Should have read classics discussion

My initial reaction to the music in the recent movie was also negative. Then I heard a story or an interview on NPR discussing what the intent was. In the twenties, jazz was sort of disreputable and looked down upon. It was considered sort of low-class. The sound track for the recent movie was trying to use a contemporary equivalent to the social standing of jazz in the twenties. The movie did use Gershwin at one point, and it really stood out and made an impression, possibly because it was so different from the rest of the sound track.

Thanks for the info. Its a terrible rationale, though. The most effective movies aren't saddled with clever hidden messages and sly double-meanings like this, on the part of the director. Its a clumsy and inept parallel he's drawing in any case. Riddled with holes. Shouldn't be in the forefront. The fundamental test for effectiveness in a film, is whether 'suspension of disbelief' is achieved. Does the audience feel themselves unengrossed, aware of their seats, phones, snacks--aware they are watching a giant flickering rectangle--or does the rectangle disappear as they become absorbed into the scene with the characters and the story? Coy, bumbling social commentary hinders that.

The man with the owl-eyed spectacles is an echo of the Dr. Eckleburg spectacle billboard. Owl-eyes sees through Gatsby's disguise. He is impressed with the detail of the fraud. He demonstrates to Nick that the books are not only real but uncut--just as they would be if Gatsby's library were real. If Gatsby had gone to the trouble of cutting the pages, it would have been going too far as no one would believe that he actually read the Stoddard Lectures.

A couple of notes: Books are bound in "signatures," which are basically large, double-sided pieces of paper on which an even number of pages are printed (say, 16 pages on one piece of paper). Each signature is folded and sewn/glued into the spine of the book. Later, printers came to use big guillotines to "chop" the edge of the book so that the reader could open and leaf through it. In Fitzgerald's day, the books were sold unchopped. Readers used book knives (like letter openers) to cut the signatures open as they read. This is how we know that Hemingway read the first few pages of Ulysses before skipping to the end. Another interesting tidbit is that the white supremacist book that Tom finds so compelling was written by the son of the Stoddard whose travel lectures Gatsby has included in his library.

So back to the book. I've finished through chapter five. Will try to get through the rest tonight.

All-seeing Owl-Eyes goes in the company of a man so drunk he does not know he has crashed his car. The wheel is off, yet the drunken man proposes going in reverse. The situation is hopeless, and there is no reasoning with him. Isn't this Nick? Observing, yet willing to be carried along by reckless companions headed for disaster.

Tom also loses a wheel in Jordan's narration of the Buchanans' early marriage. Clearly, Tom's been running around on three wheels for a long time.

Is Nick a reliable narrator? He claims to be a Yale man. He also says he's only been drunk twice in his life. Uh, yeah.

Fitzgerald must be telling us that while Nick considers himself a tolerant and insightful fellow, he is not quite, as he describes himself in contrast to Jordan "one of the few honest people I have ever known." This declaration comes just after we discover that Nick's non-engagement (he told Daisy and Tom and the reader that he was not engaged but had merely been friends with a girl that others thought that he ought to marry given the warmth of their "friendship") actually does amount to an "understanding" that would have to be broken off. What else has Nick been reticent to disclose? Oh, and as to his temperate habits, when he goes to his first Gatsby party, he is uncomfortable and forms the intention to hit the bar and get "roaring drunk." What we are learning about Nick is that he is maladroit, malleable, and maybe even spineless. His motives for participating in the lives of these people may be a simple inability to say No to personalities more vital than his own. Even the girl back home seems to have been put off rather than firmly dumped.

And/or he may be enjoying himself. His own life is boring, boring, boring. He describes it in a passage I'll bet most readers don't even remember. It isn't until Jordan enters his life more regularly that he perks up. What does she see in him? Is he just safer than all the other people careening around with one wheel off?

Gatsby is a curiosity as a neighbor but an actual connection to Jordan. It is Jordan who asks Nick to arrange a rendezvous between Gatsby and Daisy.

Gatsby himself is the one person in the novel (so far) in whose presence Nick asserts himself. Nick insists on paying the check, he drags Gatsby over to meet Tom (whereas he always been the dragee), he berates Gatsby and tells him he's "acting like a little boy" when Gatsby's nerve fails him during his meeting with Daisy. Gatsby's smile, which Nick finds so enchanting, yet which is generally followed by some spine stiffening in Nick is described by Nick as giving the impression that "it understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey." What Nick sees in Gatsby is a reflection of himself in which he is superior to those around him and in particular Gatsby, who is the only one meek enough to allow Nick to browbeat him.

I have purposely (and with great effort) restrained myself from mentioning any of the movies. These are two very different art forms (ask Stephen King).
For someone who loved a book, the movie is almost always bound to disappoint.
I have enjoyed reading the comments and shared insights of you all. I believe that great literature transcends time. People are people and are always prone to do selfish and foolish things. Fitzgerald demonstrates this.
Studying the Bible has led me to ponder the question: "Would I behave any differently in their place?"
Sadly I reply: "Probably not."

Elizabeth wrote: "I haven't tried tender is the night, but it sounds more like a book I would enjoy.

I appreciate the feedback Feliks. You are correct that human psychology is a more interesting subject matter. I ..."

You might check out the short story, "Diamond as Big as the Ritz," a darkly satiric look at greed (in the '20s or any other age).

Rb wrote: "For someone who loved a book, the movie is almost always bound to disappoint..."

Yes, but there are some instances where a film matches a book in pleasure. I can name perhaps a dozen of my own favorites.

I have wondered if Fitzgerald made Gatsby a war hero to try and gain some respectability for his character? Or to try and bring down the idea of a war hero, to one of a normal human being?

Finished. So...hm.

First, Tom. Nobody likes Tom. He's a boor and a bully, a philanderer. Really unpleasant fellow. But, surprise, surprise, Daisy loves him. And Myrtle sure thinks he's the bee's knees. He may be a hulking brute, but he's their hulking brute. In the end, he has very little trouble reclaiming Daisy from her Gatsby dream. And far from throwing anybody away, he's enraged at Gatsby for running Myrtle down "like a dog," and he reaches out to Nick, whose alignment with Gatsby would have been enough to put your basic jealous husband off any further contact. He doesn't throw Daisy away, though he would have had grounds--it would be easy to say that he was just retaining his chattel except for Nick's glimpse of Tom and Daisy through the shade. As for Tom sending Wilson after Gatsby, yeah, he might have called the police and prevented murder, but that would have stirred up a scandal with Daisy in the middle and, probably more immediately important to Tom, Wilson had a right to kill the man who killed his wife--and he'd be taking revenge (unknowingly) on Tom's behalf too. From Tom's POV Gatsby was a criminal, a homewrecker, and a cold blooded murderer.

Daisy doesn't throw anybody away either. She and Jordan are old, old friends. She takes up distant Cousin Nick. She and Tom are not frequenters of the kind of decadent parties that Gatsby throws. As a very young woman she dates Gatsby for a month. A month! Long distance doesn't work for her, and she falls in love with someone else. Gatsby's obsession is not her fault. When he reappears, she is unhappy in her marriage. Her husband has a mistress; why shouldn't she have a mister? Especially one who represents her younger self, a faithful lover, the man she might have married and lived happily ever after? Gatsby--generous, loyal, polite, affectionate--everything Tom is not. Divorcing Tom, however, is not what Daisy wants. She invites Gatsby to her home and trots out little whatshername, the heretofore invisible baby, as if to say "Think about what you are asking me to sacrifice." It would be unfair to say that Daisy is a mere trophy wife, with her voice full of money, but she doesn't appear to be much of a mother, and we are left to believe that she doesn't confide in Tom about her role in Myrtle's death--she lets Gatsby take the blame. So I suppose, maybe she doesn't throw Gatsby away so much as she throws him under the bus, but hey, she was trying to repair her marriage. And avoid manslaughter charges. And, after all, Gatsby had no right to ask so much from her.

Gatsby I remembered as a fraud--that he had built up this impenetrable facade to mask his true identity. Not so. He's basically a typical jazz age self-made man (albeit a criminal). New money trying to buy the approval of old money. He keeps a picture of his notorious mentor in plain view, his medals are real, he was at Oxford (briefly). He introduces himself to Nick by suggesting (quite plausibly) that they might have seen each other during the war. Gatsby hasn't had to construct an elaborate lie; he has only had to buy an elaborate house. His guests--strangers to him--invented his mystery for him.

According to Gatsby's own story, his ambitious climb started long before he met Daisy. His father backs that up when he shows Nick the schedule Jimmy had jotted down for himself as a boy. He wanted to climb alone to a "secret place above the trees" and "suck on the pap of life," but Daisy messed it up. Falling in love with her meant abandoning his self-identifying divinity and becoming a man. He continued his climb after the war, but his "vision" was distorted and confused. He buys the house to be near Daisy, in the hope of meeting her again. He lives lavishly in the hope that She of the Voice Made of Money would be drawn to him. He doesn't really know Daisy, let alone understand her. But he had "incarnated" for her, dagnabbit, and he would redeem her if it was the last thing he ever did.

Gatsby keeps his wartime heroism in his pocket instead of on his chest. He and Nick have their service in France in common. This alone would be a bond at least as strong as the Yale bond Nick shares with Tom. These two had come home from some truly horrific action, and though Fitzgerald doesn't dwell on it, the generation first reading the novel would have had all that background as part of their own experience. Nick is dealing with his PTSD by selling bonds; Gatsby is dealing with his by stealing them. Maybe that's at the root of why, though he claims to disapprove of Gatsby, Nick finds greatness in him. Tom and Daisy are locked in a "disgusting" domestic tussle over some self-indulgent infidelities. Jordan swings away at golf balls, seemingly indifferent to everything. Gatsby, for all his faults, is large in his aspirations and shows doggedness and courage (and unscrupulousness) in attaining his objectives, including his "incorruptible dream."

Nick says that his vision of New York became distorted after Gatsby's funeral. Less Petronius, more Fellini. He needs Owl-eyes to show up at the funeral to confirm, with his corrective lenses, that "they" had been a "rotten crowd" and that Gatsby was pitiable in his aloneness. Nick seems to derive a sense of self-importance (and self-righteousness) in being Gatsby's lone mourner. Betrayed by a kiss (Daisy's), assassinated, deserted by his followers--Gatsby seems to grow in Nick's esteem as no one else remains to spin mysteries about the man.

My daughter recently read Gatsby for school. She liked it but found it "colorless" and kind of boring. I think the real reason kids have a hard time relating to this book isn't the setting or the people. It's the pale pinks and yellows and whites in which the whole thing is written. Gray is the color of evil. Yet it's a violent story. There is a fortnightly carnival, a broken nose, arguments, gun shots, revving motors of big cars--but no loud noises, no percussion, very little in the way of red blood. Nick's narration is so quiet, he meditates characters to life, he averts his gaze from violence and focuses on the margins, he thinks and thinks and much of what he thinks doesn't ring quite true. Kids are pretty open to narrators that speak frankly, but narrators that withhold, distort, try to control the reader's impression of a story that doesn't seem quite right--that's off-putting. If the author doesn't make the narrator clearly unreliable, then the story may just have an inauthentic feel, and the reader may not realize that there is a different story going on underneath.

My daughter recently read Gatsby for school. She liked it but found it "colorless" and kind of boring. I think the real reason kids have a hard time relating to this book isn't the setting or the people

I think this is a good point Longhare. I taught high school juniors for twelve years, and most books they read on their own tended toward straight forward narrative and plot driven action. They don't like to peel the layers away as they often feel it is the adult (the teacher) ascribing meaning that isn't there in the text. They read very literally and must learn to be more figurative in what is in the text.

Elizabeth, I remember all through high school (way before you started teaching) how the class would challenge and challenge the teacher: "How do you know that's what the author meant?" Because it always seemed like a stretch to impose all kinds of symbolism and whatnot to what seemed like a straightforward (but boring) book. I'm glad I learned what I did (as skeptical as I remained for years beyond high school). At some point, books started to become more three dimensional for me, and all the weird stuff you teachers used to foist on us finally made sense. Thank you for teaching.

For a movie buff, I can't restrain myself and NOT talk about the movies! It's like the words fall out of my mouth before I try to stop them. I've been thinking about a comment to post ever since I found out that this book has been assigned. I read the book a long time ago and I loved everything about it: the plot, the style, the descriptions, the love triangles, everything! When I first saw the movie starring Robert Redford, it didn't disappoint me at all. The acting was superb. It's the second adaptation that drove me crazy. The acting was clearly too much, everything was overdone. The music didn't fit at all even though it was done on purpose to detach itself from the first one. Best choice I ever made was turning it off after 20 minutes in. My point in all of this is that it's always important to read the book first. Seeing a movie adaptation is always exciting especially if you've gone crazy over the book or the trilogy but it's almost always a let down and somehow that disappointment will change the way you first felt about the book. "The Great Gatsby" was and still is a great book to read. It teaches a lot about love, deceit, revenge, pride, social class and more. It also talks about the American dream, changing one's social status, making it big and doing everything to fit certain social norms.

Bravo! I applaud ye.

Elizabeth wrote: "The music didn't fit at all even though it was done on purpose to detach itself from the first one. ..."

Bingo. What colossal lameness. That's not the way to do a remake, ever. You're supposed to succeed in *at least* every area the previous version did, and then... succeed better!

I'm convinced the only way these new schlock-fests lure most folks through the turnstiles is publicity. These aren't films; they're just 'media events'. "Who's starring in it? Who's doing the soundtrack?" yada yada yada. No one with a shred of sense would otherwise, bother. There's a good many people out there who just can't stand not to be in-on-current-gossip-topics. They'd rather perish than be the only one in a group of people who doesn't have the latest gab.

Longhare wrote: "My daughter recently read Gatsby for school. She liked it but found it "colorless" and kind of boring. I think the real reason kids have a hard time relating to this book isn't the setting or the people. It's the pale pinks and yellows and whites in which the whole thing is written. Gray is the color of evil. Yet it's a violent story. There is a fortnightly carnival, a broken nose, arguments, gun shots, revving motors of big cars--but no loud noises, no percussion, very little in the way of red blood."

Thank you for this comment!

When I read the book I kept comparing it to current way of describing "fallen culture" - it seems to me that nowadays everything is painted in very livid colours. Older authors manage to use fewer, gentler words to describe similar situations. It takes much more graphic description to shock someone now.

Feliks wrote: "Rb wrote: "For someone who loved a book, the movie is almost always bound to disappoint..."

Yes, but there are some instances where a film matches a book in pleasure. I can name perhaps a dozen of..."

I agree, as I can also name exceptions to this rule. I was merely trying, in an indirect way, to steer the conversation back to books. Perhaps we should start a group about books that have been made into films. I would definitely participate in that!

Anna wrote: "Older authors manage to use fewer, gentler words to describe similar situations. It takes much more graphic description to shock someone now..."

I've been trying to recall a recent work where the author doesn't work hard to convey the sensory details of a violent situation. It seems natural to me that a writer would want to make a situation as real to the reader as possible. The biggest booms, the reddest blood, the most forensically accurate details down to the last maggot. Sometimes it feels like there's a competition to see who can be the grossest.

I'm wondering if Nick's Hays Code prose was deliberate on Fitzgerald's part. As it is, the book sort of murmurs along, not quite toneless but limited to a narrow mid-range of psychological impressions, which bright, noisy action would have disturbed. Nick seems almost numb to me--he reacts to horrific incidents with varying levels of disgust. What moves him about Gatsby's murder is not his death so much as his loneliness. Maybe it was all that machine-gunning during the war?

Anna wrote: "It takes much more graphic description to shock someone now. ..."

This is a savory insight I very much agree with. Over-description and over-intensity..its just one failing of many orders and classes of failing within which contemporary authors can be sorted and defined by. Its 'billboard writing' from the culture of cartoon tattoos and cartoon mindsets.

You can see childish flaws like this committed by 'big name' authors like David Baldacci or the current-ghostwriter-for-Robert Ludlum...or, the self-pubbed hacks who pour their own brackish self-promo into the weirs of Amazon and Goodreads. Its clownish. You can't hardly call these species, 'writers'. Any of them.

Longhare wrote: "I'm wondering if Nick's Hays Code prose was deliberate on Fitzgerald's part. As it is, the book sort of murmurs along, not quite toneless but limited to a narrow mid-range of psychological impressions, which bright, noisy action would have disturbed. Nick seems almost numb to me--he reacts to horrific incidents with varying levels of disgust. What moves him about Gatsby's murder is not his death so much as his loneliness. Maybe it was all that machine-gunning during the war? ..."

Wonderfully stated. I think its just the difference between the reserved, modest, reticent 'pre-modern America' and what we have now. Different world. I don't think Fitzgerald is 'over-steering'; I think he simply came-from and moved-in an upperclass, un-loud social strata which used to behave consistently subdued, as a rule.

In the 20s and 30s the middle-class hadn't yet formed; people were either very rich or very poor; and the rich behaved with decorum and often with education. America's rich traveled in Europe and were brought to realize how crass the rest of the world considered us. The sensitive among them came to adopt an English manner whenever they could; and at some point it became ingrained. FSF merely writes with that 'better sensibility'. Its one which used to be the norm for (non-genre) literary work read by the audience of his times. Vernacular literature has been 'loud' for so long, we've forgotten all about authors like Sherwood Anderson and Thornton Wilder.

I know feb is over, but does it bother anyone when a movie totally changes elements of plot and outcome from the book!? This always kills me! The kids who watch and think they know the novel are sadly mistaken!

K

I never read this in school, however having recently read it, I enjoyed it a great deal. Fitzgerald's writing style is magnificent.

This was my first Fitzgerald novel. Again, read because my kids were reading it in high school. The boys seemed to think that except FOR the violent parts, it was boring. My daughter, who's now 21, LOVED it. She felt that the Buchanans were the real criminals & that Gatsby himself seemed to be mostly in the wrong place at the wrong time when it came to Myrtle's death, & that Daisy LET him take the blame for it. I loved it as well, & from then went on to read the majority of Fitz' body of work :)

I actually preferred the movie version to this book, which rarely happens. I thought the book a little dry.