In continuation of my winter list, yesterday I read The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. While best appreciated in the context of the novel, I found the following exert especially profound.
"Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailor's eyes- a fresh green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder."
An apt catechism for the Lost Generation.
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