This Side of Paradise - F. Scott Fitzgerald (good books for 7th graders .txt) 📗

many things ahead calculated to arouse the Machiavelli latent in him, could he but insert a wedge. The upper-class clubs, concerning which he had pumped a reluctant graduate during the previous summer, excited his curiosity: Ivy, detached and breathlessly aristocratic; Cottage, an impressive mélange of brilliant adventurers and well-dressed philanderers; Tiger Inn, broad-shouldered and athletic, vitalized by an honest elaboration of prep-school standards; Cap and Gown, anti-alcoholic, faintly religious and politically powerful; flamboyant Colonial; literary Quadrangle; and the dozen others, varying in age and position.

Anything which brought an under classman into too glaring a light was labelled with the damning brand of “running it out.” The movies thrived on caustic comments, but the men who made them were generally running it out; talking of clubs was running it out; standing for anything very strongly, as, for instance, drinking parties or teetotalling, was running it out; in short, being personally conspicuous was not tolerated, and the influential man was the noncommittal man, until at club elections in sophomore year everyone should be sewed up in some bag for the rest of his college career.

Amory found that writing for the Nassau Literary Magazine would get him nothing, but that being on the board of the Daily Princetonian would get anyone a good deal. His vague desire to do immortal acting with the English Dramatic Association faded out when he found that the most ingenious brains and talents were concentrated upon the Triangle Club, a musical comedy organization that every year took a great Christmas trip. In the meanwhile, feeling strangely alone and restless in Commons, with new desires and ambitions stirring in his mind, he let the first term go by between an envy of the embryo successes and a puzzled fretting with Kerry as to why they were not accepted immediately among the elite of the class.

Many afternoons they lounged in the windows of 12 Univee and watched the class pass to and from Commons, noting satellites already attaching themselves to the more prominent, watching the lonely grind with his hurried step and downcast eye, envying the happy security of the big school groups.

“We’re the damned middle class, that’s what!” he complained to Kerry one day as he lay stretched out on the sofa, consuming a family of Fatimas with contemplative precision.

“Well, why not? We came to Princeton so we could feel that way toward the small colleges⁠—have it on ’em, more self-confidence, dress better, cut a swathe⁠—”

“Oh, it isn’t that I mind the glittering caste system,” admitted Amory. “I like having a bunch of hot cats on top, but gosh, Kerry, I’ve got to be one of them.”

“But just now, Amory, you’re only a sweaty bourgeois.”

Amory lay for a moment without speaking.

“I won’t be⁠—long,” he said finally. “But I hate to get anywhere by working for it. I’ll show the marks, don’t you know.”

“Honorable scars.” Kerry craned his neck suddenly at the street. “There’s Langueduc, if you want to see what he looks like⁠—and Humbird just behind.”

Amory rose dynamically and sought the windows.

“Oh,” he said, scrutinizing these worthies, “Humbird looks like a knockout, but this Langueduc⁠—he’s the rugged type, isn’t he? I distrust that sort. All diamonds look big in the rough.”

“Well,” said Kerry, as the excitement subsided, “you’re a literary genius. It’s up to you.”

“I wonder”⁠—Amory paused⁠—“if I could be. I honestly think so sometimes. That sounds like the devil, and I wouldn’t say it to anybody except you.”

“Well⁠—go ahead. Let your hair grow and write poems like this guy D’Invilliers in the Lit.”

Amory reached lazily at a pile of magazines on the table.

“Read his latest effort?”

“Never miss ’em. They’re rare.”

Amory glanced through the issue.

“Hello!” he said in surprise, “he’s a freshman, isn’t he?”

“Yeah.”

“Listen to this! My God!

“ ‘A serving lady speaks:
Black velvet trails its folds over the day,
White tapers, prisoned in their silver frames,
Wave their thin flames like shadows in the wind,
Pia, Pompia, come⁠—come away⁠—’

“Now, what the devil does that mean?”

“It’s a pantry scene.”

“ ‘Her toes are stiffened like a stork’s in flight;
She’s laid upon her bed, on the white sheets,
Her hands pressed on her smooth bust like a saint,
Bella Cunizza, come into the light!’

“My gosh, Kerry, what in hell is it all about? I swear I don’t get him at all, and I’m a literary bird myself.”

“It’s pretty tricky,” said Kerry, “only you’ve got to think of hearses and stale milk when you read it. That isn’t as pash as some of them.”

Amory tossed the magazine on the table.

“Well,” he sighed, “I sure am up in the air. I know I’m not a regular fellow, yet I loathe anybody else that isn’t. I can’t decide whether to cultivate my mind and be a great dramatist, or to thumb my nose at the Golden Treasury and be a Princeton slicker.”

“Why decide?” suggested Kerry. “Better drift, like me. I’m going to sail into prominence on Burne’s coattails.”

“I can’t drift⁠—I want to be interested. I want to pull strings, even for somebody else, or be Princetonian chairman or Triangle president. I want to be admired, Kerry.”

“You’re thinking too much about yourself.”

Amory sat up at this.

“No. I’m thinking about you, too. We’ve got to get out and mix around the class right now, when it’s fun to be a snob. I’d like to bring a sardine to the prom in June, for instance, but I wouldn’t do it unless I could be damn debonaire about it⁠—introduce her to all the prize parlor-snakes, and the football captain, and all that simple stuff.”

“Amory,” said Kerry impatiently, “you’re just going around in a circle. If you want to be prominent, get out and try for something; if you don’t, just take it easy.” He yawned. “Come on, let’s let the smoke drift off. We’ll go down and watch football practice.”

Amory gradually accepted this point of view, decided that next fall would inaugurate his career, and relinquished himself to watching Kerry extract joy from 12 Univee.

They filled the Jewish youth’s bed with lemon pie; they put out