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On reading an inscription in This Side of Paradise
If I can only imagine the snow swept streets of 1920 America when Paul gave
Marion a copy of This Side of Paradise that Christmas morning and what she
must have thought as she unwrapped the ribbon and thin paper of his gift and
touched those lovely pages with her fingertips while Fitzgerald, even then was
traveling toward some palmy Hollywood studio backlot, his hands wringing
and desperate, trying to write Gatsby and who knows what happened to Marion
and Paul, how their lives were shaped by unforeseen tides and how it happens
that on this sunny Wednesday morning in March in Florida, 86 years later, I take
their book off the shelf and touch Fitzgerald's pages wanting to write something,
anything this morning and know another Christmas looms - even as the roses and
geraniums outside my window proclaim paradise. |
