Comment by everybodyknows
3 days ago
The author quotes: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
Then comments:
> I think that “beat” and “borne” lack visual concreteness. Shouldn’t it be “paddle”? “Paddle” sounds a little silly, but that’s the metaphor Fitzgerald is using. (Those boats must be canoes, not steamboats. A steamboat wouldn’t care that much about a current.)
A reminder of the obscurity of Fitzgerald's analogy, which is specific to the technology of sailing: A "beat" is a course that will take the boat upwind -- always a challenge. And if the current of the water is pointed downwind, perhaps impossible.
Somehow none of the New Yorker editors caught this either.
This is a good catch! The choice of beat here to my ear is meant to capture both a sense of urgency (beating a drum to set the pace for rowers) and beating upwind (tacking frequently). The whole article feels a little undercooked and peevishly underinformed for the New Yorker.