How Do You Get Yours?

'Her Brown Back Hanging From Her Pearls'

The other evening I took off the various items strung around my neck and flung them rather haphazardly across the room. When I looked across, I saw they had fallen together, a set of headphones lightly wrapped around four strings of fake pearls. Without reflection, the phrase "her brown back hanging from her pearls" came into my mind. For me, it is one of the most striking turns of phrase - and certainly the one which has stuck with me most clearly and tenaciously - in F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is The Night; whereas pearls hanging from any part of the body would be a typical, banal image, an easy image to marry with Fitzgerald's  repeated thematic treatment of the beautiful rich, the idea of a back hanging from pearls has always seemed to me somewhat macabre and has always presented itself in very visual terms in my imagination. The pearls became fixed, a superficial point (much like the indulgence in conspicuous consumption practiced by both Rosemary and Nicole) from which to hang various parts of Nicole Diver. Nicole herself, however, was verbally dismembered, her precarious grip on being whole presciently questioned in this image. The phrase came to me so violently when looking at my clutter that I wasn't sure whether I was hearing it in my mind, remembering an image from having read the book or seeing the words in front of me. The sight of the headphones entangled with the necklace played into this momentary confusion and led me to consider the method of literary consumption today. Although there is much to recommend the tactile experience of a physical book and equally plenty of advantages offered by e-books and Kindles there need not be a preferred or superior medium for all literature; a great image (and indeed, a great story) must surely be able to transcend this, if presented simply and concisely. In this case, the visual reminded me of what I had read which I then consolidated by capturing the visual in watercolours. Due to the strength of the phrase, I am certain that it would have retained its initial impact had I not read the Tender Is The Night, but rather listened to it on an audio file or book. That is not to say that all books can be equally served by all mediums; I have recently finished Ford Madox Ford's immense (in both senses of the word) quadrilogy Parade's End, whose impressionist language and open-ended sentences drawing out images and ideas often cannot make the same impact that Fitzgerald achieves so concisely. Rather, it is so beautifully and intricately constructed and uses such words - astutely chosen but both intellectual and now obsolete - that the audience needs to have the time to re-read the sentences and roll the words about on the tip of their tongue to be able to savour and thereby appreciate the flavour of them. I doubt I would have been struck in quite the same way had I dropped my headphones onto the branch of the Groby Great Tree. But somewhere in this rambling paragraph there is a perhaps an argument: all methods of literary consumption are viable and all are to be encouraged and explored, but some are more viable for different works. To quote Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, "it [is] an aesthetic choice more than a moral one". Here the aesthetic is that of the work and not that of the medium - it's just unfortunate (and unavoidable) that an aesthetic is only truly understood in retrospect.