Personal anthology: F. Scott Fitzgerald
In honor of everyone heading off for Thanksgiving, one of my favorite bits from The Great Gatsby:
One of my most vivid memories is of coming back West from prep
school and later from college at Christmas time. Those who went
farther than Chicago would gather in the old dim Union Station
at six o’clock of a December evening, with a few Chicago friends,
already caught up into their own holiday gayeties, to bid them
a hasty good-by. I remember the fur coats of the girls returning
from Miss This-or-That’s and the chatter of frozen breath and
the hands waving overhead as we caught sight of old acquaintances,
and the matching of invitations: "Are you going to the Ordways’?
the Herseys’? the Schultzes’?" and the long green tickets
clasped tight in our gloved hands. And last the murky yellow cars
of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul railroad looking cheerful
as Christmas itself on the tracks beside the gate.When we pulled out into the winter night and the real snow, our
snow, began to stretch out beside us and twinkle against the windows,
and the dim lights of small Wisconsin stations moved by, a sharp
wild brace came suddenly into the air. We drew in deep breaths
of it as we walked back from dinner through the cold vestibules,
unutterably aware of our identity with this country for one strange
hour, before we melted indistinguishably into it again.— F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (text found at the University of Minnesota)
The Great Gatsby is now so popular that several narrators have produced audio books of this fine work. This should help the students, especially those with reading difficulties.