But first, I have to tie up a few loose ends.
First, exams. I wrote my third one today, so I only have one more to go- yay! My brain is so fried. I mean, I really feel like it’s done for, and I only have a mass of fizzled out nerve endings sloshing around in my head. I’ll push through for the last time next Thursday- Psychology had better be good to me, I deserve it.
Next, and in the midst of all this end of year rush, is- insert drumroll here– my 20th birthday! I’m so excited. Look out for my first ever outfit post after this coming weekend: I found these pink jeans at Mr Price that I have to show you.
There’s also the unresolved matter of the The Beautiful and Damned book review. I realise it’s taken me just as long to post the review as it did for me finish reading the book in the first place. Book review fail. Maybe next time I’ll just get one of you to review a book for me in a succinct but well-phrased and grammatically impeccable paragraph (or two)? I’m not asking too much, really.
Okay. So I’ve got the last “installation” of the book review here:
It’s a difficult book to review, but I do think it’s one you should read if you wake up one morning feeling like you’re finally ready to tackle your list of good books by old authors that you should read before you extend your leg and hit a pail, thus signaling the end of your time on this geoidal life-space ;).
It’s as one of the characters says:
“A classic… is a successful book that has survived the reaction of the next period or generation. Then it’s safe, like a style in architecture or furniture. It’s acquired a picturesque dignity to take the place of its fashion…”.
To wrap up, I have some quotes which I really liked:
“Blowing bubbles- that’s what we’re doing, Anthony and me. And we blow such beautiful ones today, and they’ll explode and then we’ll blow more and more, I guess- bubbles just as big and just as beautiful, until all the soap and water is used up”
– Gloria “making plans” for how she and Anthony will accommodate each other’s dreams and still be happy in marriage. Of course, things don’t quite work out this way.
“The notion of sitting down and conjuring up, not only words in which to clothe thoughts but thoughts worthy of being clothed- the whole thing was absurdly beyond [his] desires”
– Anthony’s thoughts on how he can’t even begin to concentrate on writing.
– Anthony to Gloria at a museum of sorts:
“Don’t you want to preserve old things?
But you can’t , Anthony. Beautiful things grow to a certain height and then they fail and fade off, breathing out memories as they decay. And just as any period decays in our minds, the things of that period should decay too, and in that way they’re preserved for a while in [the hearts of few]”
“…the wretched aura of stale wine, with its inevitable suggestion of beauty gone foul and revelry remembered in disgust…”
– This is how alcohol hangs over the heads and follows them around like a dark cloud.
“…desire just cheats you. It’s like a sunbeam skipping here and there about a room. It stops and gilds some inconsequential object, and we poor fools try to grasp it- but when we do the sunbeam moves on to something else, and you’ve got the inconsequential part, but the glitter that made you want it is gone”
– [Insert adage about the likelihood of glimmering objects turning out to be a yellowy, gaudy material from which jewellery is made here]
“…opalescent dreams of future pleasure- the natural heritage of the happy and the damned”
– Do with that what you will
“Life is so damned hard…it just hurts people and hurts people, until, finally it hurts them so that they can’t be hurt ever any more. That’s the last and worst thing it does”
– This is how Anthony tries to pacify the girl at the army camp when he decides to break up with her and go back to his wife.
I really did enjoy the way some of the language sounded more like poetry than prose- do people still write that way? Feel free to suggest a book, and I’ll pull down some more Free Time from my secret reserve 😉
Oh, yes! The Gossip Girl reference. I spent the entire time trying to find why Cecily von Ziegesar decided to make reference to this book in her series, and the only link I could find was that both the characters in Fitzgerald’s book and the fictional Upper East Side elite live impossibly extravagant lives on fluffy white clouds of self-absorption and (old) money, and they are occasionally pulled down from these clouds by the harsh winds of reality. Once they’re down on earth, they are confused and finding their way back to what they know is not without its life-changing, sanity-testing trials.
Okay, I’ve read The Beautiful and Damned. Now to tackle A Clockwork Orange.
JOKING!
xoxo
Nkhensani Manabe 