He had one of the rarest qualities in all literature, and it’s a great shame that the word for it has been thoroughly debased by the cosmetic racketeers, so that one is almost ashamed to use it to describe a real distinction. Nevertheless, the word is charm — charm as Keats would have used it. Who has it today? It’s not a matter of pretty writing or clear style. It’s a kind of subdued magic, controlled and exquisite, the sort of thing you get from good string quartettes.
Raymond Chandler, in a letter about Fitzgerald
An author I know remarked that writers are like mediums, they channel their characters. Another, who brought me that gorgeous bottle of Irish whiskey, is of similar mind. I try to gussy up the process by talking about sense memory, but we all have our talismans — those bits of manna; a pocket watch, a typewriter, a shooting script, a letter — that came from those before us, opening the heart to fluid time and lives infinite.
I went through an F. Scott Fitzgerald spurt in the past few months. I re-read The Great Gatsby plus The Last Tycoon, and read Tender is the Night. All that just to say his prose sings. Such beautiful, haunting writing.
I’ve never read The Last Tycoon, a situation I better remedy very soon…
“the word is charm.” Yes.