Sunday, December 17, 2017

Beautiful Color! Coral and Apple-Green and Lavender and Faint Orange, and Indian Blue.

From F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby:

Recovering himself in a minute he opened for us two hulking patent cabinets which held his massed suits and dressing-gowns and ties, and his shirts, piled like bricks in stacks a dozen high.

“I’ve got a man in England who buys me clothes. He sends over a selection of things at the beginning of each season, spring and fall.”

He took out a pile of shirts and began throwing them, one by one, before us, shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel, which lost their folds as they fell and covered the table in many-colored disarray. While we admired he brought more and the soft rich heap mounted higher — shirts with stripes and scrolls and plaids in coral and apple-green and lavender and faint orange, and monograms of Indian blue. Suddenly, with a strained sound, Daisy bent her head into the shirts and began to cry stormily.

“They’re such beautiful shirts,” she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. “It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such — such beautiful shirts before.”

As soon as I started writing about color, I looked up this passage from The Great Gatsby. It's one of my favorite passages about color.

The question, of course, is -- why is Daisy crying?

If you know any other beautiful passages describing color, please let me know. Color obsession continues!





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