It's a cipher for who we are and where we are at any given time in history and our lives. When I read the book in high school, I thought of it as a traditional love story and saw Gatsby as this hopeless romantic, but reading it as an adult, I see it as a tragedy and Gatsby as this really hollow man, not at all in touch with reality.
... so said Leonardo DiCaprio in an interview I read the other day. Not bad, Leo - not bad at all.
Gatsby is, of course, a touchstone for me - for a while there, the one that I thought of as my single favourite novel.* The last time I read it was a fair few years ago, and this time round it read quite differently to me, though I'm not sure I can say exactly how; I certainly read it attentively, but the more important thing would've been the different perspective that the intervening years have brought in terms of how I make sense of the whole, and of the figure of Gatsby in particular.
I think that for me, the tragedy of the character, and of the whole milieu for which he in some ways stands, has always been in the foreground, but on this pass, I didn't get anywhere near the sense of romanticisation or idealisation of that tragedy that I think I had previously; and, maybe relatedly, the novel itself didn't seem to have quite the same savour of greatness that it's always held for me...though I wonder if perhaps it isn't rather that another layer of complexity has opened up in my response to - and understanding of - it...a cipher indeed.
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* The list in full: Wuthering Heights (late high school to earlyish uni), The Crying of Lot 49 (most of uni), then Invisible Cities (perhaps the very tail-end of uni through to the beginning of work) and then Gatsby (thereafter until, I don't know, maybe a few years ago, when the position of 'favourite novel' became vacant somewhere along the line - not that I'd read it in the intervening period, but then our relationships with novels, or any works of art, don't depend on immediate contact).
... so said Leonardo DiCaprio in an interview I read the other day. Not bad, Leo - not bad at all.
Gatsby is, of course, a touchstone for me - for a while there, the one that I thought of as my single favourite novel.* The last time I read it was a fair few years ago, and this time round it read quite differently to me, though I'm not sure I can say exactly how; I certainly read it attentively, but the more important thing would've been the different perspective that the intervening years have brought in terms of how I make sense of the whole, and of the figure of Gatsby in particular.
I think that for me, the tragedy of the character, and of the whole milieu for which he in some ways stands, has always been in the foreground, but on this pass, I didn't get anywhere near the sense of romanticisation or idealisation of that tragedy that I think I had previously; and, maybe relatedly, the novel itself didn't seem to have quite the same savour of greatness that it's always held for me...though I wonder if perhaps it isn't rather that another layer of complexity has opened up in my response to - and understanding of - it...a cipher indeed.
---
* The list in full: Wuthering Heights (late high school to earlyish uni), The Crying of Lot 49 (most of uni), then Invisible Cities (perhaps the very tail-end of uni through to the beginning of work) and then Gatsby (thereafter until, I don't know, maybe a few years ago, when the position of 'favourite novel' became vacant somewhere along the line - not that I'd read it in the intervening period, but then our relationships with novels, or any works of art, don't depend on immediate contact).
