This New York Times article discusses the resonance of Scott Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby with first and second generation Americans. Readers of the blog might recall the hypomanic episode of two months past, when the novel began an invasion of the lives of myself and my erstwhile chums. Since then, I haven’t stopped thinking about Gatsby– like, every day– and in this exact context: first generation Americans on the hustle-hustle for dollars dollars. After all, I’m one of their number. They is me. Me is they.
I ain’t dissing on kids 15 years younger, but by focusing on high school students, the article offers a pat distillation of every pedestrian and obvious interpretation of Gatsby. The fleeting Green Light, the limits of class, money, social-climbing and the American Dream. I suppose that’s all in the novel– they were Fitzgerald’s obsessions– but reading Gatsby for insights on these topics is like looking for milk in a pint of ice cream.
If the book has any power– and I think that it does– it isn’t as a morality tale about money, but as a series of interlocking portraits of the most repugnantly stupid and shallow characters in American Literature. A casual read will be dominated by the obvious repulsiveness of Tom and Daisy Buchanan, those careless people, but probing with any depth leaves the reader with the irredeemability of the novel’s other figures.
In the first few pages, Nick identifies himself as an Andy Warhol kind of guy– someone who’ll listen to your problems in silence, appearing to offer sympathy but is storing his queeny contempt for later judgment. His relationship with Gatsby is that of a Distinguished Gentleman and a rough trade rentboy– Gatsby humored as long as he’s amusing. Even Nick’s final comment– “You’re better than the whole damned lot!”– is offered not to establish a sympathy between the two men, but as a kindness given by Nick to himself. Everyone feels better when they pretend that they care about other people. But no one does. Nick is the devil, sheer evil. Hence the name.
But Jimmy Gatz. Wealth obscures truth. Even after Fitzgerald’s 30 page epilogue in which the false identity of Jay Gatsby is demolished, the money continues to hide his character. Reactions are usually about the American Dream or the impossibility of crossing class boundaries. Very rarely do you hear anything about Gatsby himself. So, lemme just say it: Jimmy Gatz was an idiot. That’s the point of the book.
Gatsby had a desperate smarts born of necessity but no wisdom and no ability to see a thing for its own nature. Not Daisy, not Tom, not Meyer Wolfsheim, not Nick and not his own self. The great line (later quoted by Bob Dylan in “Summer Days”), “What do you mean you can’t repeat the past? Of course you can.” is Gatsby’s unknowing epitaph– he dies because he does not understand Daisy. Some people, some women, are no good. But Gatsby can’t see it and returns to her, arms and wallet open, and she destroys him a second and then a third time. Even in his grand enterprise– climbing way up the social ladder– he’s a failure, and not because he’s nouveau riche non plus ultra, but because he’s stupid. His idea of wealth is throwing house parties and calling people Old Sport– dime novel fantasies of a school boy. He appears to Nick as what he’s fashioned himself: a freak.
Oddly, the only character that I find likable is Tom Buchanan. He’s as bad as the rest, but he never pretends that he isn’t– there’s simplicity in his acceptance of himself as a selfish, racist brute. Everyone else is a thief and a liar, but only Tom might admit it.
