The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby [1925, by Fitzgerald] contains an incredible sense of the modern within its old fashioned twenties scenery. It's much more than flappers and parties--it's the American dream and where it fails, the many things that happen to men after war, the drive of energy that keeps you going in life and its dangers.

The book is very short if you want to read it quick, here you go.

Drive is often spoken about in terms of its relationship to American culture, the national character--but it can also be dangerous, if you focus on the wrong thing. Gatsby tries to surmount his pitiful origins and still fails, in the end. He doesn't get Daisy, he is under pressure from his criminal business associates, and then he greets death.

He barely has a friend in the world, as the narrator notices angrily. The story is like a gem encrusted throne with a thousand facets. Is Daisy being pragmatic by staying with her average [yet wildly wealthy] husband and child, or is faithless? What is truly pledged in love?

Is it foolish to throw away your life on brief rushes of feeling for other people, or noble? That is a question at the heart of the American character. Romanticism versus practicality. The love of pleasure versus the puritanical.

Fashion was changing, as was the widespread knowledge of oriental fashions [Poiret and harem pants] and Orientalist paintings, and Egyptian styles and tombs [King Tut had just been found]--but more than that, it was a sense that the world was vast and incredible. That ancient Egypt was amazing and beautiful. That Moorish and Arab style was beautiful, and ancient mosques and the Alhambra were a deep well of beauty. That the Greeks and Romans were enticing in their white robes and tunics.

That's all for now, I'll be back many times on this subject.