The Great Gatsby (Book Review!)

"A dream you dream alone is just a dream."

- Yoko Ono

The Great Gatsby is a book to read slowly - deliciously - aloud even (though reading it out loud and absorbing it at the same time is a difficult balance). It's like a fine steak, rich with juicy flavors and succulent desires. It would be a crime to take two chews and swallow before its full impact is felt. Oh sure, you might get an impression of what you'd taken in if you did but you'd be forever bound to only have an impression. It's the longest short book I've ever read.

It's the kind of book as a writer you dream of creating, extending out a childhood fantasy. You write as if one who moves through life in a forever dream, letting the ebbs and currents flow as they may around you but never knocking you off course. Doing this causes you to feel the edge of roughness to the world but also to see its lurking, hidden magic. It's as if all the world lives just around the corner from paradise - but never quite reaches it. F. Scott Fitzgerald makes that journey for us - into us - detached from this world while others anchor themselves to it.

From the Wiki:

With The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald made a conscious departure from the writing process of his previous novels. He started planning it in June 1922, after completing his play The Vegetable and began composing The Great Gatsby in 1923. He ended up discarding most of it as a false start, some of which resurfaced in the story "Absolution". Unlike his previous works, Fitzgerald intended to edit and reshape Gatsby thoroughly, believing that it held the potential to launch him toward literary acclaim. He told his editor Maxwell Perkins that the novel was a "consciously artistic achievement" and a "purely creative work — not trashy imaginings as in my stories but the sustained imagination of a sincere and yet radiant world". He added later, during editing, that he felt "an enormous power in me now, more than I've ever had".

It's not the plot that matters but rather the dreamlike movements of its characters being brought into focus. It's a high wire act of writing where one must inerrantly stay the course or fall flat. We're wrapped up in the world of the rich - a world made frightful to dreams - while wishing for a better way. Everyone's looking to "get out", but to get out of one thing means to get into another. And how often do we delude ourselves of that which we're getting into?

Fitzgerald died a forgotten man, his true reputation only being secured decades later. With this book of such stunning lyrical beauty and truth he has woven into the fabric of society an invaluable mirror. But that does not make for a popular book among ugly people. The initial printings did not even sell out. Like Vincent before him, we dared not admit Fitzgerald's worthiness until the safety of time gave us cover. ("It was that generation who was corrupt!")

There is the life we wish to lead, the life we meant to lead and the life we do lead. Like a leaky faucet that cannot be fixed, we eventually succumb to the sound of the incessant dripping, declaring a faux peace until finally - inexorably - the madness of repression overtakes us. With each new currency of our demise we utter in all contempt, "That is nothing new" as if that were some great insight into the human condition which somehow resolves it.

For the entirety of its existence Mankind has lived just around the bend from bliss, wondering of its whispered dreams, tantalized by its promise but never breaching its shores. We resist. We resist furiously and maddeningly, with honor glory and nobility we resist, saying on one hand bliss does not exist - the "habitat of mad children" - and on the other that it must lest the day become too long. When we dream the dream together, it will be a wondered dream no more. The time is always now but we always say now is not the time.

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."