Ever read a book that perfectly fits your mood? I did. Finished it just today, in fact. "The Great Gatspy" by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Sure, I "read" it years ago in high school. Just like I "read" books in graduate school. Translation: I flipped through the book, teased out important themes from random passages, and winged it from there. This time was totally different. Maybe I sensed that when I selected it a few days ago over "Breakfast of Champions" -- another book I ostensibly read in high school.
"The Great Gatspy" is, of course, famous for being a book about the irredemably rich. But at its core, it is a very serious commentary on the persistence of dreams in the face of unrequitted love. The riches of all the characters -- especially Gatspy himself -- serve only to highlight the limitations of wealth and power in securing enduring love.
It is a bleak book, ultimately. As bleak as Graham Greene in "The Heart of the Matter" or, yes, even perhaps Edith Wharton's "Ethan Fromme." Yet I sense ambiguity in its message as well, ambiguity which might in the proper light be construed as hope. All of the characters have qualities I identify with. Narrator Nick Carroway earns my respect for being wholly honest in his relationships -- something I have always admired and aspired toward. Gatspy gets points for fighting the good fight, for being at once shamelessly gregarious, generous, and also paradoxically anti-materialistic. He also scores for re-inventing himself according to the lessons of every newly acquired piece of wisdom. Daisy gets points for suffering and enduring Tom, and yet potentially more for finding a way to love him despite all of his obvious faults. Tom the polo player with the bone-crushing backhand, possessing the kind of contempt which only the privelaged can have for the less fortunate, gets points for finding beauty in something as plain as Mrs. Wilson. Jordan, the mercurial tennis starlet, earns points only for unflappability: perhaps the least admirable quality in a person honestly immersed in the messy business of life.
One passage in particular struck me, when Carroway describes Gatsby's mood in the garden after he has seen Daisy again for the first time in years:
"There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams -- not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart."
At first, this struck me because I have recently felt the exact contrary emotion -- a recognition that sometimes time and distance can lend the appearance of illusion to things which are enduring and fundamental. I am in L.A. again, briefly, confronted with a still vibrant memory of the life I lived here before leaving to lead the one I live now in the East. What I realized yesterday in Friday afternoon traffic, somewhere in the Hollywood Hills, was that I have consigned my past to the realm of illusion. It is reachable, but only in a controlled fashion -- archived, labelled, and stored for future reference. History. All the messy looseness of life, all the dangling intangibles and other possible avenues, have been tucked away into an acid-free shoebox in my head. Yet why, and for what? How much integrity can there really be to a life cordoned and studied, quarantined against its own latent antibodies and every residual emotion seeking to break through? How can studied removal from the past with its innumerable places, endlessly worthy people, and all forms of love (however imprudent or hopeless) -- be so automatic? I think I have found a partial answer these past several days, though the implications elude me in my present state of semi-wakefulness:
I think it is that the sum of all decisions large and small, by their very nature, preclude coherency. To believe that every choice taken was in the service of some emergent vision is itself a grand fantasy. Perhaps it is better not to know this, though. Perhaps it is better to think that wisdom and experience guide us always, steady us, and ultimately carry us through. It is better, whether it is true or not, that we do not suspect the existence of life's grandest illusion of all: that past decisions, once made, cannot be altered.
"The Great Gatspy" is, of course, famous for being a book about the irredemably rich. But at its core, it is a very serious commentary on the persistence of dreams in the face of unrequitted love. The riches of all the characters -- especially Gatspy himself -- serve only to highlight the limitations of wealth and power in securing enduring love.
It is a bleak book, ultimately. As bleak as Graham Greene in "The Heart of the Matter" or, yes, even perhaps Edith Wharton's "Ethan Fromme." Yet I sense ambiguity in its message as well, ambiguity which might in the proper light be construed as hope. All of the characters have qualities I identify with. Narrator Nick Carroway earns my respect for being wholly honest in his relationships -- something I have always admired and aspired toward. Gatspy gets points for fighting the good fight, for being at once shamelessly gregarious, generous, and also paradoxically anti-materialistic. He also scores for re-inventing himself according to the lessons of every newly acquired piece of wisdom. Daisy gets points for suffering and enduring Tom, and yet potentially more for finding a way to love him despite all of his obvious faults. Tom the polo player with the bone-crushing backhand, possessing the kind of contempt which only the privelaged can have for the less fortunate, gets points for finding beauty in something as plain as Mrs. Wilson. Jordan, the mercurial tennis starlet, earns points only for unflappability: perhaps the least admirable quality in a person honestly immersed in the messy business of life.
One passage in particular struck me, when Carroway describes Gatsby's mood in the garden after he has seen Daisy again for the first time in years:
"There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams -- not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart."
At first, this struck me because I have recently felt the exact contrary emotion -- a recognition that sometimes time and distance can lend the appearance of illusion to things which are enduring and fundamental. I am in L.A. again, briefly, confronted with a still vibrant memory of the life I lived here before leaving to lead the one I live now in the East. What I realized yesterday in Friday afternoon traffic, somewhere in the Hollywood Hills, was that I have consigned my past to the realm of illusion. It is reachable, but only in a controlled fashion -- archived, labelled, and stored for future reference. History. All the messy looseness of life, all the dangling intangibles and other possible avenues, have been tucked away into an acid-free shoebox in my head. Yet why, and for what? How much integrity can there really be to a life cordoned and studied, quarantined against its own latent antibodies and every residual emotion seeking to break through? How can studied removal from the past with its innumerable places, endlessly worthy people, and all forms of love (however imprudent or hopeless) -- be so automatic? I think I have found a partial answer these past several days, though the implications elude me in my present state of semi-wakefulness:
I think it is that the sum of all decisions large and small, by their very nature, preclude coherency. To believe that every choice taken was in the service of some emergent vision is itself a grand fantasy. Perhaps it is better not to know this, though. Perhaps it is better to think that wisdom and experience guide us always, steady us, and ultimately carry us through. It is better, whether it is true or not, that we do not suspect the existence of life's grandest illusion of all: that past decisions, once made, cannot be altered.
