Gatsby – Part One

Better, thought the young Samana

To make sacrifices to the fair Kamala [1]

[the most beautiful of courtesans]

Than to offer sacrifices to the gods.

Siddhartha

*

And Now a Story

In recent months, I have written on abstract topics: positive psychology, uncertainty, wisdom, Stoicism.

It’s time to leave the clouds behind, at least temporarily, and sink our collective teeth into a good story.

I selected The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Many of you know this story.

If you do, please don’t blurt out the ending and spoil it for the others! Try to be patient. You haven’t heard my version, and THIS IS JUST THE TRAILER.

Why Gatsby?

What is it about Gatsby that makes it compelling enough to justify our spending precious minutes, if not hours, reviewing a book Fitzgerald wrote a hundred years ago?

In the last year, Gatsby devotees published two major works:

Writing Gatsby: The Real Story of the Writing of the Greatest American Novel by William Elliott Hazelgrove. 

and 

Blood & Ink: The Scandalous Jazz Age Double Murder that Hooked America on Crime by Joe Pompeo. 

Both flirt with the genesis of Gatsby.  

Why are literary lions still spilling ink about Scott, Zelda, and the semi-fictious Jay Gatsby?

• Is it because, as shown above, some still claim that Gatsby is the “greatest American novel” - no minor compliment when one considers Steinbeck, Hemingway, or Hawthorne?

• Is it because the story is only half the story? How Fitzgerald told it equally inspires awe: a mix of memoir, National Enquirer, and Lord Byron.

• Is it because, like a Russian nesting doll, as we explore Gatsby, we discover more and more eye-popping layers?

·      Start with the story itself: amazing plot; unforgettable characters; hints of wisdom; and significant twists and turns, as the story crescendos to an unpredictable ending.

·      As we peel back a layer, we find Fitzgerald’s vivid use of imagery and symbols: the “Valley of Ashes,” Gatsby’s pink suit, the green light that calls to Gatsby like a sacred sound calls to a mystic, the Yellow Rolls Royce, and the semi-religious billboard of TJ Eckleburg, Oculist, that watches over all like the eyes of God.

·      If we study the minor characters, we find a rogues’ gallery, featuring the notorious “Meyer Wolfsheim.” A thinly disguised version of Arnold Rothstein, the New York gambler who “fixed” the 1919 World Series, Wolfsheim moves in and out of the plot.

·      Removing another layer, the real-life Scott and Zelda fascinate as they draw us into their nonstop, over-the-top lifestyle, portions of which populate the plot.

·      We discover that Zelda, Scott’s semi-feral muse, destined for mental illness, may have been a genius in her own right.

·      If we study Gatsby further, we learn that what Fitzgerald believed was a masterpiece, the public greeted with anemic sales - until after Fitzgerald’s death (doesn’t that always happen?).

·      Ultimately, if we continue to follow our curiosity, we learn of the tragedy of Scott’s alcoholism and his self-destructive death in obscurity.

• Is it because Gatsby gives us a snapshot of an era, we call the “jazz age,” with its unique dazzle of bedizened decadence, wedged between the victory of WWI and the struggles of people to simply survive the Great Depression?

·      When the bulls of Wall Street created a magical money machine that made millionaires faster than Saudi golf?

·      When the wealthy threw parties at which people puked and played until dawn; where women transformed into “flappers” to act out years of female repression, smoking cigarettes (“We’ve Come A long Way Baby”), bathing in bathtubs of gin, dancing naked on tables, and chugging champagne straight from the bottle?[2]

·      When even the youngest among us wreaked of new money?

·      When the difference between rich and poor in the land of plenty meant that few had plenty, and those who did gave little thought to the many who had little?

• Is it because Fitzgerald shrouds Gatsby in a tantalizing mystery of fact and fiction? Discovering  the “real Gatsby” is like guessing who Carly Simon had in mind when she wrote, “You’re so Vain.”

• Is it because tabloid newspapers were just beginning to exploit the gory details of non-fiction scandal; Fitzgerald spotted this trend and applied his skills as a master wordsmith to embellishing adultery, abuse, murder, and the raw power of the rich?

• Is it because of the obvious comparison to Gordon Gekko, The Wolf of Wall Street, the tech bubble, the sub-prime mortgage boom/bust, and the current crypto craze; because the seeds of unbridled greed and decadence still live with us - like an oligarch with herpes?

• Is it because, in the midst of sweaty, drunken dancing fools, the chaos of excess, and his wife’s affair, Fitzgerald created a masterwork that has spawned five movie versions?

• Is it because Gatsby makes us confront a moral Rorschach test, presenting the reader with the age-old conundrum of which is more powerful: love or money?

As we go through Gatsby’s story, let’s apply our wisdom-consciousness and evaluate how many wise and unwise decisions we spot.

I will cover the basics facts of the Gatsby story in Part Two. In the meantime, I will give you an opportunity to review it.

I believe that you will agree that, whether you read Gatsby as required summer reading in high school, not at all, or saw one of the movie versions, it justifies a refresher course.

*

A good writer, they say, eschews all unnecessary words. Scott must have been thinking about that as he wrote his epitaph:

Then I was drunk for many years, and then I died.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

*

Genius is pain.

                           John Lennon

[1] No relation to our Vice President.

[2] “Flappers,” we called them. What happened to the Flappers? Killed by the meteor crash of 1929 and now as extinct as silent movies?