Chapter 15 list

With Nicole's help, Rosemary bought two dresses, two hats and four pairs of shoes with her own money.Nicole bought all the products listed on the two-page shopping list, and bought whatever she liked in the window.Whatever she likes, even if she doesn't use it, she buys it as a gift.Among her purchases: colored beads, fold-out beach cushions, artificial flowers, honey, guest beds, assorted purses, scarves, lovebirds, miniature furniture for dolls, three yards of new cloth in shrimp red, etc.She also bought a dozen bathing suits, a rubber crocodile, a gold and ivory chess set, some linen squares for Eb, two Hermes suede jackets (one kingfisher blue, A dazzling green piece)—she didn’t buy these things like a courtesan buys underwear and jewelry, one is for dressing and professional needs; the other is to save some money for future livelihood.She buys things for a very different purpose entirely.Nicole is the product of wit and ingenuity combined with hard work; for her, the train starts from Chicago, crosses the round belly of the American continent to California; Mixing toothpaste and pumping mouthwash, buckets and small buckets are constantly busy; women workers rush to canned tomatoes in August, and work hard in cheap stores on Christmas Eve; mixed-race Indians toil on coffee plantations in Brazil , the dreamer invented a new tractor, but was deprived of the patent right.All these people are just part of the people who provide Nicole's tithes, everything is like a complete system, shaking and roaring, rolling forward, for Nicole's big purchases, etc. Add a layer of hot red.This ruddy look is quite like the excited expression of firefighters who stand firm in the face of a raging fire.What Nicole shows is some naive nature, which contains self-destructiveness.But she performed so deftly that a quality could be appreciated that Rosemary was eager to do the same in the near future.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night (1934) "The rich are not like us," F. Scott Fitzgerald once said to Ernest Hemingway, who replied, "Yes, they have more money." This anecdote was recorded by Fitzgerald, but posterity does not praise him when it comes to it.But Hemingway's positivist dismissive answer misses the point: that in money, as in everything else, sooner or later, quantitative changes lead to qualitative changes, for better or worse.Fitzgerald's portrayal of Nicole Davell shopping in Paris powerfully demonstrates how the rich are different. This description also illustrates the latent expressiveness of the physical inventory or list in the discourse of fiction.On the surface, it may seem far-fetched to insert a rambling list of titles in a story that focuses on characters and their actions, but the novel style is so inclusive that any non-fiction genre can be accommodated - Letters, diaries, testimonials, even checklists, etc. - and can be adjusted at will.Sometimes lists can be featured vertically, in contrast to the surrounding discourse.Samuel Beckett, for example, satirizes traditional fictional descriptions in "Potatoes" by listing the heroine's physical characteristics in plain, statistical tabulation:

small and round head green eye skin color white yellow hair Rich and varied facial features Neck 13″ Upper arm 11″ Forearm 9″ etc. The contemporary American writer Lori Moore wrote an interesting story "How to Be Another Woman" ("Self-Help" 1985).This story is written entirely in the style of non-cash genres—self-care manuals and checklists.The narrator is a mistress who knows she is not in a stable position in the heart of her lover, especially when his lover praises his wife.Compliments are as follows: "She's so organized you won't believe it. She makes a list of things first, which is just so charming."

"She still makes a list? You like that?" "Oh yes. Things to do, things to buy, names of clients to meet, etc." "The list?" you mutter to yourself, feeling hopeless and listless, your expensive beige raincoat still on. Of course, shortly afterward, the narrator also makes the list: client to meet birthday snapshot adhesive tape Letters to TD and Mom In fact, she is just an ordinary secretary, and no clients can see her.She made the list to compete with the wife of the lover she had never met.When the lover says his wife is sexually adventurous, the narrator responds:

list all lovers Warren Lascher Ed "Rubberbrain" Catepano charles dietz or kitts Alphonse Tuck it in your pocket.Find an obvious place to drop it, and somehow you can't find it.Just kidding myself that it was "misplaced".Make another list. These days there are popular novels about the lives of the rich, mostly for women, known in the publishing world as "sex and shopping" (or, more colloquially, "S and F") novels.Such novels describe in such detail how the heroine purchases luxury items that even the last designer's label is written on them.Lust and materialistic satisfaction are the objects of description in this type of novel.Scott Fitzgerald noted a link between sexual seduction and ostentatious profligacy, but he handled it more subtly and critically.In this quote from Tender Is the Night, he does not list the names of the items on Nicole's two-page shopping list, nor does he list the brand names, but only mentions many Fewer items, a trade name of "Hermes" (and interestingly no date), to create the impression of extravagance.But he emphasized the wide variety of shopping items, and expressed that Nicole's shopping is not entirely out of practicality.From cheap and frivolous items such as colored beads and household items such as honey, to large items such as beds, expensive toys with gold and ivory chess pieces, and boring and frivolous items such as rubber crocodiles, these things are mixed together.The shopping list has no local color, no price list, no grades, and no categories.That's the problem.

Nicole's purchases soon exceeded the scope of the shopping list, and she simply bought what she wanted;—all according to the whim, without any consideration of economics or common sense.Her personality and character are exposed from all this: on the one hand, she is generous, lovable, and tasteful; on the other hand, she is emotional and impractical.The fun and sensuality of such a splurge will infect even the reader.For example, those two suede jackets, one kingfisher blue and one dazzling green, are so tempting (the key word is "two pieces", for two clothes of different colors but equally charming and similar styles, most people will Difficult to choose, but Nicole figured it out and bought both at once).No wonder her young protege and future opponent, Rosemary, admired her style of life and was eager to emulate her.

However, opposite to the shopping list is another list, which is a list of names, or a list of group categories.The wealth that Nicole inherited was obtained by exploiting these people.This list turned our emotions in the opposite direction, changing the direction of the entire text with just one sentence: "Nicole is the product of a combination of ingenuity and hard work." It makes us suddenly realize that she is no longer a The consumer, a person who collects all kinds of commodities, objects, but a commodity, she herself is a commodity - a final commodity produced by industrial capitalism, very delicate, but very expensive and costly.

The first list is full of nouns, and the second list is full of verb phrases: "The train starts...the smoke from the chewing gum factory...the man mixes toothpaste...the woman rushes to make canned tomatoes..." At first glance, these activities are as messy as Nicole's shopping list, but there is a certain connection between the male workers in the toothpaste factory and the female workers in the discount store and the Indian workers in Brazil: the profits created by these people's labor indirectly benefit Nicole. Kohl's Shopping provided funding. The second list is more allegorical than the first, beginning with a striking metaphor: the train crossing "the round belly of the American continent" conjures up images of carnality and gluttony; it concludes with the train as a danger The self-destructive energy of industrial capitalism lurks: "Everything rolls onward like a whole system, reeling, with a deafening roar." This reminds us of this same symbol used by Dickens in a book: (This power travels on the rails—following its own track—defying all paths, passing through all obstacles, and dragging behind it all classes, ages, and ranks of beings. It is an invincible monster , is Death.)

In typical Fitzgerald style, the development of metaphors is unexpected and elusive.At first he likened the situation to a railway locomotive stove, and then changed his pen to a raging fire.At this moment Nicole is not a fire burner, but a fire extinguisher, or at least a person who doesn't care about the fire. The word "fireman" can be interpreted as both a firefighter and a fireman.The reason why Fitzgerald used this word shows that he probably has an ambivalence towards people like Nicole: both admiration and disgust. "Nicole shows some naive nature, self-destructive in it, but she does it so deftly that one appreciates a quality." That sounds like Hemingway's definition of bravery: "Beauty under pressure." Whether consciously or not, he seemed to be repeating Hemingway's words.