#171 Babylon Revisited- F. Scott Fitzgerald
Charlie is revisiting Paris trying to rebuild his life. It
was destroyed by the financial crash, over exuberance or youth, and drinking.
He was once a great success, married, with a child and everyone about town
loved him for his material things. Now without the party atmosphere of the boom,
things were more somber.
His wife dead, is child in the custody of his step-sister,
and his business somewhat back on its feet he comes hat in hand hoping for
redemption. Paris is a different place when you’re not partying:
“I spoiled this city for myself. I didn’t realize it, but
the days came along one after the another, and then two years were gone, and
everything was gone, and I was gone.”- And tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
–
He is mostly sober taking only one drink a day to remember.
He wants his daughter back, he seems matured, and together and lucky to have
survived a crash that most did not. His old life keeps revisiting him in the
form of former companions and stories of debauchery. They seek him out trying
to gain his strength or drag him back to the past.
“They liked him because he was functioning, because he was
serious; they wanted to see him, because he was stronger than they were now,
because they wanted to draw sustenance from his strength.”
Are his past mistakes too many to overcome?
Notable Passage: “In the little hours of the night every move
from place to place was an enormous human jump, an increase of paying for the
privilege of slower and slower motions.”
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