tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32685968.post5685087791959961312..comments2024-03-25T10:47:42.656-07:00Comments on Can't Explain: "Winter Dreams" (1922)Jeff Pikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17148737647138431543noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32685968.post-89021605981537945102016-12-02T13:16:48.996-08:002016-12-02T13:16:48.996-08:00Thanks for this review, Jeff -- it inspired me to ...Thanks for this review, Jeff -- it inspired me to get out my Fitzgerald anthology to read and enjoy "Winter Dreams" yet again, precisely for the magic of his words, as you've noted. I don't share his obsessive theme of status-seeking (much of which seems to have come from his eternal passion to win the hand of Zelda Sayre, whose family was somewhat wealthier than his own), but the written romance he derives from this quest always enraptures me. And despite Fitzgerald's perfect exemplification of the excesses of the 1920's, I think he was likely less interested in wealth as an end, but rather as the Gatsbian means to realize his romantic fantasies.<br /><br />I like your comment about Fitzgerald's "very white world," as I think it was from one of his characters that I first came across that now-blessedly-obsolete expression of thanks, "That's awfully white of you." Just what a Princeton man would say, I guess. I've since heard it in movies from the '30s too, so it was apparently routine in Fitzgerald's day, but of course grates on our '60s-onward sensibilities. For a further inquiry into Fitzgerald's racial attitudes, it might be interesting to study his story "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz" (also from 1922), with its rich white survivalist holed up in Montana with the gem of the title, his whole operation protected by by a brigade of servile "negro" soldiers. This story always disappoints me, both for its racial condescension, and because I want it to be about one of Fitzgerald's romantic young men buying a diamond ring at the Ritz department store to impress a Zelda-like beauty, rather than this gloomy tale of some quasi-fascist hoarding that literal lump. But that's another review. -- R. Riegel Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com