AN EFFERVESCENT HOMAGE TO THE SUBJUNCTIVE TENSE: (OK, I am never using a hed like that again. Promise.) This is a great Bleat about Scott Fitzgerald and why his “glimmering ghosts” and champagne prose don’t quite capture the ’20s. Lileks suggests John O’Hara’s Appointment at Samarra instead. I haven’t read that, so I’ll put in a word for the lurid, corroded allegory of Nathanael West’s Miss Lonelyhearts, one of the best American novels I’ve read.