I was watching a bunch of kids last week and after a full morning at the pool there was a moment of quiet as they all b
ecame engrossed in their various screens. I didn’t want to disturb the peace and I also didn’t want to do chores, and I couldn’t find my Kindle, so I reached over the bookshelf and I picked up the dog-eared copy of The Great Gatsby that I purchased in approximately 1999 – I was delighted to see my youthful handwriting and my maiden name on the inside cover.
This is perhaps my 6th re-read–it’s somehow been about 10 years since my last one–and the book still gives me that haunting feeling that I got when I first read it at 17 – like somehow the words have captured something that is un-captureable, and I still have to look at it out of the corner of my eye, lest it escape. A scent you almost remember; a startling recognition that you almost lost something (a knowledge, a truth, a flavor?), and that it was beautiful or painful or both, and that you might easily lose it again.
This is a perfect book. I’m sorry, that is just a fact. The economy of language; the perfectly awful, beautiful, human characters; the layers and layers of meaning and subtext; the cleverly observed relationships and selfishnesses both large and small; the inevitable tragedy; the evergreen condemnation of rich, careless people.
He was balancing himself on the dashboard of his car with that resourcefulness of movement that is so peculiarly American—that comes, I suppose, with the absence of lifting work or rigid sitting in youth and, even more, with the formless grace of our nervous, sporadic games. This quality was continually breaking through his punctilious manner in the shape of restlessness.
I MEAN!!! A few words and I have an immediate, precise vision in my mind. I’d give more examples but I’ll run out of room, so please just go read it.
Upon this reading I noticed and re-noticed so many new things as well – for instance, how absolutely modern is his critique of American wealth and class. I mean, it’s not exactly subtext, but I guess that’s the beauty of a great novel: it meets you where you are. (I remember that last time I read this I had been totally focused on the weird Jordan-Daisy-Nick relationship, like do you guys even like each other?) There are Gatsby’s parties, for instance, which we think of in pop culture as the epitome of 1920s glam. I noticed especially, this time, how glam is soooo close to tacky. Fitzgerald’s prose so deliberately skates right on this line, describing but never quite judging…well, almost never:
They conducted themselves according to the rules of behavior associated with an amusement park.
Anyway, Gatsby throws these lavish parties, and is engaged in mysterious criminal enterprises with dudes who (spoiler) won’t bother to show up at his funeral, all in the pursuit of a woman with whom he has no real relationship. If that’s not a modern indictment of American capitalism, well.
And there are some really perfect one-liners along these lines:
Americans, while willing to be serfs, have always been obstinate about being peasantry.
Or how about:
He was a son of God–a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that–and he must be about His Father’s Business, the service of a vast, vulgar and meretricious beauty.
And of course, THE punchline:
They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.
It’s just so good, I’ll never get tired of it.