Fitzgerald's TN

[alice wellintown]

Like Pynchon, Fitzgerald makes wonderful use of film and lighting.

When Rosemary's point of view dominates we wonder if any of this real,
for like Dorothy of the famous Oz film, Rosemary, though not because
she is dreaming after a knock on the head, but because she is dreaming
as a young beauty often does, that she is an actress and all the world
is watching her, can not get enough of her, and, of course,  the irony
is that she is by profession an actress who has only recently made a
name for herself in a hollywood film.

Piaget and Elklind: Adolescent egocentrism can be divided into two
separate forms: the imaginary audience and the personal fable.

The first scene on the beach, where Fitzgerald makes it known that the
idea of a plot will be in play, as the people on the beach put on a
plot play for Rosemary, and the scene soon after when Rosemary goes to
a movie set, invite us to look back to that beautifully composed
opening scene, and the clipping of Rosemary's shadow under the sun.
Why is it clipped?

Clip: an odd word for that. Later, Diver will clip the sun from
Rosemary's shoulder with an umbrella.

The light, the shade, the sun, the lights of studios, what Tanner
(American Mystery) and Reynolds (Intro to Gatsby, The Constant
Flicker)  discuss at some length, the pooling lights (sure that green
one too, if we must have it), find their way into Pynchon's prose,
and, the idea of merging the theatre with the theater, so it all
theater, while something we might trace to Shakespeare or even to the
Greek Dramas, is so modern in Fitzgerald; there, with the girl, her
legs pink with sun, face fresh, bursting with beauty...bright and
burning under the sun, under the hollywood lights...moving like ash
before the camera, frsh from the tender-oven...