I like to listen to NPR’s Planet Money podcast and for some reason they decided to read the entirety of The Great Gatsby for their first episode of the year. I hadn’t read that book since college, maybe high school, so I decided to go ahead and listen to the whole episode while cleaning my apartment a few weeks ago.
I have some issues with Fitzgerald as a person, especially since reading Z a few years ago, so I had mixed feelings about rereading this, especially knowing how much of it is about a dude building up in his head his relationship with his girlfriend from five years ago.
But listening to it … damn. The man could write. The writing in this book is just so gorgeous.
Given how many similarities there are between Fitzgerald and Gatsby, I have to wonder why Fitzgerald chose Nick Carraway as the narrator, especially since Nick at one point says he actively dislikes Gatsby and his friends. Maybe because Fitzgerald wanted to maintain the air of mystery surrounding Gatsby.
Given the obsession with class and money that’s front and center in the plot, it’s interesting that Gatsby doesn’t get anything he wants, even after making all that money and trying so hard to act the part of an upper-class man. He apparently had a hard time convincing anyone he was really “an Oxford man,” so as a comment on class, I suppose that’s pretty well on point.
Nick seems to think it’s terrible that no one came to Gatsby’s funeral, but I think that’s just the price you pay when you put all your energies into trying to win back a woman who’s already married to someone else. He left his family when he changed his name, and he was too obsessed with Daisy to try to forge real relationships with anyone else. He only cares about Nick when he realizes he’s related to Daisy.
As much as I love Leonardo DiCaprio, I can’t say I ever looked forward to his adaptation of The Great Gatsby. The only reason I saw it was because my mom wanted to see it, so I went with her, and I actually remember enjoying it more than I thought I would. While I was listening to the Planet Money team read this book, I kept thinking about that adaptation and I was surprised at how true the movie was to the book. I’m still not sure why they chose to put Nick in a mental asylum, unless it was to imply that putting up with all that shit would drive anyone crazy. Also not sure why they chose to eliminate my favorite character, because I loved her.