Just Finished Reading: The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald (FP: 1926)

Looking for somewhere reasonable to live close enough to his New York business interests Nick Carraway takes up residence in a slightly run down property in West Egg village. He quickly discovers that his neighbour is a mysterious self-made man known to throw lavish parties for celebrities far and wide. Rumoured to have made a fortune at bootlegging the owner of the property – Jay Gatsby – is quickly dismissed by Nick as just a piece of local colour. On the other side of the sound Nick discovers that an old college friend and his young wife (who Nick also knows) have taken up residence and is invited to dinner. Seeing Tom, and especially Daisy, again bring back pleasant memories and all is going well until Gatsby is mentioned by name. Invited over days later by the man himself Nick meets Gatsby for the first time and can’t help but be impressed. Gatsby too seems like he’s looking for a friend and the two men start spending some time together. Quickly it transpires that Gatsby needs Nick to do something for him. Explaining that he knew Daisy before her marriage he asks Nick to arrange an ‘accidental’ meeting so that they can become reacquainted. Despite misgivings Nick agrees and so starts a chain of events that ends in tragedy.

I was honestly in two minds about this book before I even picked it up. It had been on my shelves for a long time and I’d yet to start it. I’ve never seen any of the movies all of the way through and had assumed it was going to be about the lifestyles of the rich and shameless – which it kind of was. Of course it’s a 20th century classic and is taught in schools so it must have something going for it, right? So over 3-4 days I gave it a go. It was, thankfully, easy to read and, again thankfully, short. My copy runs to 188 pages. Those two things were, by and large, the good points. About the most sympathetic character in the book was the narrator, Nick. His function, as such, was to hold the story together. Tom, Daisy’s Husband, was essentially, a racist bully with no redeeming qualities and who was having a frankly ridiculous affair with the wife of a local garage mechanic. Daisy herself was pretty and had a ‘good voice’ but I found her weak, self-centred and not exactly love of my life material. As to Gatsby himself – decorated war hero, promoted to Major, self-made millionaire and literally a self-made man from the ground up, driven, focused, for want of a better word a hero. But, he was also socially isolated, manipulative, obsessed, and as far as I could tell, at least borderline psychotic. I really couldn’t understand his obsession with Daisy. Sure she was cute and all but she’d married someone else – who had money before Gatsby could make his – after she got fed up waiting for Jay to come back to her. She had moved on with her life whilst Gatsby hadn’t moved an inch in his. The secondary characters, Tom’s mistress, Nick’s love interest Jordan, the garage owner, Jay’s Jewish business partner and so on where, with the possible exception of Jordan, cardboard cut out people. I found myself quite quickly uncaring if any of them lived or died (again except Jordan).

The plot, such as it was, meandered all over the place and came across to me as a loose collection of ideas for a story tied together in the hope that something reasonable would appear. As far as I was concerned the appearance was barely perceptible and fleeting. I struggled all the way through with the idea that this was regarded as a great 20th century classic. I just couldn’t agree. At times frustratingly unfocused, racist, anti-Semitic, and just plain dull with dialogue even worse than Star Wars I’m just glad it was so short. I could see what he was attempting to do – tell a tale of ennui and nihilism in the upper echelons of American society but there are much better ways to tell that story than this one.  I doubt very much if I’ll be reading any more of his work.