SOURCE: "Time and Structure in Fitzgerald's 'Babylon Revisited'," in Modern Fiction Studies, Vol. 10, No. 4, Winter 1964-65, pp. 386-88.

In the following essay, Staley demonstrates how Charlie's past and present interact to influence his future.

Kant wrote that time is the most characteristic mode of our experience, and, as Hans Myerhoff has pointed out, "It is more general than space, because it applies to the inner world of impressions, emotions and ideas for which no spatial order can be given." Modern fiction is preoccupied with the concept of time; Bergson's concept of la duree realle and Proust's la memoire involontaire have of course, exerted a large influence on fiction; in fact their indirect influence has been enormous. Modern writers since Bergson and Proust have become increasingly aware of the implications of time in the structure of their fiction. F. Scott Fitzgerald was particularly preoccupied with the forces of time...