After the publication of "The Great Gatsby" Fitzgerald said that he realized that writing was really "the thing," and he sould have buckled down and sacrificed all his energy to it. Sometimes, hell is simply our bitter regret.
The picture which Hemingway paints of Fitzgerald as a party goer/heavy drinker sheds some light upon the bitter regret over wasted time and opportunity.
Apparently, Fitzgerald did a major structural rewrite of "The Great Gatsby" during the GALLEY SHEET phase, which is I suppose a time meant only for minor corrections and editing.
The publisher commissioned an artist to do a mystical sort of painting for the cover; coney island at night, ferris wheels, but in the sky the ghostly face of a woman, (and in the pupils of the eyes of that face, there is not a retina, but a tiny image of a naked woman.) The artist had the cover for the book ready BEFORE Fitzgerald had the book finished.
Time is so precious. We must use it wisely. Even when we think we are weary, there is so much we can learn, so much we can say, if only we have the courage to face the paper; face the printed page.
Sometimes I feel weary, but I carry some book with me, and open it at random and read a page, or half a page.
I opened Hardy, "Far from the Madding Crowd" (yes, I used to think it was Maddening not so long ago) and I read the passage about Bathesheba's upper and lower lip. When she was troubled by an earthy visceral thought, her lower lip quivered (I just made a "Freudian slip" and typed "lover lip"). When a more etherial, elevated, higher matter troubled her, then her UPPER lip quivered. This was a clever device for Harding, but somewhat contrived. How convenient to have a spiritual barometer on ones' face. Yet, I only came to appreciate that because I used an extra moment to read at random, a moment which might have otherwise been wasted.
(By the way, how clever of this forum's sofware! I have edited this a dozen times in a dozen minutes, yet the forum only shows ONE view. Good forum! Good doggy!)
