SOURCE: "Fitzgerald's 'Babylon Revisited'," in College English, Vol. 25, No. 2, November, 1963, pp. 128-35.

In the following essay, Gross refutes James M. Harrison's argument that Charlie is still drawn to his former Life.

Thus, though we cannot make our sun Stand still, yet we will make him run.

—Marvell

In the little hours of the night every move from place to place was an enormous human jump, an increase of paying for the privilege of slower and slower motion.

—"Babylon Revisited"

I

The two epigraphs which introduce this essay define, in one sense, the polar limits of Fitzgerald's life. His frenetic attempts, almost heroic in their intensity and pathetic in their ultimate ineffectiveness, to stay ahead of "Time's winged chariot" (though he was afraid the race was lost at thirty) are too well known, have been too fully documented, to need much elaboration here. "I wanted to enjoy, to be...