Dear friends and stalkers,
Welcome back to 2Literate2Work. We'd like to apologize for the long recess between chats-- we were both busy turning 26, Meredith moved across the country and Emily paid off almost all of her library overdue fees. But we never did finish Jane Eyre (srry CharBro).
For this chat, we took to The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, or that book that everyone lists as their favorite because they were required to purchase it in high school, it's about money and they don't know how to read. It's always seemed a little pale but apparently Hunter S. Thompson re-typed the manuscript as a youth so he could feel what it was like to type a masterpiece. We figured we should give it another shot.
For our readers who are illiterate or homeschooled, Gatsby is considered by many to be the defining American novel of the 20th century. It's narrated by Nick Carraway, who finds himself entangled in the of world Jay Gatsby, the mysterious millionaire next door. Affairs, automobiles and moonshine are the other characters. Gatsby was written in 1926, "The Height of American Excess" (tm) version 1.0, right before the stock market crash and ensuing Great Depression. =PARTY TIME.
Love, Money and Death in Modern America
Meredith: sitting at a cafe, getting ready and to chat and drinking a coffee and taking notes, was listening to some ella fitzgerald and thelonious monk to set the mood
but they're playing KE$HA "we r who we r" in this shop, and that fits so much better
spot on
re: moral decay
Emily: wait, are you drinking?
should i be drinking?
Meredith: ugh no. just coffee.
WWFScottD?
Emily: G&T!
but I'm only drinking tea.
so THIS BOOK. Love! money! the American dream!
Meredith: anddd how!
Emily: had you read it before?
Meredith: nope. you?
Emily: I was supposed to for my junior year English class, but didn't
my misspent youth, etc.
But I remember my teacher, Mr. H. Wayne Curtis, telling us that T. J. Eckleberg, the big glasses that served as an advertisement and watched over East Egg was a representation for god. Metaphor for decreased prominence of god in the modern world? CHECK
Meredith: yeaaah wow
So Nick moves from the mid-west to New York to work in "bonds" and other boring things in the city
Emily: right, he's an outsider to the east, as are all the main characters
I read it as sort of a cautionary tale of the new American mobility of the twentieth century.
For the first time, you didn't have to risk your life in a covered wagon to go east or west
And New York is where the most cherished American commodity was: money
Meredith: yes
Emily: what did you think of the specific characters?
Meredith: well I thought the great Gatsby would be "greater" or i guess i didn't know in what sense he was great. i certainly wasn't expecting someone so fallible.
Emily: yes! but that's him as the representation of the American dream: he ascended from nowhere to become this titan.
Meredith: so clearly his money was his greatness in many senses. it was really sad at the end that no one showed up to his funeral.
(spoiler alert, yadda yadda yadda)
Emily: that’s when i almost cried! In public!
Meredith: was it because people were "busy" that they didn’t go to his funeral or because they didn't want to risk getting in trouble, if they were bootleggers?
Emily: it's the contrast between old and new money. All the people at his parties were old money and the ones who really knew him acquired their money in unsavory ways, and couldn’t be associated with him. Hence, his empty funeral.
I also thought Fitzgerald was attempting to point out the frivolity of the upper classes, in that sense
Meredith: so if the American dream was to have lots of money and live lavishly, why didn't Daisy leave Tom for Gatsby?
Too much of a hassle?
Emily: ah, ok so this was also hearbreaking and earthshattering: Daisy really loved them both. She gave up Gastby, who she loved more, for the security of Tom.
Meredith: did she love Tom?
Emily: in a certain way. she can't truthfully tell Gatsby she never did.
it's the DECEIT OF THE HUMAN HEART!
which is why this book is so huge
it tackles the nature of human love, money and modern america all at the same time
in less than 200 pages
Meredith: myessss so good
Emily: so Tom Buchanan
Meredith: yeah wtf Tom
Emily: he reminds me of every conservative I’ve ever met
Meredith: hahah yeah. just kind of a hypocritical jerk
total square
doesn't like "art"
Emily: yeah, super dominant authoritarian personality. and racist.
Fitzgerald really explores a lot of different personality archetypes.
Tom, the "brute" as Daisy calls him
Nick is the sane, thoughtful one
and Gatsby is a hyper-driven mystery
And Daisy and Jordan-- Daisy is a pretty fool, and Jordan is a little tougher and more jaded.
I do like how he writes the women. They felt real to me.
Meredith: me tooooo!
Emily: good work, F.!
Meredith: his writing made me melt toward the end.
Some of the most beautiful prose ever.
like this: "it was dawn now on Long Island and we went about opening the rest of the windows downstairs, filling the house with grey turning, gold turning light. The shadow of a tree fell abruptly across the dew and ghostly birds began to sing among the blue leaves. There was a s low pleasant movement in the air, scarcely a wind, promising a cool lovely day."
HOW'D HE DO THAT
There’s also a lot of talk of movement, it seems like things are constantly moving, which speaks to what you were talking about the new modern mobility
Alsoooo, a lot of "east and west" talk
And he was among the expats to move east across the Atlantic to France
Emily: with Hway and stuff! they were friends!
Hway and Fitz in Paris
It seems like his prose exists somewhere in the middle of the hypermodern (for the time) of Hemingway and the more descriptive Victorian style, which is ALSO what the book was about! Transition.
Meredith: i kept being surprised that this man writing in the 1920s was writing with emotion.
it was great!
hemmy trained me well
Emily: yes, seriously. It seems like a simple book but it's a machine.
And it went unrecognized in his lifetime!
Meredith: right. Well it's super autobiographical, which, show me a book that isn't. But this one very much so.
Emily: true! Zelda[Fitzgerald’s wife] almost didn't marry F. because he didn't have money!
And she was a southern debutante! JUST LIKE GATS AND DAISY
F. and Zelda, 1921
Meredith: also, it might be my birthday being right around the corner, but the passage where Nick Carraway talks about his birthday. There was lots of drama going on. And he just suddenly remembered. Which I thought was really sad.
And then: "thirty-the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief-case of enthusiasm, thinning hair..." f. scott f. was 29 when this book was published!
Emily: UGH
yes
I hope I forget about this book before I turn 30.
Meredith: i found myself feeling so sorry for him.
Emily: I love the scene where he and Jordan break up over the phone.
"I don’t know who hung up with a sharp click but I knew I didn’t care."
it’s so brutal.
Meredith: yes
Emily: ALSO
there is some dialogue in here that killed me
when Daisy says to Gatz "you look so cool. you always look so cool." And Nick describes that as Daisy telling him she loves him in front of a room full of people, including her husband.
I was like GAHHHHHHHHHH
those lines are quiet but so powerful.
Each character has a really distinct voice.
Meredith: Also "angry, and half in love with her, and tremendously sorry, I turned away."
Emily: yesss! Who doesn’t live in that space 24 hrs a day.
Meredith: for reals, love that shit.
I really didn't know the story when I was starting it. And to be honest felt myself dipping into boredom. But definitely redeemed itself and it might have just been where I was.
But it was funny-- you texted me "i'm at the good part"
and right when i got there, i knew what you were talking about.
Emily: yes! Toward the end when Daisy and Gatsby are sort of getting together but you know it doesn't end well.
speaking of
this line KILLED ME: “they had never been closer in their month of love nor communicated more profoundly one with another, than when she brushed silent lips against his coat's shoulder or when he touched the end of her fingers, gently, as though she were asleep.”
Meredith: I
KNOW
RIGHT
jesus
talk about melting
Emily: I was like uhh, yeah, thats everything, ever, right there.
Then the flip side, when Gatsby goes back to to Daisy's in Louisville after he gets back from the war, and she's already married tom:
“but it was going by too fast now for his blurred eyes and he knew that he had lost that part of it, the freshest and the best, forever.”
GUUUHA it so perfectly captures the feeling of having had everything and losing it, and in that moment the life and fulfillment you thought you would have disappear forever. The end of youth.
Meredith: I have such a crush on F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Emily: he is crushable.
Can the modern world even make someone like this?
No one is sincere or believes in lips brushing collars anymore.
The Drunk and The Careless
Meredith: Woody Allen just made this film, Midnight in Paris
where he kind of reconstructs the feeling of the 20s and the world that F. Scott conveyed
and Owen Wilson’s character desperately wants to live in the 20s, in Paris, with Hemingway and Fitz-g, and Gertrude stein, etc.
and there are characters playing f. Scott and Zelda and Zelda is a drunk, but actually kind of charming. and F. Scott is such a real guy. and Hemingway is the best.
mixed reviews on the film, but the FEEEEELING was nice
also Adrian Brody plays Salvador Dali. Ooof.
Meredith: anddd how!
Emily: had you read it before?
Meredith: nope. you?
Emily: I was supposed to for my junior year English class, but didn't
my misspent youth, etc.
But I remember my teacher, Mr. H. Wayne Curtis, telling us that T. J. Eckleberg, the big glasses that served as an advertisement and watched over East Egg was a representation for god. Metaphor for decreased prominence of god in the modern world? CHECK
Meredith: yeaaah wow
So Nick moves from the mid-west to New York to work in "bonds" and other boring things in the city
Emily: right, he's an outsider to the east, as are all the main characters
I read it as sort of a cautionary tale of the new American mobility of the twentieth century.
For the first time, you didn't have to risk your life in a covered wagon to go east or west
And New York is where the most cherished American commodity was: money
Meredith: yes
Emily: what did you think of the specific characters?
Meredith: well I thought the great Gatsby would be "greater" or i guess i didn't know in what sense he was great. i certainly wasn't expecting someone so fallible.
Emily: yes! but that's him as the representation of the American dream: he ascended from nowhere to become this titan.
Meredith: so clearly his money was his greatness in many senses. it was really sad at the end that no one showed up to his funeral.
(spoiler alert, yadda yadda yadda)
Emily: that’s when i almost cried! In public!
Meredith: was it because people were "busy" that they didn’t go to his funeral or because they didn't want to risk getting in trouble, if they were bootleggers?
Emily: it's the contrast between old and new money. All the people at his parties were old money and the ones who really knew him acquired their money in unsavory ways, and couldn’t be associated with him. Hence, his empty funeral.
I also thought Fitzgerald was attempting to point out the frivolity of the upper classes, in that sense
Meredith: so if the American dream was to have lots of money and live lavishly, why didn't Daisy leave Tom for Gatsby?
Too much of a hassle?
Emily: ah, ok so this was also hearbreaking and earthshattering: Daisy really loved them both. She gave up Gastby, who she loved more, for the security of Tom.
Meredith: did she love Tom?
Emily: in a certain way. she can't truthfully tell Gatsby she never did.
it's the DECEIT OF THE HUMAN HEART!
which is why this book is so huge
it tackles the nature of human love, money and modern america all at the same time
in less than 200 pages
Meredith: myessss so good
Emily: so Tom Buchanan
Meredith: yeah wtf Tom
Emily: he reminds me of every conservative I’ve ever met
Meredith: hahah yeah. just kind of a hypocritical jerk
total square
doesn't like "art"
Emily: yeah, super dominant authoritarian personality. and racist.
Fitzgerald really explores a lot of different personality archetypes.
Tom, the "brute" as Daisy calls him
Nick is the sane, thoughtful one
and Gatsby is a hyper-driven mystery
And Daisy and Jordan-- Daisy is a pretty fool, and Jordan is a little tougher and more jaded.
I do like how he writes the women. They felt real to me.
Meredith: me tooooo!
Emily: good work, F.!
Meredith: his writing made me melt toward the end.
Some of the most beautiful prose ever.
like this: "it was dawn now on Long Island and we went about opening the rest of the windows downstairs, filling the house with grey turning, gold turning light. The shadow of a tree fell abruptly across the dew and ghostly birds began to sing among the blue leaves. There was a s low pleasant movement in the air, scarcely a wind, promising a cool lovely day."
HOW'D HE DO THAT
There’s also a lot of talk of movement, it seems like things are constantly moving, which speaks to what you were talking about the new modern mobility
Alsoooo, a lot of "east and west" talk
And he was among the expats to move east across the Atlantic to France
Emily: with Hway and stuff! they were friends!
Hway and Fitz in Paris
It seems like his prose exists somewhere in the middle of the hypermodern (for the time) of Hemingway and the more descriptive Victorian style, which is ALSO what the book was about! Transition.
Meredith: i kept being surprised that this man writing in the 1920s was writing with emotion.
it was great!
hemmy trained me well
Emily: yes, seriously. It seems like a simple book but it's a machine.
And it went unrecognized in his lifetime!
Meredith: right. Well it's super autobiographical, which, show me a book that isn't. But this one very much so.
Emily: true! Zelda[Fitzgerald’s wife] almost didn't marry F. because he didn't have money!
And she was a southern debutante! JUST LIKE GATS AND DAISY
F. and Zelda, 1921
Meredith: also, it might be my birthday being right around the corner, but the passage where Nick Carraway talks about his birthday. There was lots of drama going on. And he just suddenly remembered. Which I thought was really sad.
And then: "thirty-the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief-case of enthusiasm, thinning hair..." f. scott f. was 29 when this book was published!
Emily: UGH
yes
I hope I forget about this book before I turn 30.
Meredith: i found myself feeling so sorry for him.
Emily: I love the scene where he and Jordan break up over the phone.
"I don’t know who hung up with a sharp click but I knew I didn’t care."
it’s so brutal.
Meredith: yes
Emily: ALSO
there is some dialogue in here that killed me
when Daisy says to Gatz "you look so cool. you always look so cool." And Nick describes that as Daisy telling him she loves him in front of a room full of people, including her husband.
I was like GAHHHHHHHHHH
those lines are quiet but so powerful.
Each character has a really distinct voice.
Meredith: Also "angry, and half in love with her, and tremendously sorry, I turned away."
Emily: yesss! Who doesn’t live in that space 24 hrs a day.
Meredith: for reals, love that shit.
I really didn't know the story when I was starting it. And to be honest felt myself dipping into boredom. But definitely redeemed itself and it might have just been where I was.
But it was funny-- you texted me "i'm at the good part"
and right when i got there, i knew what you were talking about.
Emily: yes! Toward the end when Daisy and Gatsby are sort of getting together but you know it doesn't end well.
speaking of
this line KILLED ME: “they had never been closer in their month of love nor communicated more profoundly one with another, than when she brushed silent lips against his coat's shoulder or when he touched the end of her fingers, gently, as though she were asleep.”
Meredith: I
KNOW
RIGHT
jesus
talk about melting
Emily: I was like uhh, yeah, thats everything, ever, right there.
Then the flip side, when Gatsby goes back to to Daisy's in Louisville after he gets back from the war, and she's already married tom:
“but it was going by too fast now for his blurred eyes and he knew that he had lost that part of it, the freshest and the best, forever.”
GUUUHA it so perfectly captures the feeling of having had everything and losing it, and in that moment the life and fulfillment you thought you would have disappear forever. The end of youth.
Meredith: I have such a crush on F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Emily: he is crushable.
Can the modern world even make someone like this?
No one is sincere or believes in lips brushing collars anymore.
The Drunk and The Careless
Meredith: Woody Allen just made this film, Midnight in Paris
where he kind of reconstructs the feeling of the 20s and the world that F. Scott conveyed
and Owen Wilson’s character desperately wants to live in the 20s, in Paris, with Hemingway and Fitz-g, and Gertrude stein, etc.
and there are characters playing f. Scott and Zelda and Zelda is a drunk, but actually kind of charming. and F. Scott is such a real guy. and Hemingway is the best.
mixed reviews on the film, but the FEEEEELING was nice
also Adrian Brody plays Salvador Dali. Ooof.
Emily: !@!!!!!1 me: ok, I’ll have to see it.
yeah, Fitz was a drunk but apparently didn’t drink and write.
or edit
Meredith: it's interesting, the edition I got from the Seattle Public Library, Ballard location, is the 75th anniversary edition (wow!) and it spoke about how he wasn't a strong speller and edited SO MANY drafts.
Emily: back in the age of typewriters!
Meredith: this one said it restored it kind of close to the original
And they restored thousands of commas or something
Because those things are no decorations
But yeah, I can imagine him going back and forth between leaving and omitting a comma. It can totally change a sentence, as we great writers know.
So many dogs with rain coats on right now, btw
Emily: my edition said that he had a “pitch perfect sense of the English language,” which I think definitely comes through.
comma misuse is enraging.
Meredith: yesss, that phrase is really incredible, and was certainly proven true.
what did you think of nick as narrator?
Emily: I liked him. He’s understated but reliable, and he has his own personality.
I like his contempt for everything in East Egg by the end.
Meredith: I liked him too. very sincere
He says "I am one of the few honest people I know."
Emily: yes, judgmental but also knows his own flaws.
So towards the end of the book, Nick decides Tom, Daisy and everyone of their class are "careless" and I think that’s an interesting word to use.
it seems simple and almost weak but when you think about it, it’s pretty cutting.
it’s close to selfish, it almost seems to mean lazily so.
not even selfish for a reason, just completely disregarding of anyone else at all.
because they can afford to be.
Meredith: which, is that exemplified in the accident, when Daisy kills Myrtle, the woman Tom’s having an affair with while driving Gatsby’s car?
Emily: yes, totally. and the affairs themselves, and Gatsby’s death, when Myrtle’s husband kills Gatsby-- Daisy and Tom just leave town.
Meredith: the lack of any type of emotion except from Tom seemed careless to me, too.
Emily: they've purchased immunity from the norms or courtesies of human interaction.
they don't have to abide by them.
which is why nick judges and dislikes them.
Meredith: right. he's a humble mid-westerner.
just like F. Scott F.!
Nick seemed so reluctant to go east at the beginning of the book
like he was doing just because that's what he's "supposed to do"
go to college, get job, meet wife, etc.
which doesn't sound too different from 2k11
except Yale probably cost a couple hundo more
I downed an americano at the last cafe I was at because they didn't have wifi! doh
so now I’m at vegan bakery and it smells weird and spicy
Emily: where are you, Kuwait? who doesn’t have wifi?
Meredith: srsly.
Emily: Fitz knew he was destined for greatness with this book, BUT NO ONE ELSE DID!
one of my favorite things about F. is that he knew he was a genius
he really pushed this one through on his faith in it
Meredith: did he feel like that with all his work? or was it just this one that he thought "that's gonna be a good one"?
Emily: he said: "The author would like to say that never before did one try to keep his artistic conscience as pure as during the ten months put into doing it... what I cut out both physically and emotionally would make another novel.”
and, the first printing was only 5,000!
and the obits barely mentioned it when he died!
and the NYT said "he never grew up"!!!!!!!!!1111111
Meredith: how old was he when he died? and was it from 2 much booze?
Emily: He was 44. And I think so... all the best ones go that way. BUT, he thought it should become a favorite of "classrooms, profs, lovers of English prose."
AND IT DID!
Meredith: YES IT DID
I read that he was in Italy when it was in the publishing process
so he wasn't right there through it all which I can imagine was stressful. he should have just skyped
Emily: I am lisnin to Justice's new album right now in honor of F's Parisian expat days
Meredith: ah tres bien! j'adore les artists francais
Emily: si si!
have you seen the Gatsby movie?!
w Redford?!?!?!?!
and Mia Farrow?
The greatest love story of our time!!!!
Meredith: noooo!
Emily
you'll never believe this
I just went to look it up
they're making a 2012 version, in production now
this is like that time we read jane eyre (hyperlink to ourselves)
Emily: srsly@!!!!!!!
Meredith: leo diCappiez!
Emily: Hollywood is cesspool of mediocrity and needs to Hunter S. Thompson itself
Meredith: was HST gun to the head?
Emily: yeah
Speaking of death:
F's grave is inscribed with THE FINAL LINE FROM GATSBY: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
Meredith: jeeSUS
Emily: that is pretty heavy
Meredith: IT'S SO BEAUTIFUL
Emily: "epic" in the most-non fratty use of the word possible
Meredith: legit.
Next: Is Daisy a fully realized character? Is Nick a judgemental douche? How can we talk about Dashboard Confessional in conjunction with the text? AND MORE
