The Great Gatsby wasn’t the first book I read more than once; that was The Call of the Wild by Jack London. And the reason I had read Gatsby twice so soon was, admittedly, because it was assigned reading in both high school (English) and college (Arts & Humanities) classes. However, I’ve developed this strange habit of underlining books while I read, and both times I read Gatsby, I was using a class copy that was lent to me and that I wasn’t supposed to mark up. So I felt that I should return to the great American novel once again to give it the underline treatment and preserve my favorite quotes and passages for easy reference.
The second time I read it must have been the summer of 2002 — almost seven years ago — and yet, reading it a third time, I noticed parts of the book that have undoubtedly influenced my writing. Even “Don’t Ever Let the Ice Cream Melt,” the story I just published on Supraterranean.com last month, contains segments that echo my lasting impression of Gatsby. And yet that was a totally unconscious factor in my writing process. It makes me wonder what else from long ago influences my creative work in the present time. Some writers would call this perjury even if it’s unplanned. I’d like to think that it’s a positive thing when my favorite literature shapes my own writing. Isn’t that the point of looking up to other writers, and trying to learn from their accomplishments and mistakes?
I’ve always been one to clash with figures of authority, not so much in an outward way as within my own head, and my experience with English teachers was no exception (I always got along better with science and Spanish teachers). However, I feel somewhat indebted for having read Gatsby with two different teachers. Each provided a vastly unique interpretation of the book, but neither was necessarily tailored to the level of the class. For example, my 11th grade teacher pointed out that two characters went to have sex when they disappeared in Chapter II, but it was the college instructor who focused on the names listed in Chapter IV, illustrating that East Egg was all old money (mostly White Ango-Saxon Protestants, or at least people of Western European background) and West Egg was all new money (people from Hollywood and Broadway, but also Eastern Europeans).
Having most of the symbolism and mysterious segments already figured out, I was able during this third read to really soak up the language and story — especially the vocabulary. In fact, if I named one book that has made me love the English language more than any other, it would be Gatsby. Fitzgerald’s grasp of adjectives and adverbs was purely astounding. And the book is far more poetic than I remembered, with sentences that seem to curl and float around the page, winding intricate lullabies where other authors would chant monosyllables. I even kept a list of words I would have sworn I’d never seen before: meretricious, somnambulatory, caravansary. Then there were awesome words I had seen but couldn’t define: dilatory, credulous, magnanimous, interminable, etc, etc.
To be completely honest, my comprehension level was significantly lower during the first two reads. I just wasn’t an avid reader until around the age of 22 — that’s the only explanation for it. Reading takes practice, just like any other skill.
These are just a few of my favorite passages. They’re not related in any specific way, and (I’m hoping) one doesn’t have to have read the story to appreciate them.
“But his heart was in a constant, turbulent riot. The most grotesque and fantastic conceits haunted him in his bed at night. A universe of ineffable gaudiness spun itself out in his brain while the clock ticked on the washstand and the moon soaked with wet light his tangled clothes upon the floor. Each night he added to the pattern of his fancies until drowsiness closed down upon some vivid scene with an oblivious embrace. For a while these reveries provided an outlet for his imagination; they were a satisfactory hint of the unreality of reality, a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy’s wing” (pp. 99-100)
“After all, in the very casualness of Gatsby’s party there were romantic possibilities totally absent from her world. What was it up there in the song that seemed to be calling her back inside? What would happen now in the dim, incalculable hours? Perhaps some unbelievable guest would arrive, a person infinitely rare and to be marveled at, some authentically radiant young girl who with one fresh glance at Gatsby, one moment of magical encounter, would blot out those five years of unwavering devotion” (p. 110).
“They had never been closer in their month of love, nor communicated more profoundly one with another, than when she brushed silent lips against his coat’s shoulder or when he touched the end of her fingers, gently, as though she were asleep” (p. 150).
“…Perhaps he no longer cared. If that was true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream. He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass. A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about…like that ashen, fantastic figure gliding toward him through the amorphous trees” (p. 162).
“For a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder” (p. 182)
“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…. And one fine morning—
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past” (p. 182)
Gatsby’s belief in “the orgiastic future” is particularly interesting. There is obviously more than one definition or conception of the American Dream. In a recent newspaper article, one economist referred to it as the idea that each new generation will have a higher standard of living than the previous generation. According to that economist, using that definition, the American Dream has ended — at least at the present time, following the recession that started in Fall 2008.
But this isn’t the first time that the American Dream has been declared dead. I seem to remember Hunter S. Thompson hinting at such a suggestion in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. (By the way, Thompson once typed out Gatsby in its entirety to make the style and vocabulary his own). Maybe every American must endure the death of his or her first dreams, only to build up new ones and hope that they will take flight. The problem is that most men never build up new dreams; most men fade into the ashen wasteland — like Wilson in this story.
I think Gatsby’s American Dream is an all-encompassing one: the simple hope that the future will be better than the past and present. (UPDATE 3/14/09: It just occurred to me that I haven’t fully expressed this thought. Let me try again; I think it’s actually a two-part concept. 1) That the future will be better — or at least not worse than — the present. 2) That the present can live up to the favorable aspects of the past. Obviously this is still a failure of an attempt to encapsulate the Dream. The basic idea is that things should either remain steady or get better, not get worse as time goes on.) But even that modest dream can be unbearably difficult to nurse at times. I’m hoping that the general public will experience a rebirth of that essential dream, now that the Bush Administration cannot damage our national morale or international reputation any longer. Although, for us to depend on any one man for such a transformation would be totally irresponsible.
And then there’s the ghost of youth, issuing sweet whispers that haunt us and fill our minds with memories that seem more wholesome and complete than any adult experience — which brings to mind another Gatsby quote:
“Thirty—the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning briefcase of enthusiasm, thinning hair. But there was Jordan beside me, who, unlike Daisy, was too wise ever to carry well-forgotten dreams from age to age. As we passed over the dark bridge her wan face fell lazily against my coat’s shoulder and the formidable stroke of thirty died away with the reassuring pressure of her hand.
So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight” (pp. 136-137).
