Nick looked on at the moon, coming up over the hills.
“It isn’t fun any more.”
He was afraid to look at Marjorie. Then he looked at her. She sat there with her back toward him. He looked at her back. “It isn’t fun any more. Not any of it.”
She didn’t say anything. He went on. “I feel as though everything was gone to hell inside of me. I don’t know, Marge. I don’t know what to say.”
He looked on at her back.
“Isn’t love any fun?” Marjorie said.
“No,” Nick said. Marjorie stood up. Nick sat there, his head in his hands.
– An excerpt from “The End of Something”
That was published in 1925. It is now 87 years later, and it is still exactly right. That is precisely how it goes down when one person no longer loves someone they once thought they did. I know, because I have been on both sides of that conversation. In its most recent appearance in my life, I am heartbreak’s Marjorie. That is what prompted this task of reading 50 classic works of American literature in a year. My heart is broken and it needs a distraction. I want to get lost in a world outside of my own.
