---------------------- [The Great Gatsby, excerpt] -----------------------------------------------------
Tom Buchanan, who had been hovering restlessly about the room, stopped and rested his hand on my shoulder.
"What you doing, Nick?"
"I'm a bond man."
"Who with?"
I told him.
"Never heard of them," he remarked decisively.
This annoyed me.
"You will," I answered shortly. "You will if you stay in the East."
"Oh, I'll stay in the East, don't you worry," he said, glancing at Daisy and then back at me, as if he were alert for something more. "I'd be a God damned fool to live anywhere else."
At this point Miss Baker said: "Absolutely!" with such suddenness that I started -- it was the first word she uttered since I came into the room. Evidently it surprised her as much as it did me, for she yawned and with a series of rapid, deft movements stood up into the room.
"I'm stiff," she complained, "I've been lying on that sofa for as long as I can remember."
"Don't look at me," Daisy retorted, "I've been trying to get you to New York all afternoon."
"No, thanks," said Miss Baker to the four cocktails just in from the pantry, "I'm absolutely in training."
Her host looked at her incredulously.
"You are!" He took down his drink as if it were a drop in the bottom of a glass. "How you ever get anything done is beyond me."
I looked at Miss Baker, wondering what it was she "got done." I enjoyed looking at her. She was a slender, small-breasted girl, with an erect carriage, which she accentuated by throwing her body backward at the shoulders like a young cadet.
Her gray sun-strained eyes looked back at me with
polite reciprocal curiosity
out of a
wan,
charming,
discontented
face.
It occurred to me now that I had seen her, or a picture of her, somewhere before. ------------------------------ [end, excerpt]
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
In the UK newspaper The Guardian (online), I read an article titled, "What makes The Great Gatsby great?" -- written by Sarah Churchwell, published 'Fri 3 May 2013' probably in relation to the Leonardo DiCaprio film that was coming out at that time.
One Reader Comment under the article said instead of seeing the movie, a person would be --
"Better to fly to NY and see the 6 hour play which reads the entire book."
Another Reader Comment said --
"Read somewhere that Hunter S 'Gonzo' Thompson typed up the Great Gatsby in its entirety. Apparently he wanted to know how it felt to write like Fitzgerald."
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Boy, I can identify with that! ...
___________________________
{The Great Gatsby. F. Scott Fitzgerald. Charles Scribner's Sons. 1925.}
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