The Importance of Distortion

After Gatsby's death the East was haunted for me like that, distorted beyond my eyes' power of correction. So when the blue smoke of brittle leaves was in the air, and the wind blew the wet laundry stiff on the line, I decided to come back home. There was one thing to be done before I left, an awkward unpleasant thing that perhaps had better have been left alone. But I wanted to leave things in order, and not just trust that obliging and indifferent sea to sweep my refuse away. After all, Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I were all westerners; we possess some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern