The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

[CD]

Well the purple prose puts me off.  It's a little too over the top.  It's like he can't help but turn everything into a metaphor.

"Purple prose" has a connotation for me of stuff like Victorian aesthetes waxing lyrical about the joys of opium. I thought Gatsby was fairly light. Edit: typos

[DavidW]

Oh, and it's not a flaw that Nick is a narrator standing slightly off to one side. He has his own life, but he is telling Gatsby's story. It's only natural he would concentrate on that.

I didn't say it was a flaw.  Are you replying to me?  Who are you replying to?

"Purple prose" has a connotation for me of stuff like Victorian aesthetes waxing lyrical about the joys of opium. I thought Gatsby was fairly light. Edit: typos

Wilkie Collins sure liked the stuff!

[secondwind]

Well, there was Owl Eyes, the guy Nick finds in the library, and the only one who attends the funeral, he who says "The poor son of a bitch."

Yes, Owl Eyes has some redeeming human features.  He's also a pretty interesting minor character.  He recognizes that Gatsby's house is an elaborate set.  In the library scene, he admires the degree of realism Gatsby has introduced:

"See!" he cried triumphantly.  "it's a bona-fide piece of printed matter.  It fooled me.  This fella's a regular Belasco.  It's a triumph.  What thoroughness!  What realism!  Knew when to quit, too--didn't cut the pages.  But what do you want?  What do you expect?" 

He recognizes Gatsby as an artist, like the theater impressario Belasco http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belasco_Theatre.  In fact, it is interesting to look at the book from the standpoint of Gatsby representing the artist in society.  He has constructed an entire life, but his most cohesive work is, of course, his house, which he has created for a very select audience of one.  In this work of art, it is important to have real books and also important that it is clear they are not really meant to be read.  Like everything else in this world of the novel, it is only the surface appearance that counts.

The discussion of Nick has been interesting. For what it's worth, my understanding is that Fitzgerald, following Conrad's example in The Secret Sharer, conceived of Nick as Gatsby's alter ego. Fitzgerald sometimes spoke of himself as two people: one the one hand, the self-destructive, alcoholic wastrel, and, on the other, the "spoiled priest" who stands aloof and observes. In Gatsby, he constructed his hero and his narrator out of those two parts of his psyche. Nick is the spoiled priest, Gatsby the "doer" who who is destroyed in the pursuit of his dreams. It makes sense that Nick would be complicit in Gatsby's failure: He is Gatsby. They're the same age, and they share the same modest, Midwestern background.

It is interesting to think of Nick as Gatsby's alter ego.  In fact, in psychoanalytic terms, we could think of Nick as an ineffectual Super-ego and  Gatsby as the uncontrolled Id.  What's missing from the picture is an effective Ego to implement some of the policies of the Super-ego and to channel and control the powerful urges of the Id.  Which brings me, of course, directly to the metaphor of cars and driving.

Who drives in this novel?  One answer is, all the wrong people at all the wrong times.  Drunks, careless drivers, angry drivers.  I'd have to check to be certain, but I don't think that Nick ever drives in the story.  Even in his nostalgia for the midwest, he remembers going home on trains (no driving required).  Interestingly, Owl Eyes does drive himself to Gatsby's funeral, even though he had been driven to the party where Nick met him. 

Daisy, Tom, Nick and Jay are all transplanted midwesterners spoiled, and in one case destroyed, by the East. In the end, Nick gives it up and returns home with that wonderful paragraph about "my" middle west.

Yes, what do you make of that? 

Gatsby's list of resolutions is said to be a takeoff on Benjamin's Franklin's resolutions in the Autobiography. Franklin is the first and largest example of the distinctly American drive toward self-improvement, and more, self-reinvention, which is Gatsby's whole problem. Franklin --- the first pattern American, in D.H. Lawrence's phrase --- set out to prove that Americans can be anything they wants to be, given the will. Gatsby is Fitzgerald's counterexample. (What Larence overlooked, and what saves Franklin, I think, is his wit and irony. After all, Franklin says he gave up the whole self-improvement kick when he found, he says, he was getting too perfect, and society dislikes perfect people.)

So Jimmy Gatz is aiming for Ben Franklin and ends up a bootlegger?  My, how the American dream has fallen.

Sorry if this sounds like a  high school book report.

Well, if it is, it must be in the AP class!

[Joe Barron]

Yes, Owl Eyes has some redeeming human features.
He recognizes Gatsby as an artist, like the theater impressario Belasco.

Interesting insight, but I think there's also a sense of fraudulence here. Belasco (who was, by the way, the source for Madame Butterfly) was noted for teh degree of realism of his sets but the shallwoness of his plays. It was the influence of Belasco and others like him that O'Neill rebelled against in the twenties.

Owl Eyes is describing a theater set. Everything is for show, and the fact that the pages aren't cut in fact proves that Gatsby hasn't read any of the books.

[secondwind]

Interesting insight, but I think there's also a sense of fraudulence here. Belasco (who was, by the way, the source for Madame Butterfly) was noted for teh degree of realism of his sets but the shallwoness of his plays. It was the influence of Belasco and others like him that O'Neill rebelled against in the twenties.

Owl Eyes is describing a theater set. Everything is for show, and the fact that the pages aren't cut in fact proves that Gatsby hasn't read any of the books.

It is always a fine line, isn't it, between art and artifice, between artistic and artificial?

[Szykneij]

I can't help but feel there is a connection between "Owl Eyes" and the "Eyes of Doctor Eckleburg". If Dr. Eckleburg symbolizes an all-seeing God, might the examination of Gatsby's library by Owl eyes symbolize an examination of his soul?

[secondwind]

I can't help but feel there is a connection between "Owl Eyes" and the "Eyes of Doctor Eckleburg". If Dr. Eckleburg symbolizes an all-seeing God, might the examination of Gatsby's library by Owl eyes symbolize an examination of his soul?

If so, his final judgment is sympathetic--"The poor son of a bitch."

[Herman]

I have read about fifty pages now, in a TGG copy I bought in January 1976, as noted on the endpaper (bad habit). Fifty pages is pretty much the exposition, including the first conversation with Jay Gatsby. I can't say otherwise than I have repeatedly been stunned at the deftness of the prose and the way the exposition is handled. The party at Buchanan's lovenest is just amazing writing, and so is the contrasting party at Gatsby's.

If there's one downside, it's minute, and that is that indeed the prose occasionally turns purple, when it concerns attractive women, such as when Daisy and Jordan, both dressed in white, are introduced. But, hey, nobody's perfect, and certainly books aren't. Also it may be FSF wished to convey in this way that Carraway was a little bashful around this kind of woman.

[Joe Barron]

If there's one downside, it's minute, and that is that indeed the prose occasionally turns purple, when it concerns attractive women, such as when Daisy and Jordan, both dressed in white, are introduced. But, hey, nobody's perfect, and certainly books aren't. Also it may be FSF wished to convey in this way that Carraway was a little bashful around this kind of woman.

But, hey, I mean, we're talking about women here, for heaven's sake. 

[Herman]

I finished reading The Great Gatsby last night, and I cannot but reconfirm that this is one of the greatest American novels.

Browsing a biography (Bruccoli) today, one cannot but marvel at the way Fitzgerald arrived at this book, which in a funny way is not flawless, and yet it is perfect.

This must have been the fourth of fifth time I read The Great Gatsby and I am already looking forward to the next time.

[secondwind]

Herman, I'd be interested to know if there were new insights or observations that you had about Gatsby this time around, having read it several times before.  Also, can you tell us a little about how Fitzgerald "arrived at this book."  I don't know a lot about his biography.   

[Herman]

Well, Fitzgerald had had two bestsellers previously, but I suspect he was getting the feeling time had passed and a new generation was taking over; he had written so many slick short stories he wasn't quite sure he was regarded as a major literary writer any longer. He wanted to write a novel that would put him squarely back on the map. Also he wanted to do something with his midwestern roots.

At first he seems to have had a plan to write a novel set in 1885 in the Midwest; an American historical novel, so to speak. I suspect he wanted to get away from the 'jazz-age' thing he was associated with. Well, this clearly didn't quite work out. The party scenes in the The Great Gatsby belong to the best there is. However, by making the novel Nick Carraway's story, the story of a man who has a sincere disgust for everything Gatsby stands for, and yet is inexorably attracted to the man's tragedy, and by framing Carraway's story in yet a larger frame (the lyrical solem stuff with the valley of the ashes and the eyes of Ecklesburg), this sense of moral distance is conveyed to the reader.

And then there's some more intimate biographical stuff. In the twenties, as Fitzgerald first felt his reputation was slipping (even though he was making enormous amounts of money in the magazines) his drinking got out of control. He moved to Southern France to focus on Gatsby; he deliberately chose an unfashionable spot so as to get away from the hip crowd. However his wife Zelda got into an affair with a dashing French airforce officer. This affair evolved into a party routine, Zelda telling folks about this tragicomical adventure of hers, and Fitzgerald embellishing the tale, too. Somehow this situation wound up in Gatsby, too, as it was happening, with Buchanan (a guy as unidentical to the writer as possible, "hulking"), Daisy and Gatsby. And Myrtle.

Just imagine this. Fitzgerald is anxious to reverse the downward trend in his career, and yet everthing around him (and in him) is falling apart. And yet Gatsby is an exquisitely controlled work of art, on which he worked longer and harder than ever before. If you see the way he rewrote the last page, it's just amazing. Obviously this was only possible with a rather short novel; it would have been physically impossible to rework a 400 page book in such a short time. I should add, perhaps, that The Great Gatsby was received with critical acclaim, and sold badly. The second printing did not sell out for many years. And these were print runs of 3000 or 2500 copies. In other words, Fitzgerald lost money big time on this book, and basically his career as a literary writer was over in 1925, the day his greatest novel was published. These days Gatsby sells 200.000 copies a year.

I can't really say I have had many 'new insights' as I read it this time, especially as I read it in a deliberately un-worky way  -  to put it bluntly, it was a bedtime reading for a week. I have gotten a little older (or as some people say: maturer) since the last time I read it, and one gets more sensitive to the moral depths of this book, that are almost always deftly tucked away in short phrases, like Nick's last talk with Jordan.

Ultimately this novel transcends stuff about 'the American dream' ( insofar as people in 1925 used that phrase, I don't know). The Great Gatsby is about the human condition. Gatsby stretching out his arms towards the green light is calling for his youthful vision of love and life to return to him. But the only way he can get Daisy back is by getting filthy rich  -  i.e. by losing his innocence and corrupting himself. Carraway, in his understated way, is concerned with the same set of problems. He's gone to the East, but it just doesn't feel right to him. He's 'a bonds man'  -  human bonds matter to him a great deal. That's one of the reasons why he gets attached to Gatsby, even though he despises Gatsby's world. At the end of the book he is one of the few people who knows his adorable cousin Daisy has killed someone, and she doesn't care; he has a hard time shaking his old college friend Buchanan's hand and not telling Jordan, who could have been his future wife, some ugly truths.

[karlhenning]

Thanks, Herman.

[secondwind]

Interesting post, Herman.  You've given me some things to think about in terms of parallels between Fitzgerald and his characters, between his world and Gatsby's.