Conversations July 25, 2010

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

Sunday, July 25, 2010

After 6 AM. As I consider this project in some dismay, I am starting to realize that your goal is as much to get me to move into analytical mode as it is to get out any particular information. Am I right?

Why ask, when you have realized? Of course it is always good to have multiple complementary objectives to be pursued by any line of thought or action. We like efficiency.

Your words about balance being the ability to move certainly struck home with at least one reader, who is herself a dancer, and who explained why it is so.

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Conversations June 24, 2010

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

Thursday, June 24, 2010

5 AM. I stopped at Barnes and Noble and bought five Fitzgeralds. Re-reading The Great Gatsby first, because it is an old friend, and perhaps will ease me into reading him as his short stories definitely did not. Also, the next volume of Nevins’ history of the Civil War arrived in yesterday’s mail. Quite a plethora of books to read; I’m a little bit overwhelmed.

Good morning, friends. Anything special on your minds today?

No? Then I guess it’s up to me. All right, Papa, let’s talk about F. Scott Fitzgerald and me. Yesterday I was moved to buy five of his books, after having been unable to read the book of his short stories that I had borrowed. Other than “The Lost Decade,” they seemed so shallow and even silly — just an impression from titles, and reading the first few pages of “A Diamond As Big As The Ritz” and “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” — that I returned the book and thought I was finished with. But then I return with Tender Is The Night, The Beautiful And Damned, This Side Of Paradise and Gatsby. I’m wondering: why.

Continue reading Conversations June 24, 2010