F.
Scott Fitzgerald
1925
An
Alexandrine Couplet About The East And West Egg Crowd
J. Gatsby loves Daisy – Daisy loves attention
Tom loves being an ass – Nick loves the
West, I guess?
***Magical Bonus
Couplet***
An
Alexandrine Couplet About Nick’s Friends
They dance and drink champagne – they traipse
around New York
dating the wrong people – and it ends tragically
So
here’s the thing: Everyone read this in
high school, but it’s a really difficult book to teach. Having taught it, I think it mostly loses
readers in its insanely complex intro, which is really hard to get through.
Alienate a teenager in the first 10 pages and you can’t really expect
them to give their full and complete attention to the next two hundred. So it goes.
Regardless,
of all the “classics” of American literature, this is 1 of the 2 best. I’m not exaggerating – I’ve spent way too
much time thinking all this through. To
Kill A Mockingbird is the other. And
here’re 2 reasons why: 1st,
Gatsby’s written about a very specific time and place, but it’s easily
translatable to other times and places.
It’s as relevant now as it was then.
It’s both history and pop-culture (there’ll be more on this after some
pictures of closets). 2nd, it
can be read as entertainment or in an educational setting. But mostly, this book is flawless. Every word is carefully chosen and perfectly
applied. Every line is pregnant with
meaning. Everything relates to
everything. There’s no wasted space,
dialog, or description, and no accidents.
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It’s
written like this closet
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But
it’s fun like this one
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We
could haggle if we needed. It always
bothered me how Nick forgot his birthday till halfway through the day, though I
can defend it if put on the spot. But
99.9% of this book is impossible to argue with.
If you don’t like it, that’s
cool. That’s a personal choice. But you can’t say it’s bad.
Living
in New York, I saw the lives of people so rich and careless. And I, as a West Coaster, never entirely fit in
there, was never truly accepted by New York, and eventually moved back. Like Nick, most of my friends in New York
weren’t New Yorkers. Virtually everyone
I knew had a great few years and moved again.
New York is filled with people from other places who hang out with
people from where they’re from. F. Scott
wrote about it then, and it’s still like that.
Also,
the lifestyle of Gatsby and his world are all very real today in hip-hop
culture. People making it, occasionally
in shady ways and occasionally in very honest ones, and then not knowing what
to do with themselves. They’re filthy
rich but people who’ve been the 1% for 2 or 3 or 5 generations will never
accept them. They throw lavish parties, drink,
dance. The entire “roaring 20s” thing,
with the sexy clothes, the flashy jewelry, the people going out, being part
of a “scene,” being photographed, it’s all so like today. Replace black and white news photos with TMZ,
the gin with Cristal, and you’re right there.
You
don’t believe me?
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| Look at Drake’s backyard . . . |
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. . . and Lil Wayne’s vodka add . . .
and tell me I don’t know what I’m
talking about.
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Honestly,
I’m not a huge fan of F. Scott’s writing.
But the man didn’t waste any time.
This book paints such an accurate picture, so brilliantly, that it
really is awe-inspiring from a writer’s point of view. Watching Nick watch all these people and
getting wrapped up in their stupid, inconsequential lives, and understanding
that they’re still people with emotions, hopes, dreams, that they actually take
themselves seriously, and having to figure out where to draw the line between sympathy
and disgust. Reading Gatsby is going
through all that, but we mostly don’t think about it or even understand it,
we just talk about the clothes they wear, the cars they drive, the physical
details through which we pretend to know and understand them. Remind you of the Kardashians? Think about it.
The
book really is stunning.
Also: Yes, the eyes of T.J. Eckleburg are meant to
be God. Just stop arguing and accept it.
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God.
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