Cheap Thought of the Day

Grace equals the space in which to honor our mistakes.

Cheap Thought

The degree to which poetry is about itself is the measure of its irrelevance.

Apply this idea at will and with the necessary substitutions to fit your situation.

The Prophetic F. Scott

I ran across this passage in Gatsby that I thought was useful in a number of ways:

“I couldn’t forgive [Tom Buchanan] or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy–they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made . . .”

Nice resonance. Let’s play around with the passage a little:

“I couldn’t forgive Dick Cheney or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Cheney and Bush–they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made . . .”

Or this:

“I couldn’t forgive the Wall Street investors or like them, but I saw that what they had done was, to them, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, the bankers and investors–they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made . . .”

Et cetera. What Fitzgerald clues in on is true of all the privileged classes, all privileged people, and we see it repeat itself across history, time without end.