Remember reading The Great Gatsby in high school? Some of you may have trudged through it, others may have appreciated it right off the bat.
The first time I read it, I vaguely enjoyed the picture that F. Scott Fitzgerald painted. But it wasn’t until I reread it as an adult that I really got lost in the writing itself.
Fitzgerald is a master at economy of words.
He writes so leanly, so precisely, and yet his writing is so full.
He doesn’t throw around long, complicated words—he doesn’t need to. He uses familiar words in surprising ways that give you a little thrill. (Who could forget his description of Daisy Buchanan’s voice as being “full of money”?) This technique makes his writing immediately accessible; he just figured out how to use an old word in a way that you always wanted it to be used. You didn’t realize it until now, of course, until you reread that brilliant sentence of his, but don’t worry, he’s got you covered.
For example, in The Great Gatsby, the narrator observes the languid, airy lives of wealthy New Yorkers in their summertime enclave. On a particularly hot day, upon touring his cousin’s breezy mansion, he introduces two of the main characters with the following image:
The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon.
Later, he describes the women’s noncommittal politeness during dinner, noting, “They knew that presently dinner would be over and and casually put away.” Perfect.
I admire his brevity. He doesn’t bury great words in layers and layers of gerund phrases (cough! Faulkner). Truth be told, if William Faulkner’s writing were a website, it would be parent menus with nested submenus with nested sub-submenus… (Sorry to any Faulkner fans; I just have very painful memories of reading As I Lay Dying aloud in class and wondering when the bloody sentence would end so I could take a breath).
Back to Fitzgerald. His writing is clean, elegant, intuitive, immediately accessible. And every bit of it is enjoyable. You want to go along with him and see where he’s going to take you. You trust him with your time.
The perfect simplicity of Fitzgerald’s prose is a model of what a website should be.
Something to think about.
Warm Design 