THE GREAT GATSBY

This was a second read for me. The first time I don't remember liking it. I suspect it was because the characters were all quite shallow and flighty, and I did not find any redeeming characters or understand what the big deal was about Gatsby, although I do like the name Jay. I had it on my bookshelf, however, and after watching the movie with Leonardo DiCaprio and Toby Maguire, I thought I would give it another try. The movie suited my mood. I've been looking at a lot of buildings recently, and my favourite architectural style remains Art Deco. This movie was an art deco masterpiece, from the movie cover graphic to the billboard eye glasses that feature in the book strongly, and was brought out nicely as a character in the movie also.

This time, I enjoyed the narrator the most. He was an observer, like me. He was not a remarkable character, but had some sense of morality and outrage that a crowd of superficial partiers had something more owed to this man of mystery that called himself Gatsby.  Not that the narrator felt he was any less flawed, but Gatsby was an idealist that worked incredibly hard to become who he wanted to be, and expected others to be the same. Unfortunately for Gatsby, as F.S. Fitzgerald writes, "Tom and Daisy were not careful people", and for me, that is when I started to like the narrator more and how it ends with a tragic but not surprising result. Throughout, Gatsby was unchanging, and aloof, and that is maybe where the appeal lies for most readers.

I find that I am more and more intolerant of the Tomsand Daisies of the world, but I am very aware that the Gatsby in their inflexible unchanging ways are definitely part of the equation. On the rereading, I can identify many Daisies in my life, and I try to avoid them, as they uniformly a cause of  toxic relationships.