Gatsby and Other Exciting Things

Despite Gatsby being the main reason for this blog entry, I’m going to leave him until last. It seems logical to start with how I’m writing to the blog. Well, I recently downloaded the newest version of MSN messenger that comes with this nifty thing called Windows Live Writer. Being a ‘writer’, I was intrigued. I downloaded it as part of my package and discovered that it was actually a program that allows me to write to my blog with ease! So if the internet’s broken or something I can just save all my junk here then post it when I get on. Fabulous.

I discovered a little while ago that when my brother tells me to shut the door he’s really telling me to get out of the room and don’t leave any trace of myself behind. That’s lovely.

It’s 10:17pm so I won’t ramble anymore. On to Gatsby.

I had high hopes for this one, which is perfectly normal because I choose all my books carefully. I think this was my second ‘classic’ novel so I was looking forward to it with perhaps more anxiety than my usual novel. I have to say, I wasn’t disappointed.

The book is narrated by Nick Buchanan (who followed the pattern of being the most boring protagonist possible), a young bondsman who has recently moved to New York State’s wealthy Long Island. His cousin, Daisy is a silly girl with an affluent background and a husband that doesn’t care about her. What I was struck by here is the airiness of their relationship, like two ships passing and acknowledging one another with with fleeting curiosity. It was, what are they called? A marriage of means.

So the novel began in an easy, uncaring way with characters that cared more about parties and dresses than feelings and relationships. The superficiality was beautiful. The parties, described sparingly with a dreamlike state of half-awareness of Nick’s part were so fantastically skin-deep.

As the novel progressed these layers of padding simply fell away, leaving raw nerves that had been veiled by masks of careless smiles completely vulnerable. Daisy’s marriage all but dissolved in the eyes of the reader (though not literally because it was a marriage of means) as we discover that she is, in fact, in love with Jay Gatsby. Then there’s a terrible traffic accident and the climax of the novel is reached. After that, I believe it took a turn for the worst. With thirty pages to go and the transformation from superficial to raw complete, the book seemed to flutter between meanings. There were two shocking character deaths that I hardly comprehended because they were done without flair or emotion.

But then, as always, the novel ends with hypotheses and contemplation that set my heart soaring. Fitzgerald likened Gatsby, gazing upon Daisy’s house with long, wonder and feeling to the first settlers in America and everything was happy in literary world.

I’m now reading Grass for his Pillow by Lian Hearn for the second time. There is a third novel in this series that I never reached two years ago when I last read them, so I’m going over the first two again, then I’ll finish the series once and for all. After that, my library club novel – The Knife of Never Letting Go. It has a truly fascinating blurb. Then I imagine I’ll read something classic again. Thomas Hardy, mayhaps, as I’ve recently fallen in love with his poem “The Darkling Thrush”.

I’m going to bed now. Goodnight!