the great gatsby
1926, f. scott fitzgerald
once again to zelda
l’edizione in inglese Penguin Books, nella quarta di copertina: There must be hundreds of novels that call themselves “the greatest love story of our time”. This is the only one where it’s true (william sutcliffe, Guardian).
Eppure la scrittura irresistibilmente semplice e secca di fitzgerald ne fa non una storia d’amore, ma un libro sul vuoto, l’aridità e la solitudine. C’è un’aderenza stretta tra il tipo di scrittura e i temi trattati.
He had one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced, or seemed to face, the whole external world for an instant and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself (terzo capitolo).