Not-So-Great Gatsby

So, I finally read "The Great Gatsby." I don't know how I never got around to it all of these years, but, on a whim, I read it. I think because some folks who've read my writing have said that my style reminds them of Fitzgerald, so I thought "Fuck it, I'll give his masterpiece a read." My stepdad hated that book, threw it out a window when he was in college, and I know someone else who hated the book so much that she couldn't finish it.

Had to tackle it at last, and I did. Surprisingly, for such a short book, it is a fucking slog. I was surprised at how hard it was to get through. Not because it was nearly impenetrable ala James Joyce, because the prose was bright and accessible, but just because it was so boring. Boring. BORING.

Not that there weren't lovely turns of phrases here and there -- there were, but I was surprised that this, the Modern Library's Number 2 greatest work of fiction of the last century, was so spare. I read it as a writer, delving through it, the language, everything. It just didn't do it for me. I was surprised at how lacking it was, in terms of language. Like Ralph Ellison's masterpiece, "Invisible Man" -- that book serves up dazzling prose in thick and juicy slabs -- whole paragraphs and chapters that sizzle with writerly energy. And much of Hemingway's best stuff also hits like that. Whereas Fitzgerald's prose struck me as a dash of seasoning here and there. Very slight.



I found myself wanting to say "WHO CARES?" while reading, even while wanting to get through it. I was disappointed, and wondered how this book became so canonical. And then I did some delving, saw that it had been nearly forgotten shortly after coming out, and Fitzgerald died feeling an abject failure as a writer -- and then, "The Great Gatsby" was included in some WWII pack given to soldiers -- some 150,000 copies were included in those packets, and that made me think that THIS was the reason the book became canonical: all of those copies, those soldiers reading that slim novel in wartime, hearkening back to an era they likely remembered in their childhood -- voila! Instant classic!

Not to be too cynical, here, but would that book have become a super-classic if not for that 150,000-copy literary inoculation given to those soldiers? It likely informed the aesthetic for a generation. Would that every writer could be so lucky! Right time, right place, I guess.

Because, in my opinion, the book was not so great. Well-written, but not nearly as well-written as I thought it would be, and not even close to the best book I've ever read. And now I wonder if I should read more Fitzgerald to see whether I can find what there is in his work that I can take inspiration from, because I found precious little in this little book. I won't forget reading it, but perhaps for all of the wrong reasons.

Also, it was curious for me, because I'd read Nathanael West's "The Day of the Locust" years ago, and I found many similarities of style between him and Fitzgerald. And, of course, those two were friends, curiously enough, so it shouldn't perhaps surprise me that they kind of wrote like each other, since odds are they read each other's work.

It was curious for me to read "Gatsby" and see a similar writing voice to West, given that Fitzgerald is, by far, the ultimately more famous of the two writers. And, bizarrely, West died in a car crash on the way to Fitzgerald's funeral, which binds them together in still more curious ways in my head.