On Gatsby

It has been a while since I've read The Great Gatsby. I've read it three times. Each time I am reminded why I love America ... the freedom, the opportunity, the ability to reinvent oneself. Each time I read it, I am reminded why I hate America ... the greed, the inequality, the lavish wastefulness. I should read it again, I could use a dose of American love, but the hate, that's what I am afraid of. I've had enough of that lately.

The next best thing is seeing the film. Yesterday I watched Baz Lurhmann's 2013 version of the classic and I was surprised. I was prepared to hate it. I usually hate the film versions of books that I love. HBO's Fahrenheit 451 was an abomination. I've already complained in this blog about Peter Jackson's The Hobbit. Lurhmann's Gatsby is pretty good, enjoyable even and the visuals were stunning. The visual contrast between wealthy Long Island and Valley of Ashes, the strip of land between Long Island and Manhattan, is stunning. The parties at Gatby's Long Island Shangri-La-like home are lush while the Valley is destitute,looks almost war-torn. I was impressed. Even the Jay Z rap music seemed to work. Anachronistic, yes, but it just seemed to work. Like I said, I was surprised.

But like most adaptions, I had problems with some of the changes they made. They botched the ending for one thing. The mystery of Gatsby's demise is powerful in the book. It leaves you thinking. The mystery is no more in this film. Lurhmann doesn't leave it to your interpretation or imagination. Why? Hollywood films like to wrap things up and not leave anything hanging. I like it hanging. They also did too much back story. We are not supposed to know that much about Gatsby. He is supposed remain a mystery. Once you take the mystery away, he is less interesting. Leaving some things up to the audience can make a story more dense. The reader's/watcher's imagination fills in the empty spots making for lush landscapes.

Casting of a classic is always difficult. I can't think of an actor alive that would make a good Gatsby. My wife and I pondered this and the only actor we could agree on is long dead, Clark Gable. Casting Leonardo DiCaprio as Gatsby ... eh ... I guess is as good as any other. For one of the greatest characters in American literature maybe an unknown actor would have been a better choice. I couldn't help but think of Gilbert Grape Gatsby. That is where my mind went a few times. He was certainly better than Robert Redford. The 1974 Jack Clayton film was my intro to the book. Having the image of Robert Redford as Gatsby didn't ruin the book for my young mind, but it was an obstacle. Neither of these actors seems to possess the darkness and depth that Gatsby requires. He is America, after all, we are full of contradictions.

One of the things that grad school did for me is lighten me up. I stopped seeing works of literature as monuments of civilization and more as living texts. Before I had that experience, I may not have been able to enjoy a Gatsby film with rap music in it. One of my cohorts did a reception study of The Great Gatsby and one of things she discovered was that the origin transcript is sometimes incomprehensible. Fitzgerald was a drunk, he wrote feverishly while intoxicated with an awful hand writing. Some people think his editor, Maxwell Perkins, should be considered a co-writer because Fitzgerald was often hard to reach, due to his binges, so entire passages were reshaped to how Perkins thought they were supposed to read. It is this image, of there being a very different version of Gatsby hidden in the scribbles of the original manuscript, that makes me see this text as truly alive, breathing, awaiting editing, awaiting interpretation, awaiting new civilizations to rip it apart and reinvent it, like Gatsby himself. Kinda like ... "boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."