Currently Reading: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
It’s been a while since I’ve read a classic, so I decided to read one that I had never managed to get around to in the past: Gatsby.
The book some tout as the great novel of the 20th century is approximately 180 pages long and divided into nine chapters. Last night I plowed Chapter 1.
As I said, it’s been a while since I’ve read a classic, and my first impression of Gatsby is: now I recall why it’s been a while. The book starts off God-awfully boring. I mean, drill-a-hole-in-my-skull boring. It’s 23 pages that could easily be distilled down to half that, or less. Yes, times have changed, as have writing styles, and books could (and did) start much slower 100 years ago. There was no TV in 1925, and, obviously, no internet to gnaw constantly at one’s attention. In 1925, people were not conditioned to be ADD by a world which bombards us with 50 inane headlines a minute vying for the gentle touch of our precious thumbs.
But now we are. I could put down this book and never again think twice about the story. If this book were published today, and I picked it up in a bookstore or read the first chapter online, well–I wouldn’t have finished Chapter 1, and I certainly wouldn’t start Chapter 2. I’ll finish it though. I finished Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and if I can get through that, I can can tunnel through the Great Wall of China with my bare hands.
Chapter 1 recap:
Nick, our slow-to-judge-his-fellow-man protagonist, is a WWI veteran from the mid-west. He has gone east, to New York, to enter the bond business in hopes of making good money. He rents a small house in an exclusive, well-to-do, new-money neighborhood located across the bay from the exclusive, well-to-do, old-money neighborhood where his old college buddy, Tom, lives. His little “eyesore” rental is immediately next-door to the yet-to-be-introduced Mr. Gatsby’s colossal mansion situated on a forty-plus acre estate. Nick goes to dinner at Tom’s. At this point, Fitzgerald writes a short novel within his novel describing lawns and drapes and persons. We meet Tom, his wife, Daisy (Nick’s second cousin once removed), and their friend, Miss Baker, a model. We quickly see these people live in a bubble. Tom and Daisy’s marriage is on the road to Splitsville, and dinner is a cluster. Nick goes home. He sees a man on the neighboring estate and wordily deduces it is Gatsby. He decides to call out to him but chickens out. He looks out at the dark sea, then looks back to Gatsby, but the titular character is gone.
What I think I know so far: Nick is a fish out of water. Gatsby is rolling in new money. Everyone is vapid.
I think I’m supposed to be intrigued, but I’m not. I’m really not.
