Book #4 of 100: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

by Trish on September 11, 2008

I’ve already brought up the fact that I reread Gatsby this summer and viewed the movie with Mia Farrow and Robert Redford and Sam Waterston, directed by Francis Coppola. I’m a fan of Coppola’s work with this movie. It did not disappoint. I loved it. At first, I was distracted by Farrow’s breathy, lyrical voice, but it shocked me into Gatsby’s world (which is the point).

But back to the book. The story of the fabulously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan is timeless. It’s a true American story: the grasp for wealth and the means by which men endeavored to reach that goal. It’s a story not of good and evil, but of human nature and its secret longings. The characters are drawn, not as caricatures, but as multi-dimensional people who lived in another time and place (1920s America, before the Depression) and who had other thoughts and worries and fears. I am both in love and irritated with Daisy. I envy Tom and despise him. I dream of Gatsby and yet don’t trust him. I adore Nick and want to clap him on the shoulder for his stand against the powerful, yet invisible forces at work. And I want to tell him not to be disappointed. He was spared from it all. But I’m oversimplifying and giving away the plot. Just read it!

This book is a classic and holds some of the most pitch-perfect prose I’ve ever read:

The lawn started at the beach and ran toward the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sun-dials and brick walks and burning gardens–finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run. The front was broken by a line of French windows, glowing now with reflected gold, and wide open to the warm windy afternoon, and Tom Buchanan in riding clothes was standing with his legs apart on the front porch.

Isnt’ that marvelous? I love it.

And then I read this critical reading somewhere and copied it down in my reading notebook:

[Gatsby] remains defined not by dark deeds but luminous aspirations. Gatsby was in a hurry to rise above the fray, and to him, as scholar Richard Lehan writes, “Money is money, and he never understands the differences between . . . the established wealth [and] the new rich, or like himself, the ersatz and criminally rich.” Gatsby, both godly and childlike, was beyond distinctions of high and low, of wealth that was criminal or noble–indeed, noble wealth, as Lehan points out, was originally criminal before it got cleansed by countless years in banks and posh real estate. Fitzgerald was well aware of this irony. The Great Gatsby, then, indicts society for the simplemindedness with which it judges its members. Gatsby is too complex and loveable to be so easily condemned.

Who knows where it comes from. I will try and track it down. I love this book so much. I will more than likely read it again and again as the years go by. It’s just one of those books you savor and think about a lot.

To all who are in New York, Pennsylvania, and the Pentagon, and for those who lost so many dear ones seven years ago today, you are in our prayers and thoughts. We love New York! And our prayers/thoughts are with those in the path of Ike. Hang on!