Arrogance. (borrowed)
"He tries to go to life. So does every author except the very worst, but
after all most of them live on predigested food. The incident or
character may be from life, but the writer usually interprets it in
terms of the last book he read. For instance, suppose he meets a sea
captain and thinks he's an original character. The truth is that he sees
the resemblance between the sea captain and the last sea captain Dana
created, or who-ever creates sea captains, and therefore he knows how
to set this sea captain on paper. Dick, of course, can set down any
consciously picturesque, character-like character, but could he
accurately transcribe his own sister?"
~
Behind Maury Noble's attractive indolence, his irrelevance and his easy
mockery, lay a surprising and relentless maturity of purpose. His
intention, as he stated it in college, had been to use three years in
travel, three years in utter leisure--and then to become immensely rich
as quickly as possible.
~
On this note the diary ended. Her eyes wandered up the page, over the
June 8th's of 1912, 1910, 1907. The earliest entry was scrawled in the
plump, bulbous hand of a sixteen-year-old girl--it was the name, Bob
Lamar, and a word she could not decipher. Then she knew what it
was--and, knowing, she found her eyes misty with tears. There in a
graying blur was the record of her first kiss, faded as its intimate
afternoon, on a rainy veranda seven years before. She seemed to remember
something one of them had said that day and yet she could not remember.
Her tears came faster, until she could scarcely see the page. She was
crying, she told herself, because she could remember only the rain and
the wet flowers in the yard and the smell of the damp grass.
~
"Idiot!" he cried, "that from you! Here I sit, young Anthony, as I'll
sit for a generation or more and watch such gay souls as you and Dick
and Gloria Gilbert go past me, dancing and singing and loving and hating
one another and being moved, being eternally moved. And I am moved only
by my lack of emotion. I shall sit and the snow will come--oh, for a
Caramel to take notes--and another winter and I shall be thirty and you
and Dick and Gloria will go on being eternally moved and dancing by me
and singing. But after you've all gone I'll be saying things for new
Dicks to write down, and listening to the disillusions and cynicisms and
emotions of new Anthonys--yes, and talking to new Glorias about the tans
of summers yet to come."
~ F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned.
after all most of them live on predigested food. The incident or
character may be from life, but the writer usually interprets it in
terms of the last book he read. For instance, suppose he meets a sea
captain and thinks he's an original character. The truth is that he sees
the resemblance between the sea captain and the last sea captain Dana
created, or who-ever creates sea captains, and therefore he knows how
to set this sea captain on paper. Dick, of course, can set down any
consciously picturesque, character-like character, but could he
accurately transcribe his own sister?"
~
Behind Maury Noble's attractive indolence, his irrelevance and his easy
mockery, lay a surprising and relentless maturity of purpose. His
intention, as he stated it in college, had been to use three years in
travel, three years in utter leisure--and then to become immensely rich
as quickly as possible.
~
On this note the diary ended. Her eyes wandered up the page, over the
June 8th's of 1912, 1910, 1907. The earliest entry was scrawled in the
plump, bulbous hand of a sixteen-year-old girl--it was the name, Bob
Lamar, and a word she could not decipher. Then she knew what it
was--and, knowing, she found her eyes misty with tears. There in a
graying blur was the record of her first kiss, faded as its intimate
afternoon, on a rainy veranda seven years before. She seemed to remember
something one of them had said that day and yet she could not remember.
Her tears came faster, until she could scarcely see the page. She was
crying, she told herself, because she could remember only the rain and
the wet flowers in the yard and the smell of the damp grass.
~
"Idiot!" he cried, "that from you! Here I sit, young Anthony, as I'll
sit for a generation or more and watch such gay souls as you and Dick
and Gloria Gilbert go past me, dancing and singing and loving and hating
one another and being moved, being eternally moved. And I am moved only
by my lack of emotion. I shall sit and the snow will come--oh, for a
Caramel to take notes--and another winter and I shall be thirty and you
and Dick and Gloria will go on being eternally moved and dancing by me
and singing. But after you've all gone I'll be saying things for new
Dicks to write down, and listening to the disillusions and cynicisms and
emotions of new Anthonys--yes, and talking to new Glorias about the tans
of summers yet to come."
~ F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned.