Would the 25 cent press keep Gatsby in the public eye—or is the book unpopular. Has it had its chance? Would a popular reissue in that series with a preface not by me but by one of its admirers . . . make it a favorite with class rooms, profs, lovers of English prose—anybody. But to die, so completely and unjustly after having given so much. Even now there is little published in American fiction that doesn’t slightly bare [sic] my stamp—in a small way I was an original.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, in a letter to Maxwell Perkins, May 20, 1940
More than any other American novel, The Great Gatsby has transcended its era to become a touchstone within the broader culture, essentially establishing itself as one of the most important books ever written. As such, I contend that Gatsby is the fabled “Great American Novel,” that vaunted title that so many writers have spent their lives attempting to produce. Concurrently, as the novel has developed into a cultural lynchpin, I maintain that there its employment has taken on a broader meaning—a “meta-Gatsby”—or overarching idea of what the taxonomy encompassing Gatsby connotes.
However, since Fitzgerald’s masterpiece centers on ambiguity, commentators, analysts, journalists, writers, and others have employed its themes and imagery in their own work, which is sometimes congruent with what Fitzgerald might have had in mind and other times, completely off kilter. Therefore, as the ideas at the heart of Gatsby have spread throughout our common cultural discourse for more than eighty-five years, its importance grew, too, thus enabling it to ascend to folklore or Americana prominence to sit at the very heart of what it means to conceptualize the nation. Whether it is interpreted correctly, incorrectly, vaguely, or in some other manner, meta-Gatsby possesses meaning for audiences.
The rest of Gatsby: The Cultural History of the Great American Novel lays out my argument in greater detail, but I will briefly outline my rationale here
so that the reader may wrangle with my position as it unfolds. Boiled down to three
essential points, I claim that Gatsby is the Great American Novel because of its sales and readership over the past nearly
ninety years, its ubiquity in high school and college classes, and its use as a cultural
touchstone within the wider mass media as a fill-in for certain terms, themes, and
ideas. These items combine to earn Fitz-
gerald’s book this title.
Examining each part of this equation on its own merit, the evidence becomes more overwhelming. First, I estimate that Gatsby has sold about 350,000 copies per year averaged out for the last fifty years, which totals 17.5 million books. Moreover, this figure increases geometrically when one considers the used-book industry on one hand and the library/classroom pass-along market on the other. Certainly, countless sales are driven by the widespread use of the novel in high school and college classrooms.
Readership also grows by multitudes if one adds in the countless students who attempt to shortcut the process by reading any number of cribbed versions, such as CliffsNotes or SparkNotes. Others attempt to circumvent reading by watching one of the several film adaptations. Woe among these who are students when their teachers or professors find out! From the readership viewpoint, an attempt at quantifying this total might be a fun exercise, but one that could never be definitely proven and ultimately might drive the researcher insane.
The third leg in the equation is one that database research helps us uncover, though the results are not comprehensive because the extant databases cannot search across all publications. Regardless, the returns are staggering. Searching “Gatsby” via Factiva yields 11,813 uses from 1971 to 2013, though Factiva’s figures prior to the late 1990s are sketchy. In contrast, a Newsbank’s North American source search yields a remarkable 38,612 results from January 1980 to February 2013. Drilling down even further, LexisNexis finds 6,928 hits in the 2000–2010 period alone. Similarly, a New York Times historical search for “Gatsby” generates 362,000 results.
When one attempts to be more inclusive, the results multiply geometrically. A search for “The Great Gatsby” via Google in mid-May 2013, for example, yielded some 110 million hits. Obviously such a broad search on Google does not provide much context, but it does speak to the pervasiveness of “meta-Gatsby.” Furthermore, an examination of these results taken together reveals the depth of the novel’s grip on American popular culture and its place within our national folklore.
* * *
The Great Gatsby matters because its inherent ambiguity enables readers to use the novel as a barometer for measuring their own lives and the culture they inhabit. Therefore, the central themes and ideas emerging from the book, ranging from the fulfillment of the American Dream to the role of wealth in society, resonate with contemporary readers who struggle with similar uncertainties today. As a matter of fact, the ambiguity at the heart of Gatsby is its lifeblood and embraced by audiences, particularly American readers who hope and anticipate that its contents will help them comprehend their lives and the larger world a little better.
Simultaneously, however, we cannot ignore the ongoing anti-intellectual and antihumanities era now under way. This breakdown, represented by the combination of the web and high-definition television, actively undercuts deep thinking, reflection, and reading with technological beeps and whirling imagery. “Literature and literary criticism have never been doubted by the general public as much as they are today and so the question of legitimacy is central to the future health of the discipline,” concludes literary scholar Mark William Roche.[1]
One needs to simply look at online video figures to see the change the web has facilitated. For example, according to marketing firm comScore, Google/YouTube videos reached 150.7 million unique viewers in February 2013 who watched an astounding 11.3 billion videos of a total of thirty-three billion that month alone.[2] I think it is safe to estimate that in one single month, more minutes were spent watching online videos than all the time people dedicated to reading books in a decade. The commitment to reading remains important, though, particularly when examining the methods used to teach in the K–12 and higher education systems. So, while the balance has tipped mightily toward technology in people’s personal lives, education is still reading based.
This tech/nontech paradox is one of many puzzles in contemporary life, so it is no wonder readers find the pulse of Gatsby oddly comforting, while concurrently confounding. “Ephemeral” is the word scholar Jonathan P. Fegley uses to describe the way Fitzgerald represents Gatsby. “Fitzgerald has rendered Gatsby through the only means possible,” he says, “. . . in the process of becoming, not in a state of being, and thus exists in an ephemeral state.”[3]
Gatsby, therefore, is almost ghostlike in his physical manifestation, always somewhat illusory as he floats above the novel’s other players, cast upward by the power of his dream. Nick sees this in the way that he watches the man and experienced it after first meeting him, not even recognizing or realizing that he was talking to his host at the first party he attended. A resolute midwesterner who made it through Yale and survived the Great War (if we can believe he actually went to war), Nick watches Gatsby soar above the crowds and wants a piece of that action, even though he does not really know what to make of the man.
This section searches for clues in answering its title, which I contend is a key question that has entertained scholars, readers, and others for many, many decades. There are numerous reasons why Gatsby matters, ranging from its foundational place as part of the literary canon to its ubiquity in popular culture. The most obvious tie is to the American Dream, that broad notion about the United States that each of its people keeps at the center of his or her belief system or worldview.
Jay Gatsby and Tom Buchanan seem to be the keys to this equation. It is Jay, the hero/antihero who is so caught up in his love for Daisy that he makes her the center of his fictional world, risking everything and eventually losing his life as a result. Tom, on the other hand, symbolizes the corruption of American capitalism and represents the idea that if one has enough money, he can stand above the law. Furthermore, in Tom’s heart of hearts, we find that he is a racist, philanderer, and snob. Juxtaposing the two characters provides the good versus evil narrative that drives so much of our popular culture, even though the great magic of Fitzgerald’s novel is that we forgive Jay for his crimes because his romanticism and the purity of his dreams elevate him to a higher plane.
The ambiguity and mystery surrounding Gatsby is attractive for many readers. In several instances, Fitzgerald claimed that the character’s murkiness stood as one of the novel’s weaknesses. Yet in modern America the secretiveness of Gatsby’s rise to power enables the reader to use the character as a prism reflecting the ideas he or she wants to accentuate. Furthermore, Gatsby’s many masks enable the reader to reassess and rethink him on subsequent examinations. Each new reading opens up the novel and its titular lead to further inspection and analysis.
An answer to this section’s primary question is that Gatsby is so important to our conception of ourselves that meta-Gatsby developed as a result of the novel’s ubiquity. “It is reasonable to assert that Jay Gatsby was the major literary character of the United States in the twentieth century,” says scholar Harold Bloom. “No single figure . . . was as central a presence in our national mythology as Gatsby.”[4] This is uncommon ground for a novel. While the nation has many ideas and iconic figures that are part of our national mythology, few are based on novels and even fewer have exhibited the staying power of meta-Gatsby.
The crux of the argument for literature holding meaning, thus for why Gatsby matters, is also contingent on believing that the humanities are worthwhile. While this statement is pretty straightforward, countless gallons of real and virtual ink have been spilled on the question of the role of the humanities in an educated society. Reading and the kinds of books and novels that should be read are part of this debate.
Perhaps an even larger issue is whether one can learn or gain wisdom or perspective from literature. We have already seen how technology is reorienting the way people spend their leisure time, so it seems only a matter of time before technology moves from its tangential place in the education system to front and center. The humanities and technology do not have to be at odds, though, if the goal is toward building, developing, and strengthening critical and contextual thinking skills. As Roche states, “Literature enriches us partly through its intrinsic value, partly as a result of its ability to address neglected values, partly through its simple vitality.”[5]
It is this idea of combining the hard work of deep reading with the simplicity of opening a book or e-book that keeps literature prized. Literature scholar Frank B. Farrell explains:
Referring to literature as truth-revealing includes those moments when we do not simply gather information but have some fundamental character of being human, and especially of human relationships, brought intensely into view . . . some truth about human interaction emerge[s] from shadows into light, so that we seem to understand it clearly for the first time . . . one can feel moved by having a vista seem to open up suddenly on the world in its character as such, or on the patterns of the psyche’s investments in the world, its attachments and losses.[6]
Thus, literature highlights and accentuates what it is to be human, to perceive and contemplate emotion, and to feel alive in the moment that the staleness of the technology world cannot.
Roche believes that critics should elevate texts that speak to virtues, such as courage and humility. In this respect, Gatsby becomes a way of addressing those ideas by presenting us with characters who are less courageous and lack humility. Demonstrating these virtues via literature enables critics to demonstrate the “existential worth of literature . . . as an end in itself and recognition of those virtues elicited in aesthetic experience but neglected in modernity.”[7]
Of course, to grasp the existential, one must be open to the idea that one can learn from literature and that it has something to pass along in the act of reading and assessment. Once could argue that the current K–16 education system is set up in absolutely the wrong way—burying, rather than exulting the existential spirit. One needs to look no further than the way children read and choose books, comics, and other materials when provided choice, versus the way they are assigned readings in elementary school.
Literary scholars and literature departments have come under increasing fire over the last fifty years to prove their relevancy in a changing world, but no one doubts the primacy of reading as a cornerstone of the American education system. Somehow a disconnect formed in many people’s minds between what literature scholars do and how that reflects in classrooms, not only in teaching young people deep reading skills, but also in training future generations of teachers. One could certainly argue that scholars brought this challenge on themselves by focusing on politicized or postmodern readings to interpret texts, rather than preparing students for comprehending and evaluating materials. As a result, students who were unsure about how to actually read deeply and bring new ideas from their efforts into their lives were instead bombarded with interpretations and politicized ideas.
One of the easiest and most persistent criticisms of Gatsby that took hold in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries is that a narrative focused on wealthy, white elites no longer held lessons for a multicultural readership, particularly immigrant populations and others that scholars should champion. Opponents of the canonization of the novel argued that readers would find deeper meaning in works by writers they could identify with based on gender, ethnicity, or race.
While the movement toward inclusion seemed logical and many writers certainly benefited from the political correctness movement in higher education that brought more diversity to the high school and college classroom reading lists, writer Lawrence Samuel found that the young people he taught in and around Boston realized that Gatsby’s themes of “possibility and aspiration” had meaning for them as individuals, in spite of their ethnicity and backgrounds.[8]
A fourteen-year-old female Chinese immigrant who had only been in the United States for a couple of years, for example, spoke eloquently about her Gatsby-esque aspiration, saying, “My green light is Harvard.” As Samuel points out, this kind of thinking is important as the idea of the American Dream continues to evolve. The Great Gatsby’s role is also critical, given that the novel is required reading, Samuel reports, “at half the high schools in the country.” Despite its 1920s setting, teachers find that it resonates with teens, many either new to the country or only a generation or two removed from the immigrant experience.[9] As it has for decades, Fitzgerald’s creation continues to inspire readers who see something of themselves in Jay Gatsby’s self-creation and desire for a new start.
In examining contemporary literary theory, scholar Frank B. Farrell makes a case for the power of reading and its potentially transformative consequences. One of the terms he uses in defining literary space is that it is ritualized, which means that the act of reading itself commands change in a safe environment, and produces “ultimately, a more satisfying sense of one’s relationship to the forces of the cosmos and to one’s community.”[10]
This idea may seem lofty to someone who is not a self-described book lover, but it is a common enough concept, usually described as getting lost in a book. Farrell explains, “By giving oneself over to these ceremonial patterns, the reader enters slightly hypnotic states determined by the rhythms and sounds as well as by the scenes and images of the text.”[11] What Farrell has outlined is the beauty in the way young children read—developing an awe and sense of wonder at the way words are shaped and the meanings they produce. What is critical in this idea of reading is that the person is altered in the process and that some fundamental shift has occurred in the way that the reader views the world. Roche, in turn, argues, “Literature teaches us the nuances of intersubjective relationships, the strategies, the limits, the possibilities of human interaction.”[12]
It is telling that we usually only discuss these kinds of transformative moments after someone has read a gripping or powerful text. If one were to chart a second-place finisher in this regard, it would be film. Ironically, given our technology enslavement, one never finds a web user touting this kind of overwhelming joy. The Internet simply does not train people to be contextual or critical thinkers; rather, it merely throws facts and imagery at the person, akin to a tidal wave or avalanche.
British critic and novelist David Lodge views reading as a kind of physical activity that mixes in deep probing, which he describes as “a very delicate and complicated activity . . . both involved and detached” that forces the reader to accept and reject ideas simultaneously while also searching for ideas and significance. He explains:
The novel unfolds in our memories like a piece of cloth woven upon a loom, and the more complicated the pattern the more difficult and protracted will be the process of perceiving it. But that is what we seek, the pattern: some significantly recurring thread which, however deeply hidden in the dense texture and brilliance of local coloring, accounts for our impression of a unique identity in the whole.[13]
While the reader makes mental notes of the aspects of the novel that work and do not, Lodge says, he or she is piecing together the whole, constantly (perhaps consciously and subconsciously) making decisions about how all these strands will flow into one united narrative. When the reader then senses that he or she has deduced the meaning, the realization “sends a shock like an electric charge through all the discrete observations.” Make no doubt about it, though, the reader is engaged in the process.[14]
Readers are so engaged in holding the actual book that the simple idea of doing so has become important. According to writers Jane Mount and Thessaly La Force, “Perhaps we’re guilty of sentimentalizing the book as an object. But in an era when digital technology (of which we are nevertheless fans) threatens irreversibly to change our reading experience, there is nothing that parallels the physical book. There is nothing like its weight and smell and the crackle of its spine.”[15]
Fitzgerald understood the role history, heritage, and nostalgia played in people’s thinking about themselves and the world around them. As a result, his novel works on two levels: a specific portrait of life in and around New York City in summer 1922 and an examination of how history’s broad sweep influenced the nation from the Civil War through the Jazz Age. According to literary theorist Mark William Roche, “Studying the past as a genuine partner in conversation gives us alternatives to the passing modes of the present. What becomes valuable is not the newest but the greatest that has ever been thought.” This kind of interaction is transformative and powerful, he explains: “To have such an encounter with the past is humbling for the present.”[16]
Undoubtedly, given the terror of World War I (“the Great War”), Gatsby’s reach back into a nostalgic vision of the past makes the novel more interesting, nuanced, and open for interpretation. Scholars Jason P. Leboe and Tamara L. Ansons discuss the role of nostalgia in fueling the kinds of reactions that readers get when reading Gatsby, explaining, “Nostalgic experiences represent a distortion of both the past and the present. The ‘good old days’ may not have been as good as they seem in retrospect. In turn, the present is only as bad as it seems when compared against an unrealistic ideal.”[17] In this regard, the reader confronts nostalgia from multiple perspectives, including Jay’s and Nick’s yearning for a romantic West and one’s own assessment of life in the Jazz Age as typified by the novel’s plot.
One interpretation of Jay Gatsby would be to anoint him a Horatio Alger–type example of the success one can have in achieving the American Dream. Yet, Gatsby is also a con man. He fakes his way into a life that he does not deserve by letting Daisy assume that he is wealthy, then steals and cheats his way to wealth later without regard for the consequences. This conflicting image heightens the mystery, because the reader knows so much more about Gatsby than the other characters do. We see him through multiple lenses hinging on his secret identity, a narrative trope that fills popular culture from the time of Homer’s Odyssey to the comic book pages of Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man.
World War I is never far from the action in Gatsby, even though the events in the novel take place as it creeps into the past. Or, perhaps the war is still on people’s minds. In response, they are just attempting to throw mud in its face by partying as hard as possible in the aftermath—dancing in the streets to avoid facing the devastation nations unleashed on one another. Early in the novel, Nick irreverently calls the war “that delayed Teutonic migration” and claims that he “enjoyed the counter-raid so thoroughly that I came back restless.”[18] This feeling of unease led him east to New York City to set up a career selling bonds and sets off the action that summer. Yet, the reader can only imagine what horrors Nick witnessed or the consequences because he never partakes in that kind of self-analysis. He narrates, but his grasp of his own history is not what he wants to serve up.
As it seems is inevitable in talking about Gatsby, Fitzgerald plays a role here too when looking at history. According to famed literary critic Alfred Kazin, Fitzgerald’s status as the voice of his generation helped establish the Jazz Age and the way people interpreted it. He says, “Mothers swooned and legislators orated; Fitzgerald continued to report the existence of such depravity and cynicism as they had never dreamed of. The shock was delivered; Fitzgerald became part of the postwar atmosphere of shock.”[19] Gatsby, a rather immoral novel for its times, becomes part of the history of the era, as its author assumed celebrity status that afforded him a platform for making various prognostications. According to Kazin, “In 1920 he was not so much a novelist as a new generation speaking; but it did not matter. He sounded all the fashionable new lamentations; he gave the inchoate protests of his generation a slogan, a character, a definitive tone.”[20]
The popular image of Fitzgerald with a martini glass in one hand and Zelda in the other while preparing to jump on the go-go 1920s dance floor mocks the solitude, hard work, and dedication the author devoted to the writing craft. The painstaking craftsmanship, however, only emerged long after his death. By that time, his legend had been established.
Much of what scholars have learned about Fitzgerald’s style is based on the pioneering bibliographic work of Matthew J. Bruccoli, who not only helped propel the Fitzgerald renaissance, but also devoted great amounts of energy to collecting the manuscripts and galleys that Fitzgerald corrected, amended, and edited by hand. Ironically, Fitzgerald’s work became “more collectible” based on his writing style: each new work necessitated extensive revision and editing, which means more items exist written in his hand. Thus, these works become valuable for scholars in understanding Fitzgerald’s style, while simultaneously establishing a market for the documents.[21]
“Fitzgerald generated a rich archive by rewriting and revising,” Bruccoli and Judith S. Baughman explain.[22] Examining the work in draft stage, which included every ribbon copy and the publisher’s proofs, demonstrates that Fitzgerald was an incessant editor and reviser. While the edits do cover simple word replacements, what is most astonishing in looking at Gatsby across drafts is the substantial thematic revision the author carried out. One could reasonably argue that the novel takes on its stylistic aura in the final revisions Fitzgerald made in the proofs he received from Scribner’s.
What Fitzgerald accomplished with Gatsby is never taken for granted by contemporary readers, but to merely acknowledge his style and poetics is not enough to explain what he achieved. According to scholar Morris Dickstein, “Its story trickles out in bits and pieces and its style, fresh and full of surprises, is as sinuous and unpredictable as the narrative . . . [it] achieves resonance as myth and metaphor rather than as a densely populated fictional world.”[23] Novelist Thomas Berger notes, “The Great Gatsby is as nearly perfect as a novel can be, with not a word, not an emotion, not an idea in excess or lacking or misplaced or corrupted.”[24] Scholar and poet George Garrett views the novel as revolutionary. He explains, “Fitzgerald advanced the form of the American novel for the benefit of all American novelists who have followed after him, whether they know it or not. They seem to sense this, to bear witness to it, in their continuing admiration for Gatsby.”[25]
The singular beauty of Gatsby is so complete that people who should possess the words for explaining it often fall back on otherworldly phrasing. “There is something magical about Fitzgerald,” says publisher Charles Scribner III, “the real magic lies embedded in his prose and reveals itself in his amazing range and versatility . . . his dramatic vision, his painstaking craftsmanship.”[26] Scribner lists the types of prose that teachers hope their students will either enjoy and/or emulate by reading Gatsby. While literary criticism is not built on speculation, it is not too much of a stretch to imagine that the novel would be widely read just for the writing style and lyricism if it had not reached meta-Gatsby proportions.
Kazin concludes that Fitzgerald the writer seemed to be at war with Fitzgerald the personality, which created a “persistent tension . . . between what his mind knew and what his spirit adhered to; between his disillusionment and his irrevocable respect for the power and the glory of the world he described.”[27] As a result of this battle, “He was innocent without living in innocence and delighted in the external forms and colors without being taken in by them; but he was preeminently a part of the world his mind was always disowning.”[28]
The tactical aspects of Fitzgerald’s writing impresses scholars, particularly as Bruccoli and others uncovered the intricate patterning and revision he conducted after the book was already in page proofs. The outcome, according to Farrell, is that “the stable and well-proportioned architecture of the language allows us to get closer to threatening experiences and insights without fear of being overwhelmed by them, since the architecture of the prose that we identify with seems able to internalize such material without losing its self-sustaining form and momentum.”[29]
Popular culture provides the central narratives that comprise life in contemporary America. In a sense, therefore, our very existence as language-making creatures centers on our ability to interact with one another as storytellers. These narratives created in society by individuals, groups, and organizations establish, shape, and reflect all that we are and someday hope to be. Popular culture’s centrality is self-evident to scholar Ray B. Browne, who views it “as the everyday world around us: the mass media, entertainment, diversions, our heroes, icons, rituals—our total life picture.” Importantly, when placing Gatsby within this culture, Browne explains, “Popular culture of a country is the voice of the people—their likes and dislikes, the lifeblood of daily existence, the way of life . . . the voice of democracy.”[30] Over time, Jay Gatsby has transformed from literary character in a 1925 novel to meta-Gatsby, a tool employed to understand that era and all those that have followed.
Audiences like Gatsby the same way they like other seemingly normal underdogs who have extraordinary (but somewhat believable) powers, ranging from the undersized action heroes played by Bruce Willis, Kevin Costner, and Patrick Swayze to the up-by-their-bootstraps figures represented by Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. The notion that a form of congruence exists between Gatsby as a fictional character and various other real and imaginary figures from contemporary mass media demonstrates how ubiquitous Fitzgerald’s creation remains.
Like the best individual pieces of popular culture, for example, a film or television series, Gatsby provides both a mirror and projection. According to writer Philip Hensher:
When we are confident, and booming, and full of trust in our own splendor, The Great Gatsby seems like a curiosity, an anecdote as it did to its first readers. But when things are going wrong all round, and we are trying to remember what it was like to live within a magnificent dream—to be deceived by what we want—then it speaks to us. It buttonholes us, saying, not quite attractively or in a way that we can trust, “Old sport.”[31]
Many commentators contend that popular culture is about individuals from across the celebrity spectrum, perhaps mainly because people interact with mass media from the standpoint of their favorite actor, band, films, or television shows. Others counter with the notion that culture is actually about the larger influences that drive society, such as technology, government, economic structures, and national ethos.
Regardless of the particular perspective one holds regarding the definition of culture, the dominant notion centers on the essential position of popular culture in contemporary society, as well as its role as a teaching tool. As discussed earlier regarding the state of the humanities, literature, and reading, the idea of reading education leading to a more nuanced and deep relation to one’s world is critical. According to eminent scholar Maxine Greene, “We need to hold in mind the fact that the arts are almost always inexhaustible. There is no using up of a painting or a concerto or a poem. If they have any richness, say destiny at all, they are inexhaustible; there is always more.”[32] As a matter of fact, the scope of arts education is endless and holds countless consequences for people now and in the future.
The outline of The Great Gatsby is relatively simple. A writer is telling the story of a year he spent among friends, relatives, and assorted famous and infamous characters at a watershed moment in American history. What the reader immediately learns, however, is that the writer (Nick Carraway)—because he is a writer—is a kind of professional liar, and boy does he lie, mislead, and generally impose on the story. After all, Nick is in the process of creating the story, which is what writers do.
As readers, we experience the first lie on the front cover, since the title character is neither “Great” nor “Gatsby.” Or, at least we are supposed to consider these options as we “listen” to Nick summarize and analyze the tale. As convoluted as it may seem, what Nick does in creating a readable, sellable, and ultimately fictitious Gatsby from the pieces of his own life is exactly what Fitzgerald and all writers have done since storytelling began.
What makes Gatsby great, for Nick, is that the story he represents is about belief in the American Dream, even though the term did not even exist at the time. Nick is a dreamer and believer. In Gatsby, he finds a fellow traveler who ultimately gives his life in an attempt to achieve his aspirations. The title character’s commitment to the dream earns him greatness in Nick’s mind, since the narrator’s own life contrasts rather negatively in comparison. The reader cannot imagine that anyone would consider Nick anything other than average.
Ironically, what makes Gatsby appear “great” is that Fitzgerald/Nick is so reserved in making him real. As a result, the reader is more or less invited to make his or her own determination. Do we emulate the heroic rise of young Jimmy Gatz to opulent Gatsby, or do we condemn the war hero who turns criminal all in the fruitless pursuit of a married woman?
When readers turn to Nick for clues, instead one finds his narrative fraught with inconsistencies and doubt. Interestingly, it is only the “great” Gatsby that Nick holds in awe while writing his book. All the other characters are revealed for their foibles and shortcomings: Tom Buchanan is a racist and snob, Daisy is weak, and Jordan is frigid and a cheat. Of the dozens of characters, only Gatsby is portrayed as meaningful, even if his guiding light is a confused quest for an unreachable aim. Yet, despite all this, readers may freely lionize the title character. As writer Bruce Bahrenburg claims, in each reading and rereading, “It is Gatsby who gains stature. He is heroic in resisting failure, and in defeat his grace is almost majestic.”[33]
***
The Great Gatsby matters, if for no other reason, in its exploration of the American Dream and its consequences. Although one might find fault in this book, arguing that its premises are forced or too much of a reach to justify, there is no questioning Gatsby’s use as a tool in teaching, assessing, evaluating, criticizing, or reinforcing this essential American notion. As a result, with each new high school or college student exposed to the book or individual who picks it up (or revisits it) based on the film release, the world gains another person with the tools to weigh how he or she fits into the American Dream.
In other words, Gatsby provides readers and viewers with a kind of blank slate that can be employed to create and recreate one’s personal worldview. And, since the novel carries so many ambiguities, it makes good fodder for doing so. According to literary critic Harold Bloom, this universality is an appealing trait across the lines that usually divide people. He explains, “There are few living Americans, of whatever gender, race, ethnic origin, or social class, who do not have at least a little touch of Gatsby in them.”[34] We are all at some point and time dreamers, obsessive, status conscious, lovesick, friends, enemies, voyeurs, among the multitude of ideas and moments that make up a life.
What all this adds up to is a situation in which a novel (of all things) has laid the groundwork for addressing many quintessentially American qualities. I label this broad and far-reaching ideology meta-Gatsby, which means that this slim book has become pivotal in our lives as a cultural touchstone that carries value that transcends itself. As a result, Gatsby defines what we suggest when we say that a thing is iconic, Americana, or folklore.
We all really do have a bit of Gatsby in us, because we certainly do have Gatsby all around us. Fitzgerald’s masterpiece is essential in our cultural world and foundational in understanding what it means to be American.
Mark William Roche, Why Literature Matters in the 21st Century (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004), 10.
Center for Media Research, “9.9 Billion Video Ad Views in February,” Research Brief Newsletter, May 6, 2013, http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/199678/99-billion-video-ad-views-in-february.html#axzz2
UbwV6Xn8 (accessed May 6, 2013).
Jonathan P. Fegley, “‘If I Couldn’t Be Perfect I Wouldn’t Be Anything’: Teaching Becoming and Being in The Great Gatsby,” in Approaches to Teaching Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, ed. Jackson R. Bryer and Nancy P. VanArsdale (New York: Modern Language Association, 2009), 131.
Harold Bloom, ed., F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, new ed. (New York: Chelsea House, 2010), 5.
Roche, Why Literature Matters, 207.
Frank B. Farrell, Why Does Literature Matter? (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2004), 11–12.
Roche, Why Literature Matters, 257.
Lawrence R. Samuel, The American Dream: A Cultural History (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2012), 167.
Quoted in Samuel, American Dream.
Farrell, Why Does Literature Matter?, 13.
Farrell, Why Does Literature Matter?, 13.
Roche, Why Literature Matters, 211.
David Lodge, Language of Fiction: Essays in Criticism and Verbal Analysis of the English Novel (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966), 80.
Lodge, Language of Fiction, 81.
Jane Mount and Thessaly La Force, My Ideal Bookshelf (New York: Little, Brown, 2012), xiii.
Roche, Why Literature Matters, 236–37.
Jason P. Leboe and Tamara L. Ansons, “On Misattributing Good Remembering to a Happy Past: An Investigation into the Cognitive Roots of Nostalgia,” Emotion 6, no. 4 (2006): 596.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 20.
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Bruccoli and Baughman, Fitzgerald in the Marketplace, xviii.
Morris Dickstein, ed., Critical Insights: The Great Gatsby (Pasadena, Calif.: Salem Press, 2010), 4.
Quoted in Matthew J. Bruccoli, ed., F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby: A Documentary Volume, vol. 219 of Dictionary of Literary Biography (Detroit: Gale Group, 2000), 310.
George Garrett, “Fire and Freshness: A Matter of Style in The Great Gatsby,” in New Essays on The Great Gatsby, ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 115–16.
Charles Scribner III, “Publishing—Past Imperfect,” in The Professions of Authorship: Essays in Honor of Matthew J. Bruccoli, ed. Richard Layman and Joel Myerson (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996), 72.
Kazin and Solotaroff, Alfred Kazin’s America, 120.
Kazin and Solotaroff, Alfred Kazin’s America, 120.
Farrell, Why Does Literature Matter?, 18.
Ray B. Browne, “Redefining the Humanities,” in Eye on the Future: Popular Culture Scholarship into the Twenty-First Century, ed. Marilyn F. Motz et al. (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1994), 252.
Philip Hensher, “Great Gatsby: A Story for the Modern Age,” The Telegraph (London), May 23, 2012, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-news/9284394/Great-Gatsby-a-story-for-the-modern-age.html (accessed March 30, 2013).
Maxine Greene, Variations on a Blue Guitar: The Lincoln Center Institute Lectures on Aesthetic Education (New York: Teachers College Press, 2001), 206–7.
Bruce Bahrenburg, Filming The Great Gatsby (New York: Berkley, 1974), 26.
Bloom, Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, 5.