"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past"

That is of course the last words of "The Great Gatsby." One of the novels whose ending I knew by memory. "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter - tomorrow we will run faster, stretch our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning -- So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." This is a hopeful/despairing and past/future ending. I came across a New York Time article last week that the Great Gatsby is now the favorite of Asian immigrant children. It doesn't surprise me. They imagine their forefathers as somebody like Gatsby going west and getting out of his class. I bet they imagine their grandpas as Robert Redford.