ginsudo

p. 54:

‘Anyhow he gives large parties,’ said Jordan, changing the subject with an urban distaste for the concrete.

Among the class distinctions that haunt Fitzgerald, and therefore this novel, is the divide between the straightforward mien of the Midwest and the slick sophistication of the Eastern cities.  Saying exactly what you mean is looked down upon by the city elite, precisely because it is a sign of naivete.  They’d like to think that those with fast minds and agile imaginations prefer to deal in subtleties, inferences and innuendo.  By their logic, only a simpleton prefers the simple truth.

But beneath the distaste for truth is the fear that an honest opinion is unpopular, or that plain words would reveal their own ignorance.  For they were all newcomers to the city once, and they escaped the mark of the rube by hiding in obfuscations, hedging their way through false sophistication.  Urbanity is just a mask to hide your true face.

A rarity here, possibly unintentional, is the wordplay in “an urban distaste for the concrete.” Cities are made from concrete, couldn’t be built without it – just as society couldn’t survive without the hard facts, however unfashionable they may be.

All that said, the generalization that Jordan proceeds into is a classic:  ‘And I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.’

p. 53:

He’s just a man named Gatsby.

Jordan tells this untruth when Nick, fresh off the surprise of an unexpected introduction, demands to know who this mysterious host is.  Is Jordan lying?  She’s known Gatsby long enough and well enough that she knows “just a man” is an inadequate description.  Likely she doesn’t have anything to add to the fevered speculation that winds through his nightly bacchanalia, and she’d rather Nick want to talk about something else.

More about Gatsby’s extraordinary smile carries over to this page:  “It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.“  I’m telling you, that’s not a natural smile, that smile has to be practiced with a focus on effect rather than on feeling.

This page has almost that all Fitzgerald ever gives us in terms of a physical description of Gatsby, “an elegant young rough-neck, a year or two over thirty.“  We don’t really know how tall he is, what color his eyes are, the shape of his nose or lips.  It’s an intentional cypher on which you can write your own imaginings.  And yet, the impression of Gatsby is enduring because of the description of his effect on those around him.

p. 52:

It faced – or seemed to face – the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor.

Most of this paragraph is taken with a description of Gatsby’s smile.  That smile is a wonderful piece of work, and Gatsby must have truly worked at it – you can picture him spending hours in front of the mirror perfecting the radiant character of that smile.  He started with natural material, the handsome face, a wide mouth around even white teeth.  His ambition to become a man of the world required an openness to experience beyond his small beginnings, and that open heart can fill a smile with good will.  He continually nurtured his ability to appreciate and reflect joy, if not always to generate it.  All of that could be genuine.

What could not be genuine, what does require that practice in the mirror, is the way that smile turns to just you, no longer the natural sun hanging in the sky buy a spotlight made and tailored just for you.  You have to remember, that’s how he smiles to everyone, it’s not just for you.  There’s a particular technique in this, a conscious effort required to give you that irresistible prejudice.  He has to lean into you a degree or two more, focus both of his eyes into your dominant eye, hold the gaze a fraction of a second longer than normal.  That smile is a work of art, not a work of nature.

p. 51:

I had taken two finger bowls of champagne and the scene had changed before my eyes into something significant, elemental and profound.

After midnight the party is starting to crest and even the studiously detached observer falls into the flow. The champagne helps more than a little.

I also like on this page the ‘old men pushing young girls backward in eternal graceless circles.’

p. 50:

‘I’ve been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library.’

If you find yourself in a similar condition, you should try this, it works surprisingly well.

p. 49:

a persistent undergraduate given to violent innuendo and obviously under the impression that sooner or later Jordan was going to yield him up her person to a greater or lesser degree.

Something about this description assures us that the violence is ultimately impotent, befitting of the stunted ambition sure to envelop the undegrad later that night.

p. 48:

It was testimony to the romantic speculation he inspired that there were whispers about him from those who had found little that it was necessary to whisper about in this world.

Now, who doesn’t daydream about being whispered about in this way? Even considering that the speculation at hand is that he killed a man.

p. 47:

the girls had moved casually on and her remark was addressed to the premature moon, produced like the supper, no doubt, out of a caterer’s basket.

Just another lovely, easy turn of phrase, describing a beautiful night and Gatsby’s otherworldly wealth at the same time.

p. 46:

I went over to his lawn a little after seven and wandered around rather ill-at-ease among swirls and eddies of people I didn’t know

I like this notion of a party as a vast river, with rushing waters and hidden depths and dangerous rocks – it suits the observer, the outsider that even the invited guest feels himself to be.

p. 45:

already there are wanderers, confident girls who weave here and there among the stouter and more stable, become for a sharp, joyous moment the center of a group and then excited with triumph glide on through the seachange of faces and voices and color under the constantly changing light.

Fitzgerald was an astute observer of a certain breed of young women, social climbers who begin with open hearts and end with emotional bankruptcy. He could be talking about Gilda Gray or Paris Hilton, the story’s the same. The Basil and Josephine Stories paint a picture of such a girl and her counterpart young man, as they both try to find that sharp peak of social victory.