Modern

F. Scott Fitzgerald

1896–1940

Novelist of The Great Gatsby

Boats against the current is Nick Carraway, closing a novel about a man who tried to repeat the past. Fitzgerald knew the current personally. The last sentence is sadder than the parties, and it is the one that stays.

In the canon

  1. So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.The Great Gatsby

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