Morgan -- I liked the parties, the pacing (except when they felt the need to go fishing, for Christ's sake), and most of all the female characters: flappers, dingbats, femme fatales, kind of like where film noir meets pinot noir. (And I swear to God I am not trying to make generalizations about the fairer sex, if I may call them that). I don't know. It felt kind of proto-beatnik to me, which I really liked. Much more of the cosmopolitan Lost Generation elements I like to talk about when I talk about fiction (if I may paraphrase Hemingway's most obvious beneficiary, Ray Carver). It just seemed to have some life to it, some viva la something that I didn't connect with in the Nick Adams and others in his canon. Gatsby, on the other hand ... well, maybe that's for another list. A list of the most Romantic, sad things on Earth. rick