Monday, September 5, 2011

The Great Gatsby

I found it appropriate to read this on the day everyone was waiting to see how the Big Apple and Long Island would fair against the forces of Irene--looks like they did ok. All while reading this I kept thinking, is this an episode of Mad Men?  No, it can't be--this is the 1920s not the 1960s!  However, I can't help but think Matthew Weiner had Gatsby (and Buchanan) in mind when creating Don Draper.  The affairs, the passion, the lack of passion, the necessity to claim a different life than your own to "make" it--the cigarettes, drinking and parties?  I even pictured Joan when envisioning Myrtle Wilson. Maybe it's all because I'm depressed MM will not be around this fall.  Or maybe it's because the inherent sense of loneliness and longing that I feel in the characters of MM is the same in the characters of GG. Maybe the society that the characters in MM hold is a desperate attempt to keep the feelings and "gaiety" of a pre-WW2 world.  But WW1 has already happened in Gatsby, the crumbling of the past into a "modern" and then "post modern" existence has happening. So, not quite sure if that whole "gaiety" thing was forreal or not.  Carraway describes the partygoers at Gatsby's shindigs via their futures:  one drowns, another commits suicide, one strangles his wife.  The 20th century upper class is grasping for something that's not there--they have to make themselves interesting, like Gatsby does, or they look on in disgust (and desire) as the Buchanans do--New money vs. Old, West vs. East. It's all there.   Nick Carraway was a boring dude, in my opinion, but that's because he's normal, because he doesn't feel the need to create an exuberant existence for himself.  He is, as us, the reader, caught up in the drama of these other peoples' extraordinary lives.  It becomes a fog of indulgence until the reality of the world crashes down upon those involved and poor Nick is left to try to put some sort of meaning into why it all happens.  Poor sap loses his girl in the process.

I'd like to know more about Fitzgerald.  I asked Matt about this when I started reading--he didn't know much but did say Fitzgerald had a very tempestuous marriage to Zelda (his wife, not the Nintendo princess) who apparently "went crazy" (Matt's words).  I wonder if the various love-lives of this novel all point to various aspects of F.S. and Z's love.  I'm sure someone's written about this.

Also, just randomly, I'd like to know more about this East vs. West business.  I mean, I get it, but being from the South, I've always considered myself from the East Coast--however, that is not this East.  This concept of the "East" is the same geographic area as the "North" --but depending on where you are from I assume you see the are north of the Potomac River in a different light.    I love Nick's (Fitzgerald's) comments in the last few paragraphs about the Dutch coming over and discovering the area that is now Long Island and New York--the opportunity they saw there, and the opportunity the characters of this book still saw in that slither of land--how, in a way, those in the West like Nick and Daisy and Gatsby, they go there to hopefully find that opportunity.  They wish to be those Dutch immigrants coming across the Atlantic, finding a new home.  But they fail because New York has already been conquered and what's left is for it, the Big Apple, to do the conquering.

So what's next?  Next, I read (appropriately) "Heading West" by Doris Betts.

2 comments:

  1. You said:
    "Nick Carraway was a boring dude, in my opinion, but that's because he's normal, because he doesn't feel the need to create an exuberant existence for himself. He is, as us, the reader, caught up in the drama of these other peoples' extraordinary lives. It becomes a fog of indulgence until the reality of the world crashes down upon those involved and poor Nick is left to try to put some sort of meaning into why it all happens. Poor sap loses his girl in the process."

    Yep. Nick-as-the-reader is a good connection, and speaks to both the appeals and dangers of literary escapism. Books are a way of us making sense of the world, they are, in some ways, interesting people we meet who help us explore life. I'm afraid of taking this metaphor much farther, but I hope you take my meaning.

    Is this a "GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL"? I don't know. For one, I don't even know what that means. I just know that the received wisdom is that it is, indeed, a GAN. I also know that this is a book that does a perhaps unparalleled job of showing the great sadness of the idea of America--and I think Mad Men does the same thing.

    Spot-on, dear.

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  2. I echo Matt's "spot-on"! I like the Mad Men/Gatsby comparison, too. The thing that's super interesting to me is how many people I've known who love the glamor of both MM and GG and wish life could be like that, despite the fact that, like you point out, the emptiness is so palpable with both texts. "On the Road" is another like this. Even if it makes the life it presents look sexy, the characters are so miserable on some levels that you'd think the appeal would be undone. But apparently not. Or maybe the tragedy is part of the appeal. The whole "leave a beautiful corpse" thing. Anyway, always a pleasure to know what you're reading and thinking.

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