I finally read The Great Gatsby. It was shorter than I expected it to be and I read it in less than a day.
A former friend (I have lots of these) who reads very little, was fond of referencing F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Great American Novel,” like a talisman of sorts. It made her appear urbane and well-read—neither of these were actual qualities that she possesses.
I have been tutoring at a school where most of the students don’t care at all about academics. I wage futile battles with my charges to get them to put their phones down and do schoolwork, nightly.
I’ll refrain from being overly critical: the school is close and the pay is great for part-time work. It’s at night, too, so I have my days free to write and be creative. Oh, and there is the additional perk of having an old-fashioned library full of books like The Great Gatsby. None of the students ever take them down off the shelves and look them over, either. They’re too busy Snapchatting or playing with their phones.
Last Friday night, Turner Classic Movies ran the 1974 Robert Redford version of the movie adapted from Fitzgerald’s classic. Here’s some “inside Hollywood” for you about the film: the script for this 1974 big screen adaptation was actually re-written by Francis Ford Coppola, after the original script by Truman Capote was rejected by director Jack Clayton.
Coppola remembers that he spent weeks locking in a Paris hotel room, an ocean away from the hype attending his own breakout Hollywood tour-de-force, The Godfather. He told an interviewer that the “key to cracking the script” for him was simply reading Fitzgerald.
The movie turned out to be enjoyable. I vowed I’d finally get the book and read it.
Monday night, I found six copies of The Great Gatsby waiting for me at the end of the night. I planned to take it home and return it. I didn’t expect to read into the wee hours and then finish it the following day.
The novel still seems very relevant in terms of class and privilege. Despite technology taking over our lives, most humans are still basically the same shitty creatures they’ve been from time immemorial.
I’ll save the synopsis. They abound across the interwebs.
I’ll briefly share this, though. Jay Gatsby was a man of means. He’d once been dirt poor. We never know for sure where his obscene wealth came from. The educated assessment from the narrative is that some of it was derived from gambling and bootlegging. Also, Daisy Buchanan is simply insufferable—what did Gatsby ever see in her?
People are always happy to ride on the coattails of others, especially if food, entertainment, and other perks are provided by someone else. Gatsby’s parties had become the stuff of legend on Long Island. Anyone who was someone wanted to be seen there, as did many people that could be best described as “poseurs.”
[Spoiler Alert!!]
When Gatsby is shot and killed at the end of the novel (and movie), the task of arranging his funeral falls to his only friend, Nick Carraway. It could be argued that even Carraway was ambivalent about his relationship with his wealthy neighbor. He at least cared enough about Gatsby to mourn his death and handle the logistics of seeing his friend’s crossing from the land of the living to whatever constitutes “the other side,” which is death.
The Eyes-The Great Gatsby (1974)
This passage towards the end of the book, detailing Gatsby’s funeral resonated with me.
About five o’clock our procession of three cars reached the cemetery and stopped in a thick drizzle beside the gate–first a motor hearse, horribly black and wet, then Mr. Gatz and the minister and I in the limousine, and, a little later, four or five servants and the postman from West Egg in Gatsby’s station wagon, all wet to the skin. As we started through the gate into the cemetery I heard a car stop and then the sound of someone splashing after us over the soggy ground. I looked around. It was the man with owl-eyed glasses whom I had found marvelling over Gatsby’s books in the library one night three months before.
I’d never seen him since then. I don’t know how he knew about the funeral or even his name. The rain poured down his thick glasses and he took them off and wiped them to see the protecting canvas unrolled from Gatsby’s grave.
I tried to think about Gatsby then for a moment but he was already too far away and I could only remember, without resentment, that Daisy hadn’t sent a message or a flower. Dimly I heard someone murmur “Blessed are the dead that the rain falls on,” and then the owl-eyed man said “Amen to that,” in a brave voice.
We straggled down quickly through the rain to the cars. Owl-Eyes spoke to me by the gate.
“I couldn’t get to the house,” he remarked.
“Neither could anybody else.”
“Go on!” He started. “Why, my God! they used to go there by the hundreds.”
He took off his glasses and wiped them again outside and in.
“The poor son-of-a-bitch,” he said.
I’m sure people who came out to Gatsby’s palatial manse gossiped about him following his murder. Gossip seems to be the stuff that holds together what remains of our personal interactions. It’s probably always been that way.
They couldn’t be bothered to pay their respects after he was dead, however.
This wasn’t a fictional trope of Fitzgerald’s, either. It’s reality.