Probably you have read Great Gatsby. If so, you don't need us to tell you how good it is, although it's worth noting that two of us consider it one of the best novels ever written, and Sarah specifically called it a 'perfect novel' without understanding how it does it. What interested us in reading Gatsby (besides its recent entrance into the public domain) was that we hadn't read it since we were much younger, either teenage or very early twenties, and we wanted to see how it read to our later adult selves. The main thing we were struck by was how one-dimensionally horrible so many of the characters are. This included the narrator, Nick, who we previously viewed as a cypher but now saw as a bad actor on his own part. From his misanthropy and anti-Semitic opinions, to his unwillingness to really reject the people he doesn't like such as Gatsby or Tom (whose hand he still shakes at the end of the story), to his frankly horrible treatment of Jordan in his departure, Nick no longer painted for us such a neutral figure. We marvelled at how many translations of the story focus on the 'tragedy' of Gatsby's failed love for Daisy when it's so obvious in Fitzgerald's writing that Gatsby is deluded about what the relationship is and what it means that time has passed, and when Daisy herself is never actually committed to that relationship despite Gatsby's pressure. Also, Daisy is a murderer who gets away with it. The character we spent the most time with was Jordan Baker. We realized that not treating Nick as a blank narrator meant that his view of Jordan would also be biased, and that meant that there's no particular reason to believe his labelling of her as a liar (based on an unresolved accusation in the past and a generally misogynist view of women's honesty) or his disdain for her at the end. It was obvious to us that Jordan is a very cool person, very accomplished, and genuinely vulnerable in her relationship with Nick. Was Jordan the innocent victim of all of the callous and judgmental people around her? This led us out to a bigger question about the novel and how wealth worked in it. We could see the novel through sorting mechanism of the truly rich (Tom, Daisy) who can quite literally get away with anything, and the adjacent-to-rich (Gatsby, Mytle, Wolfshiem, Jordan) who attempt to live that life and are punished or left behind. In a novel so much about the American Dream, does anyone actually achieve it? Is it desireable to achieve it? The image of Tom and Daisy running around the country fleeing the wreckage they cause is not exactly an admirable goal. We were really left with a deep sense of disillusionment from the novel, the idea that true wealth is both unachievable and abhorrent and that people simply use each other according to their own needs and preconceptions. We ended the conversation talking about Gatsby's dad, and how at the story's close, he had son who did better than he did and who bought him a new house. Maybe that's the American Dream for Fitzgerald -- the distant byproduct of lies, betrayal, and criminality. Again, the novel is brilliant. Stylistically, structurally, in lines and in movements and in concept, brilliant, start to finish. But what it is not is simple or clear. It's a messy ambiguous novel that paints the most gorgeous pictures of love and dreams and hope only to cynically disdain them and expose their delusions and ugly foundations. And, if you'll forgive the neat tie-up here, maybe that's the truth of the America that Fitzgerald's painting.
