Stranger on Earth

31 May 2013  bbc.co.uk A Point Of View: Gatsby and the way we live now F Scott Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby was able to invent himself because he lived in an age of illusion. Does the novel say something about the way we live now, asks John Gray. (Spoiler alert: Key plot details revealed below) Not long before he died, a celebrated conjuror, whose beautifully simple yet seemingly impossible tricks had earned him the baffled admiration of his fellow magicians, was asked if there was anything he still wanted. He replied, "I wish somebody could fool me one more time." The magician's confession came back into my mind when, a few months ago, I re-read The Great Gatsby. Scott Fitzgerald's novel - now in cinemas again - about a magnetically attractive millionaire, can be read as a story of the Jazz Age and a comment on the corruption of the American dream. It's also a tangled, and finally tragic, love story. Using the traumas of the "Lost Gener...

By this time the verdict is in: Baz Luhrmann’s amped-up version of The Great Gatsby (2013), while visually arresting and frenetically paced (at least for the first half), is yet another failed attempt at bringing the titular character to life. There have been many attempts over the years, most notably that other equally frustrating Jack Clayton-helmed 1974 version with Robert Redford as the elusive romantic (anti-)hero. Many theories could of course be served up about directorial approach, casting, scripting, and so on, but my theory is a purely literary one, based solely on Fitzgerald’s characterisation of Gatsby. The issue is that of authorial perspective. Those who have either read the novel or seen the film(s) know that Gatsby is not the central protagonist. It is Nick Carraway, a once misty-eyed Mid-Westerner who narrates his encounter with Gatsby and his clan after a short but intense summer on “that slender riotous island which extends itself due east of New Yo...

Writing about F. Scott Fitzgerald or any of his works apart from the immortal The Great Gatsby is often a challenge. The writer is after all the very definition of the Jazz Age, and it is difficult to resist reading the man himself into what he wrote. His biographers have, with varying degrees of conviction, traced characteristics of the man back to his fictional characters. Then there is the mammoth that is The Great Gatsby , which overshadows everything he wrote before and after it. He is often referred to by his detractors as a writer who never quite brought his talent to full fruition, his life wrecked by marital strife, alcoholism, penury, and a deeply entrenched sense of self-doubt. How should the reader then approach his final, uncompleted work ( The Love of) The Last Tycoon ? Read it bearing in mind that the man who wrote it was not the same youthful Dionysus who vacationed in Paris and gave the world The Great Gatsby. It was written by a man having been to the dark side ...

Is there a need for another analytical essay on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s enduring The Great Gatsby (1925)? One would be inclined to say no. There is, however, a need for a reminder of the novel’s transcendental nature: its ability to cut through generations and zeitgeists to reach the 21 st -century reader. Ernest Hemingway had the privilege of reading The Great Gatsby first-hand in Paris, and was so awed by its artistry that he considered it Fitzgerald’s best work. Generations of readers after Hemingway would come to share his view. What makes the work so fascinating that it is still being read today by high-school students and literary enthusiasts around the globe, despite its opaque language and style? The attraction of The Great Gatsby lies largely in its unabashed presentation of romanticism – the blood that runs through the veins of our imagination. The towering titular character is a man of unconditional dedication. Having lost his love to a wealthy rival, Jay ...