The Great Gatsby
I’ve read The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925) three times. Once in high school English class as a requirement. Twice for my own pleasure. But I never harvested much pleasure from it. It was advertised as the greatest American novel of the century, and at first I was excited to read a book with the word “great” in the title, figuring it must really be great if it’s in the title.
I was excited to read a book with the word “great” in the title, figuring it must really be great if it’s in the title.
But I didn’t get it. I mean, I didn’t understand why it was considered the greatest American novel of the century. I especially did not understand all the importance given in class lectures, discussions, and examinations questions to the optometry billboard on Long Island featuring the eyes of T.J. Eckleberg. They are supposed to be the eyes of God, or something, watching over the characters in the story and, in the end, judging, I suppose. In my memory of the book the eyes of T. J. Eckleberg are large, important, and a major story element. But that’s not the case in reality. In the novel the billboard in question is mentioned only briefly, and once. It’s given cursory treatment. It’s almost marginal. I always thought teachers’ concern with the eyes imagery was out of proportion, mistaken, and wrong.
Jay Gatsby (played in film by Robert Redford in 1974 and by Leonardo DiCaprio in 2014) is a wealthy bootlegger living on Long Island. His mansion home is open to partying guests among whom the source of Gatsby’s wealth is a kind of open secret, but whose invented autobiography is a semi-legendary semi-mystery. The story is narrated by Nick Carraway, a would-be Wall Street trader living in a cottage next door. Caraway’s cousin, Daisy, lives nearby and is the object of Gatsby’s fetish. Gatsby created himself. Never mind that he built his wealth on crime. Never mind that the autobiographical back-story he crafted is a bunch of lies.
So what was the big deal about Gatsby? I was recently discussing books with an American I know who likes to read. Our talk was far-ranging and diverse. At one point, Gatsby came up and during our talk I suddenly - after all these years - realized something about Gatsby and the claim that it is the greatest American novel of the century that I never figured out before. It's the most American of stories. Encoded at the very center of American DNA is admiration for the self-made success story, the mythic figure who pursues and fulfills his dream - someone like Jay Gatsby, a "Mr. Nobody from Nowhere" who rises from obscure poverty to immense wealth. In particular, Gatsby’s biography - even though it’s fiction - is his own invention, and American mythology is that it’s the land where people’s origin doesn’t matter, it’s a land where people can write their own story. Not only can they make a different future for themselves than they might otherwise have had in whatever place they came from, but they can change their past by writing / re-writing their own backstory.
You see, I disregard Gatsby because the namesake character is a criminal, a liar, and in the end a failure. There’s no depth to him, no reliable permanency. He is ridiculous, shallow, and temporary.
That’s why it’s a great American novel. It’s ridiculous, shallow, and temporary.
Or not.