Clare Snow’s Reviews > Careless People: Murder, Mayhem, and the Invention of The Great Gatsby > Status Update

"The accidental is all that we are left with once we have lost our illusions."

"Someone was going to have to improve the story, to lie better than the truth."

"The problem with unreliable narrators is that sometimes they tell the truth - it's just difficult to know when."

"Sometimes this technique is described as fiction."

😂

"Gatsby has no friends - just uninvited guests."

"This begs a question about what defines normal people, or everyday life: unlike fiction, reality has no obligation to be realistic."

"Being imported wholesale into a work of fiction would give anyone a scare."

"Although Hamborszky's statement was hearsay, vague, and did not actually deal with the crime, and thus could not be put before the grand jury, 'the authorities did not consider this a fatal defect'"

Well that's ok then...

"Possibly the first and last instance of 'furtive spooning' being cited as a motive for murder."

“I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendos"
- Wallace Stevens, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird