ABAW: The Great Gatsby

The last time I read Gatsby was in a graduate seminar taught by a man with the most astonishing southern accent ever heard in a mid-Atlantic university. I don’t remember anything about the discussion except for information about the general dissolution of Fitzgerald’s life and the way the prof said “Daisy,” with a low rumbling drawl like a heavy bell.

The time before that, I read the book on my own. Sometime in college out in the New Mexico dust. I don’t remember anything about that reading either, except that I was unimpressed and uncertain that I understood the point of the book. Ah youth.

I decided to read Gatsby again on a whim. It’s not on my list of scheduled books, but it comes up in Azir Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran, and I decided on a lark while the internet was down and ice was on the ground that I’d read or reread the major novels Nafisi discusses as I go along in her book. This has the double effect of filling in Nafisi’s allusions, and allowing me to pause as I read to digest her experience and discussion. 

I had a difficult time not getting caught up in Fitzgerald’s words. I wrote down snatches of text every few pages. I’ve included my favorite lines at the end of this post. As I think about my overall impressions of the novel, I come back over and over to the closing lines. 

“He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night…. So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

This is one of those lines that elevates the novel from a mere story about a handful of very wealthy people who mingle one summer, and connects it to something bigger. There is an inevitability in the novel that none of the characters are able to escape. There is a tension between the upper class and the upper-upper class, and the inability for anyone to penetrate too far into another strata of wealth before rebounding back to origins. The melancholy predestination of the story, of every character wanting and striving for something he or she can’t quite find or even identify is transformed into an inescapable aspect of humanity.

***

“He’s so dumb he doesn’t know he’s alive.”

“I hate careless people. That’s why I like you.”

“He had waited five years and bought a mansion where he dispensed starlight to casual moths—so that he could ‘come over’ some afternoon to a stranger’s garden.”

“Americans, while occasionally willing to be serfs, have always been obstinate about being peasantry.”

“…perhaps my presence made them feel more satisfactorily alone.”

“Her voice is full of money.”

“So we drove toward death through the cooling twilight.”

“The lawn and drive had been crowded with the faces of those who guessed at his corruption—and he had stood on those steps, concealing his incorruptible dream, as he waved them good-by.”

And my very favorite part:

“There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams—not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself in with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.”

Update on Monday, February 7, 2011 at 4:58PM by Eglentyne

An episode of Studio 360 with Kurt Anderson last fall which discusses The Great Gatsby at length, including the drawling voice of my professor, James West, and Azar Nafisi on teaching the book in Iran. Multi-media FTW.

Comments

[amy d]

I read it in college . . . or was it high school. . . ? Anyway, all I remembered about it was the pretentious-ness of the characters and how much I loathed having to read it. Good for you for going back and giving it another whirl!

I don't think I've ever read a book twice and I'll definitely not start with this one, lol.

[Eglentyne]

I did love it this time, Amy. I was surprised at the depth of emotion and the complexity of action that Fitzgerald was able to compress into 121 pages. There is pretentiousness. There is gaudiness. There is a fundamental dishonesty to most of the characters. But Jay Gatsby is a character I can love.

I've only seen a few episodes of Mad Men, but in the description of how Gatsby builds himself up and changes his life after the war, I thought of Don Draper. Does that comparison hold up to those of you who have watched Mad Men more faithfully?