Last week, I found my mind requiring entertainment (boredom is not a state I tolerate well). I'm not sure if I was inspired or just desperate, but I pulled up my Hoopla library app on my phone and began the arduous process of searching for the perfect audiobook.
What to look for? Something non-fiction to encourage a renewed mind? No... that genre must be selected sparingly. I wanted to escape, not dissect myself. Something popular and current? No... I was already reading The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, the Hunger Games prequel, on the side. (I've finished it now - highly recommend!) And so, I scrolled through and stumbled upon a classic I'd never read, but have some familiarity with due to its movie equivalent: The Great Gatsby.
It felt like the right choice. (Remember the start of this year, back when people threw parties without a second thought, and many of them were themed around "the Roaring Twenties"? Feels so long ago, now...) I approached the book with skepticism all the same. What is this, high school English lit class? Do I really want to read a literary classic? Is it going to require too much concentration to understand, too much analysis to appreciate, too much... thoughtfulness? Yet, it's regarded as one of the greatest novels of all time. That, in and of itself, should be enough to warrant a listen, should it not?
So I settled in with only middle-of-the-road expectations. I've been out of school awhile now. Give me a world to be immersed in, not a lesson to learn. Of course, I got more than I bargained for: both.
I won't spoil the book for you, in case you haven't read it yourself... but you'll be pleased (or perhaps disappointed) to know that humanity hasn't changed all that much in a nickel short of a century. Many of the themes of the book are still as prevalent today as they were when it was written. We're still selfish, and proud, and greedy. We long to recapture the past (what a poignant thought, in 2020 especially). We're still broken, in a fascinating, starry-eyed sort of way.
Not wanting to miss anything, I consulted SparkNotes for ol' Gatsby - I have plenty of my own takeaways from the book, but I enjoy the perspectives of others and the opportunity to catch things I missed. It certainly helped! But I also found a lot of attention given to little details I scarcely noticed: the symbolism behind a character clumsily knocking a clock off a table, places in the book being representative of groups of people and ideas of the time, weather indicating the emotional tone of the story. I applauded the exhaustive examination, but for me, it begged the question... was it all intentional?
Did F. Scott Fitzgerald write the perfect book, and carefully pepper all of these themes and motifs and symbols throughout his novel? Was it purposeful? When he finished, did he marvel to himself at his own genius and pat himself on the back? I imagine him chortling: "Congrats on a job well done, old sport - you'll have your readers perplexed long after you're gone!"
Or... did Fitzgerald just write what he knew? Did he create a lovable story based on a collection of his own life, his own experiences, his own observations... and it just happened to become a lasting masterpiece? Did he really mean anything by the clock being knocked off the table, or was his character just nervous, and Fitzgerald looked around his own study for inspiration? Perhaps a friend came over earlier that day and bumped into a table, giving him the idea. Was it blisteringly hot one day, when he wrote? When he started working on the next chapter, was there a chill in the air? How much emphasis did he really put in specific settings in his novel - or did his characters just need some different places to go?
I'll tell you what I do know. Fitzgerald's book wasn't particularly popular during his lifetime. It didn't become a classic until after his death - during WWII, as part of an initiative to distribute books to soldiers abroad. (More information about the history, if you have the interest and the time: https://blog.bookstellyouwhy.com/the-great-gatsbys-rocky-road-to-popularity)
I suppose I'll never know how much of the deep analysis of every detail on SparkNotes is real, and how much is happenstance. At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter. That teaches me a lesson all its own: it's human nature, to search for meaning in every moment. We long for everything to matter, for things to happen for a reason, for significance. When you look hard enough, you can find most anything you want. The ever watchful eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg stare on.
