Lamron Lit Corner: The Great Gatsby and beating against the current
If there is one quote from the classic novel The Great Gatsby that continues to poke its head up in my life—begging for attention, for regard, for answers and questions, over and over for the last several years—it is this one:
“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.”
Rereading this quote four years ago on the eve of my high school graduation, it felt like it would never again be as important as it was right then. Life was, in both metaphor and fact, restarted with the summer.
Like James Gatz being whisked away from Daisy, there was nothing I could do to “fix” that conviction; to tell myself that life would go on as it always had because it would be a lie. But Fitzgerald knew this: It is a “familiar conviction” for a reason, and though I didn’t know it then, it would rear its head again.
F. Scott Fitzgerald was no stranger to an ever-evolving life, one consisting of rebirth over and over again. Whether it be his education at Princeton, his subsequent dropping out and joining the military during World War I, his turbulent relationship with Zelda Sayre (which saw both being institutionalized on and off for their whole marriage), or his struggle with alcoholism and suicidal ideation, Fitzgerald effortlessly embodied Gatsby more so than his narrator Nick. As David Alworth states in his introduction to the Norton Critical edition, “Fitzgerald knew that he had accomplished something special in writing The Great Gatsby, but he died believing himself a failure. His death, however, was followed by a kind of resurrection.” As Nick attempts to immortalize and deify Gatsby in death, so does the literary community with Fitzgerald.
Despite being regarded well by critics, the novel sold well below expectations compared to Fitzgerald’s two previous novels, This Side of Paradise (1920) and The Beautiful and the Damned (1922), which not only earned him the title of The Writer of the Jazz Age, but also made him and Zelda something of a celebrity couple. Why, then, did Gatsby sell so poorly?
Alworth says, “The Great Gatsby was published when literary writers challenged realism on both sides of the Atlantic. If, in a fundamental sense, realism is a narrative mode characterized by plausible rather than sensational or fantastical plots, lifelike rather than idealized characters, and mundane rather than supernatural settings, then The Great Gatsby pushes this mode to its limit and beyond.”
If you recall your first run-in with Gatsby, one of the first aspects to note is how reality bends through Fitzgerald’s writing and Nick’s narration; it is not simply Long Island, Manhattan, Brooklyn, or any other specific streets and locations bearing down on the reader. It is East Egg and West Egg, The Valley of Ashes, and “the city.”
Despite being a literary story that exists without the bending of supernatural forces or unrealistic settings, Gatsby forces the reader to not only see the horrifically sensational nature of reality, but also understand how it affects everyone. Literary critics have come to call this form in which Gatsby created “subjunctive realism,” a parallel reality in which our biggest fears, hopes, dreams, and sadnesses are made into spectacles.
Fitzgerald’s subjunctive realism could be partially blamed for the lack of enthusiasm around the novel upon publication. Though, as Alworth says, more authors were beginning to experiment with the surreal and spectacular, whether in James Joyce’s Ulysses or Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, no one had pushed it as far as Fitzgerald. In the same way, we see the same few movies and TV shows becoming popular today (reboots, sequels, and prequels), Gatsby was not in the “economic” novel genre. It was, in essence, too spectacular, too surreal, and too “Gatsby” for the average reader.
Fast forward to the mid-20th century: when the surreal was becoming more mainstream, literary critics picked Fitzgerald’s work back up and began using it in schools; Gatsby eventually became one of the most-taught books in the American education system next to the works of Shakespeare. This led to the first pushback and the first round of censorship, which called Gatsby profane, vulgar, and over-sexualized, despite it being one of the tamest books in education. Compared to other classics of the 20th century (The Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies, 1984, and To Kill a Mockingbird), Gatsby was about as docile as a piece of literature could be, which may be a reason many don’t remember it as fondly as others. Compared to kids stranded on an island together or a science fiction totalitarian dystopia, Gatsby and the Roaring 20s seem to fall by the wayside.
And that is exactly what happened to me at first. When the most action that occurs in Gatsby is a car “accident,” how could it stand against the hyper-realized worlds of other classic novels? It all goes back to the familiar conviction and the cyclical nature of Gatsby and what it says about our reality. Like Nick, many to-be graduates are not at that crux of life wherein the next step is blurry, even more so than it was after high school. Yet, without the same crutches to lean on that were present, one may find comfort and connection in places they hadn’t before, chasing green lights they didn’t know existed or knew all too well.
In the penultimate moment of the novel, calling across the lawn to a Gatsby he would never see again alive, Nick says: “They’re a rotten crowd. You’re worth the whole damn bunch of them put together,” the “only compliment [Nick] ever gave him” to which Gatsby simply smiles. To me, this one moment radiates more emotion than any other book ever has. It is simple, real, and yet the weight of each word, each letter on the page, hangs in your mind as if the world depends on it.
But Gatsby is a tragedy, and thus even the kindest words were not enough to prevent the inevitable. Having put everything he had into one person, after forgiving him for everything, after helping him fix everything, having given him the love he had always yearned for, Nick is left to live in the world alone, forever changed by one fleeting summer where his life had begun over again.
This is my final Lamron Lit Corner before my life begins over again with the summer. Having been writing these almost every week for a year and a half, 27 articles later, I worry that I’ll never have such an amazing opportunity to write about books again.
We must, I find, listen to Nick. Nick sacrifices himself spiritually while Gatsby does so literally, giving meaning to why Nick so confidently states, “Gatsby turned out alright in the end,” because really, in the end, Nick is left alive to suffer. The novel is thus not only a deep look into the spectacular, surreal dream of one fateful summer and a philosophy on love and lust, but a guide as to what not to do.
I sit “brooding on” my own “old, unknown world” as Nick does at the end of the book, wondering the same things: “[Gatsby] had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.”
As we make our own dreams, readers, be sure to follow the current, as hard as it may be. Take comfort in knowing that we can only do so much in four years. The same dreams and wishes you have now will feel like a misty light at the end of the dock down the road. You could reach for it, “run faster, stretch out our arms farther,” only to find that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again. Make this one count.