I read Robinson Crusoe which annoyed me, Heart of Darkness which if you can get passed the first 6 pages and listen to the Thin Red Line soundtrack while reading it is brilliant, I learned about the stupidity of Nam with Dispatches and I fell in love with Love in the Time of Cholera. Then came Gatsby.
I had seen the trailer for the movie and had been intrigued( I like spectacle, call me cheap). I figured I should read it before seeing the film. A couple people told me to look into it and my lovely cousin suggested it. As she put it it was a good summer book. She loaned me her copy and the reading began.
Now over the years I had heard a lot of things about it. That the movie with Mia Farrow sucked balls, that they originally wanted Nicholson and that they wanted Robert Towne to write it but he said no Iam going to write a film about water and corruption in 30s LA. I had heard greatest novel ever by some unknown group of people. I had heard from my dear mother that it was kind of blah. I had heard so many things but never read it. I figured time to form my own damn opinion.
I read it in less then a week which due to the short attention span that most people have is probably one of the reasons it's so popular. And I read it usually on subway rides home or in a park which is one of the best things about New York. I had already made the decision that I was going to leave New York after nine years months earlier and had kept it quiet from most people. So it got me at a very interesting moment.
My thoughts on the book are simply this. Is it the greatest novel ever written? I don't think so. But is it good? Yeah it is. I think the problem with it is that it's overly hyped. It's like that movie that your supposed to like cause everyone says its great then when you sit down and watch it it's a huge let down. Or the really hot person you want to sleep with and it finally happens and your like well that was fun? I think that's the problem the book has.
At heart it's an interesting story. It's really about a guy who doesn't think he's good enough so he changes who he is, try's to hide where he came from and what he was so a girl will accept him. It's about a codependent relationship. Gatsby figures if he changes his speech, gets new clothes, becomes really rich and throws crazy parties the girl who he loves will run away with him. I think that's why a lot of people dig it. Because how many of us haven't been there at some point in our life. We aren't happy with ourselves so we figure if I read these books and dress this way and go to these places and hang with these people maybe that person will like me. I know your thinking that's stupid. But when you've been head over heels in love and have trouble loving yourself( yeah i know i sound like a self help book)you do stupid things. You end up idealizing that person which Gatsby does and which ultimately is his downfall.
I remember when I finished the book I found that the only characters I liked where Nick, Gatsby and the gangster. The others well, I had dealt with people like Tom and Daisy. Maybe Iam being all working class hero or something. I blame that on my years waiting on a lot of people like Tom and Daisy( we'll go into my personal neurosis another time). Tom and Daisy are a certain type of person that exist specifically in New York.
If you've never lived in New York at some point it's hard to grasp. Tom and Daisy are the women on sex and the city, they are Gordon Gekko, they are the shit show in front of Tonic on a Friday night, they are that drunk corporate guy hitting on the waitress at Pershing square waiting for the train back to Connecticut to see his family,they are the ultimate yuppie couple. They are the prom King and Queen and Gatsby is the nerdy kid who wants to go to the really cool party. God maybe that's what New York high society is : a bad high school movie. Ha I feel witty.
Because Fitzgerald both despised and desperately wanted to be a part of that world , he was both Nick and Gatsby all at once, he was able to capture a world that could of taken place in not just the 20s in New York but could of taken place in the 70s, 80s or even the last decade when things got decadent and was able to both criticize and at the same time praise the emptiness of these people. Maybe that's the brilliance they talk about with it.
I don't know , all I know is Gatsby should of just been himself, and if Daisy had come running to him then he probably wouldn't of ended up dead.
