An imaginary exchange between

F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway,

put in Paris, in the mid twenties,

[ imaginary but totally based on lines written

by Fitzgerald and Hemingway]

 

-       Ernest Hemingway reciting: "The parties were bigger. The pace was faster. The shows were broader. The buildings were higher. The morals were looser. And the liquor was cheaper” I hate you Fitzgerald for writing this. I hate you.

-       F. Scott Fitzgerald: And the people a rotten crowd. Gatsby was worth the whole damn bunch put together. But the thing with Gatsby was that the rich are different.

 -    Ernest Hemingway: Yes, they have more money.

-       F. Scott Fitzgerald: The rich are careless and think they are better; even when they sink, they still think that they are better.

-       Ernest Hemingway: I do not accept it. I never think of ourselves as poor, we are superior people.

-       F. Scott Fitzgerald: Gatsby too. Gatsby believed in the ‘green light’, the orgastic future. The orgastic future that year by year recedes before us, eluded us, but that's no matter, tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. And one fine morning… So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. Lost.

-       Ernest Hemingway: I think that all generations are lost by something and always had been and always would be.

-       F. Scott Fitzgerald: Lost. You see I usually find myself lost among strangers because I drift here and there trying to forget the sad things that happened to me.

-            Ernest Hemingway: You can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. It is not the places it’s the people. People were always the limiters of happiness.

-            F. Scott Fitzgerald: Lost within and without, old sport, within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.

-       Ernest Hemingway: If we were lucky enough to have lived in Paris young, wherever we go for the rest of our lives, this will stay with us, for Paris is a moveable feast. Write. You have always written before and you will write now. Write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.

-       F. Scott Fitzgerald: Show me a hero, and I'll write you a tragedy.