The Shimmer and the Shadow: Summer through the eyes of F. Scott Fitzgerald

What to read this June

And then, one fairy night, May became June.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Beautiful and the Damned

Early morning on the Riviera on a rainy summer’s day.

We are standing on a threshold: in a few hours, May turns into June, and slowly, quietly, spring starts giving way to summer. It is a gentle transition, but one I feel deeply each year, and I always treasure every single moment of the month of June.

For me, the seasons are an ancient, endless dance between light and darkness, masculine and feminine, extraversion and introversion. Now, we begin the approach to the Summer Solstice on June 21, the first day of summer where the light gloriously reigns supreme.

F. Scott Fitzgerald: Beauty and Disintegration

There is something inherently summery about the writings of F. Scott Fitzgerald. His work carries that particular feeling of long days and late evenings, of brightness paired with a trace of melancholy. He has the most remarkable way of capturing the shimmering surface of summer, and the quiet tensions just beneath.