?"

"Now you're started on the subject," she answered with a wan smile. "Well,—he told me once he was an Oxford man."

A dim background started to take shape behind him but at her next remark it faded away.

"However, I don't believe it."

"Why not?"

"I don't know," she insisted, "I just don't think he went there."

Something in her tone reminded me of the other girl's "I think he killed a man," and had the effect of stimulating my curiosity. I would have accepted without question the information that Gatsby sprang from the swamps of Louisiana or from the lower East Side of New York. That was comprehensible. But young men didn't—at least in my provincial inexperience I believed they didn't—drift coolly out of nowhere and buy a palace on Long Island Sound.

"Anyhow he gives large parties," said Jordan, changing the subject with an urbane distaste for the concrete. "And I like large parties. They're so intimate. At small parties there isn't any privacy."

There was the boom of a bass drum, and the voice of the orchestra leader rang out suddenly above the echolalia of the garden.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he cried. "At the request of Mr. Gatsby we are going to play for you Mr. Vladimir Tostoff's latest work which attracted so much attention at Carnegie Hall last May. If you read the papers you know there was a big sensation." He smiled with jovial condescension and added "Some sensation!" whereupon everybody laughed.

"The piece is known," he concluded lustily, "as 'Vladimir Tostoff's Jazz History of the World.' "

The nature of Mr. Tostoff's composition eluded me, because just as it began my eyes fell on Gatsby, standing alone on the marble steps and looking from one group to another with approving eyes. His tanned skin was drawn attractively tight on his face and his short hair looked as though it were trimmed every day. I could see nothing sinister about him. I wondered if the fact that he was not drinking helped to set him off from his guests, for it seemed to me that he grew more correct as the fraternal hilarity increased. When the "Jazz History of the World" was over girls were putting their heads on men's shoulders in a puppyish, convivial way, girls were swooning backward playfully into men's arms, even into groups knowing that some one would arrest their falls—but no one swooned backward on Gatsby and no French bob touched Gatsby's shoulder and no singing quartets were formed with Gatsby's head for one link.

"I beg your pardon."

Gatsby's butler was suddenly standing beside us.

"Miss Baker?" he inquired. "I beg your pardon but Mr. Gatsby would like to speak to you alone."

"With me?" she exclaimed in surprise.

"Yes, madame."

She got up slowly, raising her eyebrows at me in astonishment, and followed the butler toward the house. I noticed that she wore her evening dress, all her dresses, like sports clothes—there was a jauntiness about her movements as if she had first learned to walk upon golf courses on clean, crisp mornings.

I was alone and it was almost two. For some time confused and intriguing sounds had issued from a long many-windowed room which overhung the terrace. Eluding Jordan's undergraduate who was now engaged in an obstetrical conversation with two chorus girls, and who implored me to join him, I went inside.

The large room was full of people. One of the girls in yellow was playing the piano and beside her stood a tall, red haired young lady from a famous chorus, engaged in song. She had drunk a quantity of champagne and during the course of her song she had decided ineptly that everything was very very sad—she was not only singing, she was weeping too. Whenever there was a pause in the song she filled it with gasping broken sobs and then took up the lyric again in a quavering soprano. The tears coursed down her cheeks—not freely, however, for when they came into contact with her heavily beaded eyelashes they assumed an inky color, and pursued the rest of their way in slow black rivulets. A humorous suggestion was made that she sing the notes on her face whereupon she threw up her hands, sank into a chair and went off into a deep vinous sleep.

"She had a fight with a man who says he's her husband," explained a girl at my elbow.

I looked around. Most of the remaining women were now having fights with men said to be their husbands. Even Jordan's party, the quartet from East Egg, were rent asunder by dissension. One of the men was talking with curious intensity to a young actress, and his wife after attempting to laugh at the situation in a dignified and indifferent way broke down entirely and resorted to flank attacks—at intervals she appeared suddenly at his side like an angry diamond, and hissed "You promised!" into his ear.

The reluctance to go home was not confined to wayward men. The hall was at present occupied by two deplorably sober men and their highly indignant wives. The wives were sympathizing with each other in slightly raised voices.

"Whenever he sees I'm having a good time he wants to go home."

"Never heard anything so selfish in my life."

"We're always the first ones to leave."

"So are we."

"Well, we're almost the last tonight," said one of the men sheepishly. "The orchestra left half an hour ago."

In spite of the wives' agreement that such malevolence was beyond credibility, the dispute ended in a short struggle, and both wives were lifted kicking into the night.

As I waited for my hat in the hall the door of the library opened and Jordan Baker and Gatsby came out together. He was saying some last word to her but the eagerness in his manner tightened abruptly into formality as several people approached him to say goodbye.

Jordan's party were calling impatiently to her from the porch but she lingered for a moment to shake hands.

"I've just heard the most amazing thing," she whispered. "How long were we in there?"

"Why,—about an hour."

"It was—simply amazing," she repeated abstractedly. "But I swore I wouldn't tell it and here I am tantalizing you." She yawned gracefully in my face. "Please come and see me...Phone book...Under the name of Mrs. Sigourney Howard...My aunt..." She was hurrying off as she talked—her brown hand waved a jaunty salute as she melted into her party at the door.

Rather ashamed that on my first appearance I had stayed so late, I joined the last of Gatsby's guests who were clustered around him. I wanted to explain that I'd hunted for him early in the evening and to apologize for not having known him in the garden.

"Don't mention it," he enjoined me eagerly. "Don't give it another thought, old sport." The familiar expression held no more familiarity than the hand which reassuringly brushed my shoulder. "And don't forget we're going up in the hydroplane tomorrow morning at nine o'clock."

Then the butler, behind his shoulder:

"Philadelphia wants you on the phone, sir."

"All right, in a minute. Tell them I'll be right there...good night."

"Good night."

"Good night." He smiled—and suddenly there seemed to be a pleasant significance in having been among the last to go, as if he had desired it all the time. "Good night, old sport...Good night."

But as I walked down the steps I saw that the evening was not quite over. Fifty feet from the door a dozen headlights illuminated a bizarre and tumultuous scene. In the ditch beside the road, right side up but violently shorn of one wheel, rested a new coupé which had left Gatsby's drive not two minutes before. The sharp jut of a wall accounted for the detachment of the wheel which was now getting considerable attention from half a dozen curious chauffeurs. However, as they had left their cars blocking the road a harsh discordant din from those in the rear had been audible for some time and added to the already violent confusion of the scene.

A man in a long duster had dismounted from the wreck and now stood in the middle of the road, looking from the car to the tire and from the tire to the observers in a pleasant, puzzled way.

"See!" he explained. "It went in the ditch."

The fact was infinitely astonishing to him—and I recognized first the unusual quality of wonder and then the man—it was the late patron of Gatsby's library.

"How'd it happen?"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"I know nothing whatever about mechanics," he said decisively.

"But how did it happen? Did you run into the wall?"

"Don't ask me," said Owl Eyes, washing his hands of the whole matter. "I know very little about driving—next to nothing. It happened, and that's all I know."

"Well, if you're a poor driver you oughtn't to try driving at night."

"But I wasn't even trying," he explained indignantly, "I wasn't even trying."

An awed hush fell upon the bystanders.

"Do you want to commit suicide?"

"You're lucky it was just a wheel! A bad driver and not even trying!"

"You don't understand," explained the criminal. "I wasn't driving. There's another man in the car."

The shock that followed this declaration found voice in a sustained "Ah-h-h!" as the door of the coupé swung slowly open. The crowd—it was now a crowd—stepped back involuntarily and when the door had opened wide there was a ghostly pause. Then, very gradually, part by part, a pale dangling individual stepped out of the wreck, pawing tentatively at the ground with a large uncertain dancing shoe.

Blinded by the glare of the headlights and confused by the incessant groaning of the horns the apparition stood swaying for a moment before he perceived the man in the duster.

"Wha's matter?" he inquired calmly. "Did we run outa gas?"

"Look!"

Half a dozen fingers pointed at the amputated wheel—he stared at it for a moment and then looked upward as though he suspected that it had dropped from the sky.

"It came off," some one explained.

He nodded.

"At first I din' notice we'd stopped."

A pause. Then, taking a long breath and straightening his shoulders he remarked in a determined voice:

"Wonder'ff tell me where there's a gas'line station?"

At least a dozen men, some of them little better off than he was, explained to him that wheel and car were no longer joined by any physical bond.

"Back out," he suggested after a moment. "Put her in reverse."

"But the wheel's off!"

He hesitated.

"No harm in trying," he said.

The caterwauling horns had reached a crescendo and I turned away and cut across the lawn toward home. I glanced back once. A wafer of a moon was shining over Gatsby's house, making the night fine as before and surviving the laughter and the sound of his still glowing garden. A sudden emptiness seemed to flow now from the windows and the great doors, endowing with complete isolation the figure of the host who stood on the porch, his hand up in a formal gesture of farewell.

Reading over what I have written so far I see I have given the impression that the events of three nights several weeks apart were all that absorbed me. On the contrary they were merely casual events in a crowded summer and, until much later, they absorbed me infinitely less than my personal affairs.

Most of the time I worked. In the early morning the sun threw my shadow westward as I hurried down the white chasms of lower New York to the Probity Trust. I knew the other clerks and young bond-salesmen by their first names and lunched with them in dark crowded restaurants on little pig sausages and mashed potatoes and coffee. I even had a short affair with a girl who lived in Jersey City and worked in the accounting department, but her brother began throwing mean looks in my direction so when she went on her vacation in July I let it blow quietly away.

I took dinner usually at the Yale Club—for some reason it was the gloomiest event of my day—and then I went upstairs to the library and studied investments and securities for a conscientious hour. There were generally a few rioters around but they never came into the library so it was a good place to work. After that, if the night was mellow I strolled down Madison Avenue past the old Murray Hill Hotel and over Thirty-third Street to the Pennsylvania Station.

I began to like New York, the racy, adventurous feel of it at night and the satisfaction that the constant flicker of men and women and machines gives to the restless eye. I liked to walk up Fifth Avenue and pick out romantic women from the crowd and imagine that in a few minutes I was going to enter into their lives, and no one would ever know or disapprove. Sometimes, in my mind, I followed them to their apartments on the corners of hidden streets, and they turned and smiled back at me before they faded through a door into warm darkness. At the enchanted metropolitan twilight I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others—poor young clerks who loitered in front of windows waiting until it was time for a solitary restaurant dinner—young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life.

Again at eight o'clock, when the dark lanes of the Forties were five deep with throbbing taxi cabs, bound for the theatre district, I felt a sinking in my heart. Forms leaned together in the taxis as they waited, and voices sang, and there was laughter from unheard jokes, and lighted cigarettes outlined unintelligible gestures inside. Imagining that I, too, was hurrying toward gayety and sharing their intimate excitement, I wished them well.

For a while I lost sight of Jordan Baker, and then in midsummer I found her again. At first I was flattered to go places with her because she was a golf champion and every one knew her name. Then it was something more. I wasn't actually in love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity. The bored haughty face that she turned to the world concealed something—most affectations conceal something eventually, even though they don't in the beginning—and one day I found what it was. When we were on a house-party together up in Warwick, she left a borrowed car out in the rain with the top down, and then lied about it—and suddenly I remembered the story about her that had eluded me that night at Daisy's. At her first big golf tournament there was a row that nearly reached the newspapers—a suggestion that she had moved her ball from a bad lie in the semi-final round. The thing approached the proportions of a scandal—then died away. A caddy retracted his statement and the only other witness admitted that he might have been mistaken. The incident and the name had remained together in my mind.

Jordan Baker instinctively avoided clever, shrewd men, and now I saw that this was because she felt safer on a plane where any divergence from a code would be thought impossible. She was incurably dishonest. She wasn't able to endure being at a disadvantage, and given this unwillingness, I suppose she had begun dealing in subterfuges when she was very young in order to keep that cool, insolent smile turned to the world and yet satisfy the demands of her hard jaunty body.

It made no difference to me. Dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply—I was casually sorry, and then I forgot. It was on that same house party that we had a curious conversation about driving a car. It started because she passed so close to some workmen that our fender flicked a button on one man's coat.

"You're a rotten driver," I protested. "Either you ought to be more careful or you oughtn't to drive at all."

"I am careful."

"No, you're not."

"Well, other people are," she said lightly.

"What's that got to do with it?"

"They'll keep out of my way," she insisted. "It takes two to make an accident."

"Suppose you met somebody just as careless as yourself."

"I hope I never will," she answered. "I hate careless people. That's why I like you."

Her grey, sun-strained eyes stared straight ahead, but she had deliberately shifted our relations, and for a moment I thought I loved her. But I am slow-thinking and full of interior rules that act as brakes on my desires, and I knew that first I had to get myself definitely out of that tangle back home. I'd been writing letters once a week and signing them: "Love, Nick," and all I could think of was how, when that certain girl played tennis, a faint mustache of perspiration appeared on her upper lip. Nevertheless there was a vague understanding that had to be tactfully broken off before I was free.

Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.

#the great gatsby #long post

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sunjoys · 6 months

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finally started the promised brideshead revisited reread <3 some prelim thoughts :(under the cut bc i got a bit chattier than i was expecting):

i read brideshead for the first time in feb 2022, and i did "annotate" it (scribbled thoughts and notes in pencil along the margins), so i may post the notes i took from that first read during this revisit <3

i love the preface !! (written by waugh abt a decade after it was published) this bit in particular:

its def smth to keep in mind while reading, esp since brideshead is now considered one of The british-country-house novels (part of why saltburn is so compared to brideshead! the director said that brideshead was one of the books in that "genre" that served as reference for saltburn); the note abt the house being a sort of museum nowadays also reminds me of orlando (by woolf, 1928) vs orlando (film adaptation dir. potter, 1992) - a key setting of the story, the great house (an ancestral british home in the countryside, orlandos home) ends differently: in the 20s novel, orlando lives there with her husband. in the 90s movie, the house has been turned into a 'museum', orlando can only visit it from afar. def interesting, the way the british country house changes pre and post ww2!

also "a panegyric preached over an empty coffin" is interesting to keep in mind - waugh approached writing abt nobility w the mindset that it was basically gone - half mourning, half idolising. kinda reminds me of nick carraways approach to gatsby in the great gatsby ;; anyway i think this is interesting bc off the top of my head, most recent media abt the wealthy/nobilty is either satirical/critical or fluffy/idolising with no real teeth to it (rwrb, bridgerton?), or somewhere in between (whatever the fuck was going on in saltburn) ! so yeah this'll be refreshing ig for me ?? idk where im going with this.

also "these ancestral seats which were our chief national artistic achievement" makes me laugh a little when i remember charles, the narrator, becomes a painter, particularly of noble houses. like hmmm there's definitely something of the author in this narrator 🤔

i feel like i should have a third point and i can't think of any. um. oh yeah the prologue! I like how it starts with charles looking back at the military camp as he leaves it, its not a particularly striking first line but it def establishes that, well, charles has a thing abt looking back at places he can't really return to - a thing about revisiting places, you could say [studio audience boos as the drums chime sadly[

it's pretty bleak at the start tho; during my first read i probably wouldn't have gotten past this if i didn't have my pencil w me (the promise of being able to scribble jokes in the margin if it remained boring) (it did not remain boring, btw). ig that'll make the introduction of brideshead more striking?

i am very excited about this reread <3

#2023 jean revisits #<- my tag for this liveblog btw !! mute if u want to avoid spoilers / not b annoyed by me #brideshead revisited #probably won't tag everything w br unless it's like .... interesting #anyway sorry for bringing up saltburn a few times it got me thinking abt why a so unbrideshead story kept getting compared to brideshead #fundamentally brideshead and saltburn are just v different stories with the same initial setup!!!

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letthefairyinyoufly · 7 months

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Questionnaire for book lovers

Tag me!

I'm bored and curios.

Goodreads account?: Favorite genre(s): Favorite book(s): Favorite book series: Favorite classic(s): Favorite Author(s): Favorite quote(s): Favorite adaptation(s) to screen: Favorite character(s): Favorite villain(s): Favorite ship(s): Book boyfriend(s) or girlfriend(s): Book(s) that made you cry: Physical book, eBook or audiobook: Currently reading: Last 5 star read: Book(s) that you wish were more popular: Your old favorites: Your most anticipated book: Favorite audiobook narrator(s): Unpopular opinion:

You can add more questions!

Book recommendations are welcomed.

Tag some fellow book lovers :

my answers ⬇️

Goodreads account?: Yes

Favorite genre(s): Dark Romance, Fantasy Romance, Contemporary Romance

Favorite book(s): A Court of Mist and Fury, Anne of Green Gables, Twisted Games by Ana Huang

Favorite book series: ACOTAR, Anne of Green Gables Series, Millennium series

Favorite classic(s): The Great Gatsby, The Last of the Mohicans (one word UNCAS)

Favorite Author(s): Stieg Larsson, Sarah J. Maas, Anne Rice

Favorite quote(s): “If I offer you the moon on a string, will you give me a kiss, too?” —Lucien Vanserra (ACOTAR)

“It’s easier to bear when you let someone in, let them help you through the grief. So next time, you come to me. For everything, you can come to me. If you’re hurting, I want to hurt. If you’re angry, I’ll rage with you. If you’re happy, I’m euphoric. If you’re so beyond broken that you can’t sort through the rubble, then come to me, baby, so I can piece you back together myself. Hit me, yell at me, kiss me, fuck me, whatever you need to do, my body is yours for the taking.” —Creed (Lethal Truths)

Favorite adaptation(s) to screen: Pride & Prejudice (2005), Sharp Objects HBO, Anne of Green Gables (1985)

Favorite character(s): Lucien Vanserra from ACOTAR, Anne Shirley, Camille Preaker from Sharp Objects (show version is my most beloved fictional character, I think liked book version almost as much???), Creed from Blackwood University Series, Jim Holden from The Expanse, Lisbeth Salander from Millennium series

Favorite villain(s)/antihero(es): Arobynn Hamel from Thorne of Glass, Lestat de Lioncourt from Interview with the Vampire, Creed from Blackwood University Series, Killian Carson from God of Malice

Book boyfriend(s) or girlfriend(s): Creed from Blackwood University Series (I'm in love with him), Atlas Corrigan from It Ends with Us, Rhys Larsen from Twisted Games, Rhysand from ACOTAR, Lucien Vanserra (hopefully he will get his mate)

Favorite ship(s): Feyre/Rhysand from ACOTAR, Bridget/Rhys from Twisted Games, Anne/Gilbert from Anne of Green Gables Series, Elide/Lorcan from TOG, Holden/Naomi from The Expanse

Book(s) that made you cry: The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Leviathan Falls by James S.A. Corey

Physical book, eBook or audiobook: Ebook and audiobook (GraphicAudio)

Currently reading: Kingdom of Ash, You Can't Kiss the Nanny, Brady Banks (Audiobook, narration is so good, I wish more books had dialogue between two narrators)

Last 5 star read: Lethal Truths by Sybil Reese

Book(s) that you wish were more popular: Blackwood University Series by Sybil Reese (it's a Dark Romance and Reverse Harem so yeah😞), I wanna gush over Creed with somebody. He should be sole lead, then maybe book had more readers. It's weird when you have character who is cuddlier version of Zade Meadows and you try shoe horn him into harem when he is obvious choice. Technically he is her main hubby and others are more like sidepieces, hopefully it stays this way. And 2nd book is way better.

You old favorites: Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick (I still love it)

Your most anticipated book: God of Fury by Rina Kent and ACOTAR

Favorite audiobook narrator(s): Aiden Young

Unpopular opinion: I think Chaol is the most rational and relatable character from TOG and I side eye his haters. I have so many unpopular opinions about TOG that I sometimes wish that I have never started reading it.

sorry : @jupiter-86, @dangermousie, @acourtofthought

#books and reading #goodreads #acotar #Haunting Adeline #zade meadows #Questionnaire #Blackwood University Series #rina kent #Lethal Truths #dark romance #fantasy romance #contemporary romance

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