The Great Gatsby

When I was younger I never read any of F. Scott Fitzgerald's works .  Occasionally I'd come across references to his works and not think much of it.  Like most non-liberal arts students, I've yet to read most of the great classics and haven't motivated myself  or found the time to engage in understanding them.  I remember an episode, that is probably all too familiar, in the CBS comedy King of Queens, where Carrie takes time off to "find herself" and stakes out reading The Great Gatsby.  The episode ends with her never reading the book and her husband Doug, the clownish and portly parcel deliveryman, musing to Carrie, "don't you think the Great Gatsby was lost before he came a magician!"

The irony isn't in whether Gatsby was once lost or a magician, because on some abstract level both are true.  Instead, the irony resides in Gatsby's own devotion to a single cause and his need to re-create himself from a simpler and less glamorous past.  When prodded in the novel about being unable to "repeat the past", Gatsby retorts incredulously, “Why of course you can!”

Most people live their lives blinded to the opportunities and realities around them.  While they know there is an entire world of possibilities, they also know that pursuing those dreams is difficult and in the end, there is no more guarantee that pursuing those objectives will make them any more happy or successful.  So they compromise and accept certain realities and condemn themselves to much smaller lives; just like Carrie in the above example.  Gatsby on the other hand, has been on the other side of paradise, where the grass isn't greener, where the lights are dimmer, and hopes go unfulfilled.

With the upcoming release in December 2012 of Baz Lurhmann's film adaptation, there has been some discussion of this seminal work.  The Great Gatsby has been described as a story of "lasting power and beauty" that is rooted in "illusions and self-delusion."  Like America in both the roaring twenties -in which the story is set- and its current situation, the book is filled with the surfeit of wealth, tumultuous descents, and everyday violence.

America is now full of millions of bankrupt Gatsbys who bought their dream homes with no money down. Meanwhile, the derivatives market was the very embodiment of American fantasy and self-deception, built on as flimsy a foundation as Gatsby’s wealth. The promised gold of the Reagan years, burnished to a shine in the new millennium, has turned a grimy yellow.

It is precisely these attributes that made the story then and now so engaging.  The rise and fall of ambitious men who have seduced an even less sophisticated public on their perceived virtues.  An opportunistic elite too absorbed in extracting from society marginal gains, to understand the larger problems unfolding around them.  And, of course, a public incapable of fully engaging the world around them, but all too willing to blame others for any sleight that has befallen them. In each of the classes of people a central conceit is revealed: the moment an individual thinks that they are firmly ahead, they also become cognizant, for however a brief a moment, that the game has been rigged and that they've always been determined to be the loser. It may not be fair; it is not even remotely intelligent, but that is how the game of life is played.

Others have questioned whether Fitzgerald's story could ever be adequately brought to film.  Ta-Nehisi Coates of The Atlantic magazine discusses his thoughts on this issue:

As in so many of the books I love, I found the plot in Gatsby to almost be beside the point. Whenever I see it translated to cinema, the film-maker inevitably crafts a story of doomed romance between Daisy and Gatsby. It's obviously true that Gatsby holds some sort of flame for Daisy, but what makes the book run (for me) is the ambiguity of that flame. Does he really love her? Or is she just another possession signaling the climb up? I always felt that last point—the climb up—was much more important than the romance. 

As in all things, where the truth begins and the illusion of reality ends is not always a clear line.  Gatsby's successes and failures are driven by both factors.  What is certain, is that the recurrent theme that is portrayed in Gatsby remains a great lesson to us all in our own sometimes feeble attempts of improving ourselves.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning —
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

----
The first trailer from Warner Bros. Pictures.