Tag: gatsby

a pleasant significance

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p. 58:

He smiled – and suddenly there seemed to be a pleasant significance in having been among the last to go, as if he had desired it so all the time.

Have you ever met someone with this degree of charisma?  You’d know it if you had.  The magnetic pull that a person like this can exert upon you is mesmerizing, lulling you into a warm fuzz of contentment, willing you to believe whatever is in the moment.  This is much more subtle than the shock and awe of a motivational speaker for desperate losers; it’s a slow, singular seduction from which no one can claim full immunity.  It’s more pleasant than powerful and therefore less resistable.

simply amazing

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p. 57:

‘It was – simply amazing,’ she repeated abstractedly.

What’s amazing to me is that every time I’ve read that sentence before today, I read ‘abstractedly‘ as ‘distractedly‘ – thinking that Jordan was distracted by the hour-long conversation she’s just had with Gatsby.

And what’s really amazing is that Fitzgerald never has an imprecise paragraph or sentence or phrase or even a single slightly improper word choice. He used ‘abstractedly’ because that’s precisely what he meant.  Jordan wasn’t distracted by some diversion or emotion; she was abstracted, lost in thought. I’ve read the word wrong every time and never noticed until I took the time to find the artistry on every line.

A mild note of interest on this page is Jordan’s reference to her aunt, Sigourney. The actress Sigourney Weaver, star of the Alien movies, was born Susan and changed her name after this character, who is only mentioned this once in passing.

an angry diamond

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p. 56:

One of the men was talking with curious intensity to a young actress, and his wife after attempting to laugh at the situation in a dignified and indifferent way broke down entirely and resorted to flank attacks – at intervals she appeared suddenly at his side like an angry diamond and hissed ‘You promised!’ into his ear.

Gatsby revolves around young couples in relatively early, fragile relationships.  Here is a rare, flashing view at an older couple, in an old relationship with fragility that age has not dissipated, but crystallized into a frozen spiderweb.  Fitzgerald is known as a chronicler of the young and carefree, but this is a pitch-perfect snapshot of a couples’ argument that has developed through many years of betrayal.

In truth Fitzgerald’s heroines were never carefree, regardless of their age.  Though often misunderstood as shallow, these young female characters were engaged in poignant struggle to define a new womanhood in a time before feminism.  Those who lost – or worse, missed – the struggle could do nothing but harden their pains into an angry diamond.

a jauntiness about her movements

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p. 55:

I noticed that she wore her evening dress, all her dresses, like sports clothes – there was a jauntiness about her movements as if she had first learned to walk upon golf courses on clean, crisp mornings.

A great way to enjoy this sentence is to think of all the worse ways to describe just such a woman.  It wouldn’t be enough to just say that she has natural athletic grace.  It would be pale cliché to call her a swan, a ballerina, a long tall drink of water.  It’s not just that she’s sporty, that she grew up with money, that her cool physicality glows through an evening dress.

She moves “as if she had first learned to walk upon golf courses on clean, crisp mornings.” The magic of this phrase is that it also captures the observer’s social standing, as a man who regards the patrician pastime of golf as a subject of aspiration if not envy.  He knows that the only girls who grow up on golf courses are those who have their cares in the world filtered through a fine inheritance.

urban distaste for the concrete

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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.’

just a man

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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.

irresistible prejudice

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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.

elemental and profound

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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.’

in a library

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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.

violent innuendo

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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.