Anti-Climacus

On the new-old F. Scott Fitzgerald story: it's not very good. I was surprised: he is usually both economical and poetic with his word and sentence choices. This is neither:

Vaguely she regarded it. Then she got up from her knees and sank back wearily in the corner of the pew. In her imagination, the Virgin came down, like in the play “The Miracle,” and took her place and sold corsets and girdles for her and was tired, just as she was. Then for a few minutes Mrs. Hanson must have slept.

The word choices are inexact, the voice and tone of the narrator varying, the central simile both clunky and time-bound as Fitzgerald mostly managed to avoid. The New Yorker was right the first time.