Sean

Idle Book Club Episode 5: The Great Gatsby

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"Rich people problems" seems like a really odd attitude to this book, since it's a book to me that seems to be satirising rich people problems by contrasting them with real problems.

Daisy and Tom's problems are portrayed as melodrama (problems they create for themselves for entertainment and self-pity), & contrasted with the real problems, like Gatsby's inescapable poverty (even when he's rich, he's still tarred, because the only way to get rich was to get a reputation), the tenuousness of Wilson's existence, etc. Fitzgerald does something similar in the short story The Cut-Glass Bowl (rich vain woman makes little melodramas to entertain herself, then has to deal with real problems in the fallout), and I have vague memories of it popping up in his other short stories.

Daisy and Tom are the only two characters portrayed as truly rich, (I think I mean this the same way Chris was talking about class) ie rich beyond having to sell-out. Jordan cheats, so does Gatsby, Nick settles for less money because he likes the moral high-ground. The difference between the classes is in one you can either be rich or pure, but in the one Daisy & Tom inhabit you get to be rich and pure.

I don't think you're mean to feel sorry for Tom and Daisy for any of their problems or screwed up-ness, in the end. I kinda think that's the point?

"Don't feel sorry for these rich people and their problems, even if their lives & problems are glamourised and romanticised by our society. They just killed three people out of fealty to their class, to maintaining it, to defending it, to perpetuating it, even though they know it screws people's lives up. They're not victims, they're evil."

Maybe?

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"Rich people problems" seems like a really odd attitude to this book, since it's a book to me that seems to be satirising rich people problems by contrasting them with real problems.

Yeah, if anything I'd say the book is incredibly damning to the rich, portraying them as a bunch of spoiled infants whose adulthood is almost like children playing dress-up. It's totally different from, say, The King's Speech which bit that critique, I think.

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Apparently Nick's obsession with noses is meant to be a subtle hint that he is gay. When Tom crushes the nose of his lover, this has been read as an overt display of his heterosexuality and masculinity in its most traditional form.

I read an essay claiming that Nick was gay, and is thus given an even more of a 'outsider' role in the affairs of his friends. Most of it tried to tie the nose thing with his thoughts about turning 30. I don't know how convinced I am.

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Yeah, if anything I'd say the book is incredibly damning to the rich, portraying them as a bunch of spoiled infants whose adulthood is almost like children playing dress-up. It's totally different from, say, The King's Speech which bit that critique, I think.

Anybody read Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and the Damned? It's been a while but I remember it having an even more overtly negative portrayal (bordering on heavy handed) of the whole idle rich class of the time.

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I finally listened to the podcast and I was just thinking about your discussion on Meyer Wolfsheim, and how the kind of stereotype he was written in just wouldn't be acceptable today. It reminded me of a section in Maus, where the author felt guilty writing about his father because his father acted just like a Jewish stereotype. I think that's interesting, because a lot of times in film and novels you'll see characters who you just straight-up say I know that person (Nick Breckon even mentioned that he "knows some Daisies"), and, in the case of Meyer Wolfsheim, he was a man that he knew, Arnold Rothstein. It's just interesting to me that sometimes that guy you know is something totally different and uncomfortable when it's also a racial stereotype. Most decent people consciously tread lightly around that sort of thing, even feel guilty for noticing it. Personally I do the same, but it does make me wonder if Meyer Wolfsheim is an invalid character just because he's also a stereotype.

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I finally listened to the podcast and I was just thinking about your discussion on Meyer Wolfsheim, and how the kind of stereotype he was written in just wouldn't be acceptable today. It reminded me of a section in Maus, where the author felt guilty writing about his father because his father acted just like a Jewish stereotype. I think that's interesting, because a lot of times in film and novels you'll see characters whom you just straight-up say I know that person (Nick Breckon even mentioned that he "knows some Daisies"), and, in the case of Meyer Wolfsheim, he was a man that he knew, Arnold Rothstein. It's just interesting to me that sometimes that guy you know is something totally different and uncomfortable when it's also a racial stereotype. Most decent people consciously tread lightly around that sort of thing, even feel guilty for noticing it. Personally I do the same, but it does make me wonder if Meyer Wolfsheim is an invalid character just because he's also a stereotype.

It's the difference between attributing that stereotypical behaviour to their race or attributing it to societal pressures, maybe? Fitzgerald doesn't give Wolfsheim any of the explanations that Gatsby gets for his behaviour - Gatsby takes on shadiness for a sympathetic motivation, Wolfsheim is portrayed as inherently shady. I think you could have written a character that did exactly what Wolfsheim did and came across the same way, but less racistly. (Mad Men is kinda classic at this - portraying people acting out stereotypes but showing how that was often the best of bad options available to them because of the roles their group was allowed). Then again, Nick is portrayed as being kinda a hypocrite in his belief he doesn't judge, maybe the racism is just part of that.

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I finally listened to the podcast and I was just thinking about your discussion on Meyer Wolfsheim, and how the kind of stereotype he was written in just wouldn't be acceptable today. It reminded me of a section in Maus, where the author felt guilty writing about his father because his father acted just like a Jewish stereotype. I think that's interesting, because a lot of times in film and novels you'll see characters whom you just straight-up say I know that person (Nick Breckon even mentioned that he "knows some Daisies"), and, in the case of Meyer Wolfsheim, he was a man that he knew, Arnold Rothstein. It's just interesting to me that sometimes that guy you know is something totally different and uncomfortable when it's also a racial stereotype. Most decent people consciously tread lightly around that sort of thing, even feel guilty for noticing it. Personally I do the same, but it does make me wonder if Meyer Wolfsheim is an invalid character just because he's also a stereotype.

Interesting point, but I'm not sure where you got the idea that Fitzgerald knew Rothstein. He was a notorious gangster of his day -- he's actually a character in Boardwalk Empire. This is just Fitzgerald's impression of him, most likely via newspapers of the time.

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I completely forgot to mention this, but the first thing I did after reading Wolfsheim's first appearance was to google 'Fitzgerald antisemite' because I had no idea what the context was, and whether this was a consistent thing in his writing/views. It struck me as so incongruous after the way in which Tom's ideas are introduced that I was very confused. I think you guys handled it well on the podcast.

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Interesting point, but I'm not sure where you got the idea that Fitzgerald knew Rothstein. He was a notorious gangster of his day -- he's actually a character in Boardwalk Empire. This is just Fitzgerald's impression of him, most likely via newspapers of the time.

I thought I remembered Jake saying the character summary explained that Fitzgerald had met Rothstein. I might just be mistake .

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I was watching The Wire, and was pleasantly surprised by this scene (season 2 episode, in case you're worried about spoilers):

I think D'Angelo's take is pretty smart.

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"Rich people problems" seems like a really odd attitude to this book, since it's a book to me that seems to be satirising rich people problems by contrasting them with real problems.

Daisy and Tom's problems are portrayed as melodrama (problems they create for themselves for entertainment and self-pity), & contrasted with the real problems, like Gatsby's inescapable poverty (even when he's rich, he's still tarred, because the only way to get rich was to get a reputation), the tenuousness of Wilson's existence, etc. Fitzgerald does something similar in the short story The Cut-Glass Bowl (rich vain woman makes little melodramas to entertain herself, then has to deal with real problems in the fallout), and I have vague memories of it popping up in his other short stories.

Daisy and Tom are the only two characters portrayed as truly rich, (I think I mean this the same way Chris was talking about class) ie rich beyond having to sell-out. Jordan cheats, so does Gatsby, Nick settles for less money because he likes the moral high-ground. The difference between the classes is in one you can either be rich or pure, but in the one Daisy & Tom inhabit you get to be rich and pure.

I don't mean to dismiss the book(s) by saying they are about rich people's problems. I agree with you and meant that both authors show their "problems" aren't real problems and they don't have to deal with the consequences that would ruin other peoples lives.

One thing I took from both books is that if you aren't in the same class as them being friends with them can seriously mess up your life cause you don't have the wealth (or the attitude that no matter what happens you will be grand) to shield yourself from the consequences of reckless actions.

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So I'm finally listening to the podcast, having finished this masterpiece of a book an hour ago, and you guys mentioned that there aren't any "nice" editions of the book. Here's mine. It's beautiful.

tumblr_m5ct6x4yBf1qc82ygo1_400.jpg

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I have that edition too! Penguin Essentials and Modern Classics stuff is really nice.

Having said that I just started reading the free iBook version of The Great Gatsby on my brand new Kindle. :shifty:

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I haven't been able to sleep because of this book and have fallen into a deep depression. I think it reached subtly into something inside me and pressed on it. That's probably the mark of a great book.

I have a lot of thoughts about it. They're not worth sharing. All I can say is that some sort of despair ballooned inside of my chest and I've been distracted ever since.

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Love that D'Angelo moment up there.

 

Thought I'd share my experience reading The Great Gatsby. I went into it fresh, having never read or studied it. The extent of my knowledge was a trailer from the upcoming film, which didn't really seem all that representative of the novel.

 

Anyway, I enjoyed it quite a bit, but at the same time, even though it's rather embarrassing to admit, missed a lot of the allegorical elements, and wasn't really thinking of Nick as an unreliable narrator. Some of that stuff did come through of course, but I didn't stop to think about it, and it ended up being (on the unreliable narrator side) more of a general feeling of mistrust towards Nick, and a sense of the wishy-washy nature of his character.

 

An example of this is the green light - I was definitely on board for Gatsby's discovery that by gaining Daisy's presence he'd lost something that couldn't be reattained, but the green light at the end of the dock was just that, an slightly odd-coloured light, a rather pointless (but perhaps grounding) little detail.

 

This wasn't really a problem until I read the Introduction to my Penguin copy by Tony Tanner, which really dives into both of those elements; by the end of his Introduction, I felt somehow cheated by Fitzgerald, in that, by not having cottoned on to the fact that I should have been contemplating the symbolism and exactly how much Nick could have been re-contextualizing the story (Tanner suggests that we basically can't - and maybe shouldn't - trust anything), I had missed out on a significant chunk of the experience.

 

The biggest examples of this include how Gatsby (apparently) symbolises America at that time; the West and East Eggs symbolises the political left and right; Daisy represents the America's future, the dream being perfect, the reality fatally flawed; Jordan Baker represents the automotive industry somehow (apparently her name is an amalgam of two brands of automobile popular at the time...)

 

It's strange; usually I try as best I can to go into an experience totally naive to it, but I think in this particular case, my enjoyment of the novel would perhaps have been increased by having heard something about symbolism, allegory or unreliable narration beforehand, just to have those concepts on the mind while reading.

 

In any case, it was good to hear the cast say that the symbolism isn't nearly as essential to the book as I'd thought after reading that Introduction. My misgivings about the allegorical elements aside, it still stands as a great piece of writing with some real emotion and pathos to it.

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That's a shame that reading the intro affected your enjoyment of the book, because besides the issue of an unreliable narrator, I think most of the interpretations you mentioned were overreaching. I can't even begin to comprehend how East and West Egg are meant to symbolize the two political sides in America, or how Daisy is representative of America's future (doesn't it make far more sense to say she represents the past?).

This form of literary interpretation is so frustrating to me, because you already have a well-written book stuffed full of meaning, there's no need to go piling on all this extra content about how Jordan is the automobile industry; it detracts from the overall strength of the book. And you can tell that Fitzgerald never meant to intentionally add any of these elements into the book, because the book is actually readable. When an author is very obviously creating characters or settings to fit some kind of allegorical-mold, the book as a piece of fiction almost always suffers. A good example is Super Sad True Love Story, which overloads you with symbolism and meaning that it starts to feel childish, like the author was afraid that no one would understand his satirization of political news, so he had to label a conservative news channel 'UltraConservativeFoxNews.' 

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I haven't been able to sleep because of this book and have fallen into a deep depression. I think it reached subtly into something inside me and pressed on it. That's probably the mark of a great book.

I have a lot of thoughts about it. They're not worth sharing. All I can say is that some sort of despair ballooned inside of my chest and I've been distracted ever since.

Hope you're alright there, Kroms. I don't think the book was meant to fill you with despair! :-/

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I always understood the book as how people attach symbolic meaning to things in their lives, and the melancholy that is felt when such symbolism is revealed to just be internalized feelings projected onto a suitable object, "enchanted objects" passage and so on.

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That's sort of true, I think, but it's not just about placing symbolic meaning onto things -- it's placing importance symbolic meaning onto things that are decadent and shallow. The book isn't cynically denouncing dreams and aspirations, it's denouncing dreams and aspirations that lead to greed and selfishness. As I understand it, it's a comment on the decadence of what the American Dream had turned into by the 20s: The selfish desire for money and status.

Those wanting money and status (Gatsby) are destroyed by it. Those possessing it (Daisy and Tom) are shown to be horrible, selfish people.

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That's a shame that reading the intro affected your enjoyment of the book, because besides the issue of an unreliable narrator, I think most of the interpretations you mentioned were overreaching. I can't even begin to comprehend how East and West Egg are meant to symbolize the two political sides in America, or how Daisy is representative of America's future (doesn't it make far more sense to say she represents the past?).

This form of literary interpretation is so frustrating to me, because you already have a well-written book stuffed full of meaning, there's no need to go piling on all this extra content about how Jordan is the automobile industry; it detracts from the overall strength of the book. And you can tell that Fitzgerald never meant to intentionally add any of these elements into the book, because the book is actually readable. When an author is very obviously creating characters or settings to fit some kind of allegorical-mold, the book as a piece of fiction almost always suffers. A good example is Super Sad True Love Story, which overloads you with symbolism and meaning that it starts to feel childish, like the author was afraid that no one would understand his satirization of political news, so he had to label a conservative news channel 'UltraConservativeFoxNews.' 

Thanks for the detailed response - I've been meaning to respond to this for a while but wanted to wait until my thoughts had settled.

After reflecting a while, I think I simply shouldn't have dove right into Tanner's Introduction after finishing the last page of the book. It is clearly designed to be of interest to someone who loves The Great Gatsby, has already read it multiple times, is really into the symbolism and wants insight into every minute detail and quirk that went into the writing of it. And for someone in that position, it's probably a valuable read.

Also, I think I may have incorrectly understood some of his interpretations - he may not have actually meant that the East and West Egg represent the political right and left - more that West represented new money and East old, which is probably a pretty universal takeaway.

In any case, lesson learnt - for future reads, I'm definitely going to let the book percolate in my mind a couple of days at least before getting into the ephemera surrounding it.

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The NY Times has an article today about the movie tie-in book cover for Gatsby http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/26/business/media/new-great-gatsby-book-carries-a-hollywood-look.html?hp&_r=1&
 
I just love all the elements that are packed into this one quote: 
 

The new edition, with its Art Deco glitter, presents a stark choice for readers, as well as retailers who are trying to gauge the tastes of their customers.
At stores like Barnes & Noble, with its nearly 700 outlets, both editions will be available. But at Walmart, only the movie tie-in edition will be stocked, a tacit acknowledgment that the discount chain’s customers want books that appear fresh and new (even if they happen to have been released in 1925). And at independent booksellers like McNally Jackson in SoHo, customers who want “The Great Gatsby” can purchase only the original: not a single copy of the new, cinematic edition will be for sale.

 
Gatsby-articleInline.jpg
 

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Ugh.. that is pretty awful. Not quite as bad as the Tom-Hanks-face-tattoo edition of Cloud Atlas, but still.

 

I can see how these covers may appeal to some people, but for me it's just the opposite. I'm still embarrassed by my movie tie-in Solaris with George Clooney in the cover. 

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It's pretty comprehensive. You've got your font problems, perspective issues brought about by wayward photoshoppery, overwrought use of period stylings to frame the image... The female lead's postural discomfort contrasts horribly with Di Caprio's unconcerned expression.

 

All in all, though, it's nowhere near as delightfully obtuse as the original artwork's vision of madness. Please explain:

 

Gatsbyjp-articleInline.jpg

 

I love book cover art :)

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