Writ Large podcast tackles The Great Gatsby, a book you likely already have opinions about
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Writ Large
The Great Gatsby
Is there any work of fiction Americans are more likely to have an opinion on, regardless of their tastes and background? Nearing one hundred years since its publication, The Great Gatsby has been an institution for about three quarters of that time, which explains its inclusion in Writ Large, a show about books that have changed the world. Guest David Alworth traces the trail that author F. Scott Fitzgerald charted to achieve permanent “already read” status in American culture. More importantly, Alworth takes a crack at the “why” part of the book’s success, leading to a discussion of how Gatsby both was revolutionary for its time and also possesses a certain timeliness. Gatsby, we’re told, is among the more accessible examples of the modernist literature movement to which it belongs (which seems obvious in retrospect). Compared to works by Faulkner, Joyce, and Gertrude Stein, it’s very easy to understand what the heck is going on. Beyond Gatsby’s place in literature, Alworth says the book comes as close as art ever has to defining certain intrinsic aspects of American culture, while also providing lots of commentary but few conclusions. We’ve been navel-gazing ever since. [Zach Brooke]
19 Comments
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I hadn’t previously heard Gatsby (or Fitzgerald) compared to those literary modernists. It seems traditional in form, even if he was writing about (then) contemporary times.
Really? I disagree. The titular character doesn’t even show up until midway through Ch 4, which for a short book, is somewhat daring, I think.
Hah, that’s nothing. The Third Man waits even longer! And of course The Wonderful Wizard of Oz beat all them to it.
Gatsby is one of those novels that you’re assigned in high school that’s actually fun to read. And rereading it rewards you with a greater understanding of what Fitzgerald’s doing. There’s a lot of thematic depth packed into that slim, 200-page book.
There is?
Give it another read. I gleamed far more from it when middle-aged than I would have while still a teenager. Many books read in high school tend to be this way, because they’re really not meant for teenagers but adults.
I feel like it’s due for an adaptation, it’s pretty timely given how much the book revolves around the concept of privilege: “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
But adaptations tend to get side-tracked with “oooh wild parties!” and playing the romance straight.
In a weird way the fact that the adaptations keep getting sidetracked is testament to the power of the themes, that in a story almost explicitly about how the glitz and glamor is self-serving and empty, people still keep wanting it, just like the characters in the story
Or the fact that Gatsby is a man aspiring to be like them, comes from a childhood of poverty, and is killed by a gas station owner, thinking he’s the reason his wife died. One could argue it’s about how rich people not only make the messes, but also how people from poor working classes/backgrounds end up being the victims. The novel is a pretty huge indictment on classism and wealth aspirations, which sadly gets glossed over by people who instead romanticize the glitz and parties.
Back in 12th-grade American History class we were given a list of books from which we could choose two to read. With relief I chose the novels, “The Great Gatsby” and “Tobacco Road”. Like many works which were daringly critical of their time, by the Sixties it seemed pretty pale. The rich lead empty, vapid lives and the poor get screwed. A few years later I saw the movie (the first time I got to see Sam Waterson): the rich lead empty, vapid lives and the poor get screwed.
All you need to know about Gatsby courtesy of D’Angelo Barksdale: The past is always with us. Where we come from, what we go through, how we go through it; all this shit matters. Like at the end of the book, ya’ know, boats and tides and all. It’s like you can change up, right, you can say you’re somebody new, you can give yourself a whole new story. But, what came first is who you really are and what happened before is what really happened. It don’t matter that some fool say he different ‘cause the things that make you different is what you really do, what you really go through. Like, ya’ know, all those books in his library. He frontin’ with all them books, but if you pull one down off the shelf, none of the pages have ever been opened. He got all them books, and he hasn’t read nearly one of them. Gatsby, he was who he was, and he did what he did. And ‘cause he wasn’t willing to get real with the story, that shit caught up to him.
A story so close to my heart. ‘There are all kinds of love, but never the same love twice.’ And that is the ultimate tragedy – two people who love each other but can’t be together – and most of it due to their own folly and misunderstanding. Maybe Daisy wouldn’t have cared about Gatsby’s lack of wealth, maybe she would have run away with him – we’ll never know. Did he really believe she could wait for him – the pressure she must have been under is immense. I intensely disliked her initially, but now I see her as a coward and a victim of circumstance, I feel sorry for her. Gatsby had her so high up on a pedestal, she could have never lived up to it. Oh, but he loved her – his entire life was an homage to her.
Jane Smiley’s 2005 book ‘13 Ways of Looking At The Novel’ ranked Gatsby as the least deserving of the canon of modern American literature. In her review of the novel she said the author elaborately introduces new characters then does nothing with them. No character growth, only a few short scenes each. It was a novel written by a young man more in love with wordplay than grounded in the basics of storytelling.
It’s been a while since I read it but I don’t mind a little flab in a novel and for something to be done with every character who’s introduced, that sounds almost surgical. Funny enough, I only know Jane Smiley by name, but I just saw one of her books in a Free Little Library on my walk and thought it sounded good. Your last sentence sounds more like Nabokov than Fitzgerald.
I tried Gatsby. I really did. It’s one of the few times I put down a book and said aloud “Why the hell am I reading this?” After getting through it I was left with the impression that a one paragraph summary of the The Great Gatsby is a better work of fiction than The Great Gatsby.
As an English teacher, we pick this because it’s short and accessible. And we read it in high school. I still don’t understand the appeal of Daisy. She bugs me so much.
Never read it.Plenty of Nick Earls bullshit shoved through my adolescent eyeballs, but.
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