THE GREAT GATSBY

In my neighborhood, conveniently close to my house there is a bookstore. In that bookstore there is a section where they sell vey reasonably priced modern classics that I often haven’t read before. It’s a pretty small section, the bookstore is dedicated to the “newest thing” more often than not but I tend to check it regularly for bargains. On one such occasion I came back beaming armed with two such modern classics. One of them is the above mentioned Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I wolfed the book down in a matter of two days (to give it it’s due my edition is only a 172 pages long). By the time I had got through it I felt as if I had been hit by a bus…
Nick Carraway is a rather reserved young man living in Long Island. He is a realist with feet firmly planted on the ground, leading a very “normal” life and going down to work in the city every day. Next to his modest home is a stately mansion, filled with all the riches a man could desire. It is the setting of lavish parties everyone who is everyone goes to – regardless of whether they were invited or not. The owner of this house is Gatsby. Jay Gatsby. He is something of a man of legend, no one quite knows his origins or his business, all they know is that he is ridiculously rich, mysterious and never drinks at his own parties… He does however, have a secret. A secret Nick Carraway will become privy to, entangled in and changed by…
I was absolutely bowled over by this book… A lot of people, I have been surprised to find out, have a slight prejudice towards Fitzgerald. My grandfather who is a literature professor benignly said “Well, light fiction is also necessary of course”. My grandmother refused to read it point blank – deemed it a waste of time. However I think this is a grave misjudgment of the novel. You will have to get to the end to truly understand the deep and tragic message underlying the whole novel; basically it is dreams, it is real life, it is pursuing a dream at all costs and truly fighting for it… Nick Carraway seemed rather constipated to me all through the novel if you will. I got so aggravated with him I wanted to give him a good shake. I know see that he had to be that way – there is a Carraway and a Gatsby in all of us, the question is of course which one gets the upper hand…
I read a little (a very little mind you) about Fitzgerald’s own life after that… He died tragically young at 46 – and I am sure he had a lot more to offer us. And his beloved wife Zelda was prone to mental breakdowns that shook their marriage and them both individually… I can’t help thinking Fitzgerald’s battle between dreams and real life is in fact heavily influenced by this… I know I am being rather tiresomely underhand about the whole thing but I really want you to unravel Gatsby’s secrets for yourself. Let it suffice to say that even those of us with the teeniest hint of a dreamer hidden in our souls will find a little piece of ourselves in this novel… And be truly moved by it…