The great Gatsby / F. Scott Fitzgerald ; preface by Matthew J.
Bruccoli.

This is absolutely one of the most brilliant books I have
ever read. I love the beauty and poetry
of the writing, and especially the final sentence of the book: “So we beat on, boats
against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” Wow, a real stunner of language.

I’m a relative newcomer to this book although perhaps many
KTers will already know of The Great Gatsby and have studied
it in school. There is so much richness
here that I have to restrain myself from writing a whole book in discussing it!

The book is narrated by Nick Carraway, who is intent on
conveying this portrait of Gatsby. In
fact, several people in the book are storytellers as well as Nick, in the way
they hide their true natures. Gatsby himself goes to the greatest extent to
hide his true identity. He was born into near poverty as James Gatz
and subsequently was taken in by a wealthy man as a jack-of-all-trades
employee. Gatz renamed himself Jay Gatsby
and he began to reinvent himself as being wealthy and well educated. He served in WWI, attended Oxford University
for a few months, then came back to the U.S.
While an active soldier, he dated and fell in love with wealthy Daisy
Buchanan, who belonged to a much higher strata of society than he. The novel begins with Gatsby, seemingly
extremely wealthy, living in a mansion near the home of now-married Daisy and
her husband, Tom. It seems that he
didn’t buy the mansion or hobnob with the cream of society because of his own
interests, but because he wanted to give Daisy what he thought she wanted and
re-capture her love. He expects that
wealth, prestige and social status will help win her over.
Wealth is flaunted by Daisy’s husband Tom Buchanan, as he says to Nick
on showing him his residence: “I’ve got a nice place here.” “It belonged to
Demaine the oil man.” Tom is also
racist: “Civilization’s going to pieces. I’ve gotten to be a terrible pessimist
about things. Have you read ‘The Rise of the Coloured Empires’ by this man
Goddard?” … “Well, it’s a fine book and everybody ought to read it. The idea is
if we don’t look out the white race will be – will be utterly submerged. It’s
all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.”
“…It’s up to us who are the dominant race to watch out or these other
races will have control of things.”

Gatsby asks Nick to arrange for him to meet with Daisy. This starts events spinning in ways
unexpected by the characters. Sadly, at
the end of the book, Gatsby is James Gatz once again.

This is a beautiful, beautiful book.