Duncan Williamson: Book Review The Great Gatsby fit.html

Another book that has been a need to read of mine for a long time so I put it on my Christmas list for 2003 and it duly arrived.

My first surprise on receiving this book is that it is so short: for some reason I have visions of it being a mighty tome: 188 pages in the Penguin Popular Classics version.

Question: what does the F stand for in F Scott Fitzgerald? JR wrote to let me know: it's Francis! Thanks JR.

This is really a simple story set on Long Island in the 1920s, written in St Raphael in France in the Summer and Autumn of 1924. The story is narrated for us by Nick Carraway even though the central focus of the story is the Great Gatsby. Gatsby begins by being an enigmatic character about whom many rumours exist and around whom many would be socialites flutter. "... men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars." Even global warming gets a look in!

Gatsby hosts many parties in his large house and even if one didn't have an invitation to attend, one could go anyway. Underlying the parties is a simple ploy: Gatsby had a girlfriend whom he couldn't forget and he was hoping that one day she would just walk into one of his parties and he would start their romance all over again. This never happened. In fact, he had to cajole the narrator into setting up a meeting with his former paramour, Daisy, rather than carry on waiting for her to crawl out of the woodwork. Once they got together again, the part of the story takes on a rather predictable direction of its own: it could have gone one of two ways, of course!

Underlying the Gatsby theme there are several sub plots: military distinction, Oxford University, Jewry, what and who is Gatsby really, infidelity, life in affluent America in the 1920s, meaningful friendship and loyalty.

Gatsby has been given an English affectation: he says old boy a lot as if that's the way the English talk! Very Somerset Maugham. Even the narrator is driven to say I was happier on the lawns because I had on shoes from England with rubber nobs on the soles that bit into the soft ground.

I think it's sad in some ways that the narrator, Gatsby's next door neighbour, becomes Gatsby's best friend, in effect. At the start of the book they don't know each other although Gatsby has noticed Nick and eventually invites him to one of his parties. The motivation here is that Gatsby realises that a next door neighbour could be an ideal ally in a quest to win back the affections of a former girlfriend. The sadnesses comes at the end of the book at the time when friendship is best demonstrated yet it is lost: Gatsby has no friends.

Gatsby's father demonstrates massive sadness, too, also at the end of the book. Father goes to Gatsby's home and is in awe at the grandeur and splendour of it all. Father is proud of his son's achievements. He is entwined with a strong suspicion that Gatsby's businesses affairs are not entirely following a straight pathway: interestingly the cover says As Gatsby pursues shady deals ... but I don't think that's a valid way of summarising the story: it's a fascinating and vital element but it's not at the core of the story.

The final aspects of sadness come towards and at the end of the story, too, which I won't ruin by revealing here! Gatsby becomes involved in an incident along with Daisy and, as a gentleman feels he must, he wants to defend Daisy's honour. In a sense he does but in another sense, he doesn't really get the chance; but he pays a price!

What about the reference to global warming that I made near the beginning of this review? Large as life I read this on page 124:

'I read somewhere that the sun's getting hotter every year,' said Tom genially. 'It seems that pretty soon the earth's going to fall into the sun - or wait a minute - it's just the opposite - the sun's getting colder every year.

An oddity struck me: Fitzgerald has put two references to nasal hairs that I spotted. The first one I didn't make a note of but the second on, on page 178, says 'The hair in his nostrils quivered slightly, and as he shook his head his eyes filled with tears.

Not a difficult read even though the setting and the characters will have something of an air of unreality about them for most of us. I recommend the book and despite my reference to Somerset Maugham, you won't find the language of the book too 1920s: I am assuming that Penguin hasn't modernised the text. Maugham's style is very upper middle class England of its time and the Great Gatsby is, as they say, much more accessible ... what a dreadful and pompous phrase that is!

Here's a lesson for the learning: But I am slow thinking and full of interior rules that act as brakes on my desires. We should learn th lesson that this sentence conveys!

Finally, you might be surprised to find the listing of difficult words on this page: supposedly written by one or more students of Harvard University: not the most difficult words for University students by my reckoning!