The Great Gatsby

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past 180

Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder 180

that huge incoherent failure of a house 179

unutterably aware of our identity with this country for one strange hour, before we melted indistinguishably into it again. I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all...subtly unadaptable to Eastern life. 175-6

A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about 161

(the sick and the well) 124

"Her voice is full of money" 120

I was reminded of something—an elusive rhythm, a fragment of lost words...what I had almost remembered was uncommunicable forever.

they were a satisfactory hint of the unreality of reality, a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy's wing. 99

the colossal vitality of his illusion 95

"Then came the war, old sport. It was a great relief, and I tried very hard to die 66

sprang from him Platonic conception of himself 98

"And I like large parties. They're so intimate" 49

It's a bona-fide piece of printed matter. It fooled me. This fella'a a regular Belasco. It's a triumph. thoroughness! What realism! Knew what to stop, too—didn't cut the pages. 46 (stage director interested in perfect illusion)

"I never care what I do, so I always have a good time" 43

like a photograph of a man of action 36