Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

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This was a first real break from the hypocrisy of school tradition. The slicker was a definite element of success, differing intrinsically from the prep school “big man.”

“The Slicker” “The Big Man” 1. Clever sense of social values. 1. Inclined to stupidity and unconscious of social values. 2. Dresses well. Pretends that dress is superficial—but knows that it isn’t. 2. Thinks dress is superficial, and is inclined to be careless about it. 3. Goes into such activities as he can shine in. 3. Goes out for everything from a sense of duty. 4. Gets to college and is, in a worldly way, successful. 4. Gets to college and has a problematical future. Feels lost without his circle, and always says that school days were happiest, after all. Goes back to school and makes speeches about what St. Regis’s boys are doing. 5. Hair slicked. 5. Hair not slicked.

Amory had decided definitely on Princeton, even though he would be the only boy entering that year from St. Regis’. Yale had a romance and glamour from the tales of Minneapolis, and St. Regis’ men who had been “tapped for Skull and Bones,” but Princeton drew him most, with its atmosphere of bright colors and its alluring reputation as the pleasantest country club in America. Dwarfed by the menacing college exams, Amory’s school days drifted into the past. Years afterward, when he went back to St. Regis’, he seemed to have forgotten the successes of sixth-form year, and to be able to picture himself only as the unadjustable boy who had hurried down corridors, jeered at by his rabid contemporaries mad with common sense.