Tender is the Night

By Scott Fitzgerald, as most everyone knows.  I'm reading it again for the first time, like so many corn flakes, and in addition to being like eating breakfast cereal at 6:40 pm it's also like dropping acid without the negative side effects.  Or the social stigma.

It's pretty impressionistic compared to, say, Gatsby.  But every once in a while you run across a line that just takes your breath away.  While better in context, this one -- the one that prompted me to put the book down and come upstairs to write this -- stands on its own just fine.

Was it an hour ago she had waited by the entrance, 
wearing her hope like a corsage on her belt?

Wow.  I broke it into two lines because it seems as much like poetry as prose can get.

I have to go back downstairs now because I have some chicken on the stove, but here's a picture (from Madame Bovary) of Jennifer Jones, who played Nicole Driver, the one with the hope like a corsage, in the 1962 movie version of Tender is the Night.

Wow.  Looking great for a crazy girl.