Gatsby

The Novel

Gatsby. Saw Gatsby May 10, Friday, at 6:55 PM at the Storyteller 7 Theatre in Taos. Can't say the ticket purchasers, mostly teenagers, look middle class or better. Then again, Taos is a community with many poor people. All bags were checked for alcohol by the ticket taker. I was shocked at the glitz of the movie, though I didn't see the 3D version. Am now reading Spark Notes on the novel to get more commentary on the book's significance and staying power. Wikipedia sums it up well: "The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel written by... F. Scott Fitzgerald that follows a cast of characters living in the fictional town of West Egg on prosperous Long Island in the summer of 1922. The story primarily concerns the young and mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and his quixotic passion for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan. Considered to be Fitzgerald's magnum opus, The Great Gatsby explores themes of decadence, idealism, resistance to change, social upheaval, and excess, creating a portrait of the Jazz Age that has been described as a cautionary tale regarding the American Dream." I like what Spark Notes says: "Gatsby's irresistible longing to achieve his dream, the connections of his dream to the pursuit of money and material success, the boundless optimism with which he goes about achieving this dream, and the sense of his having created a new identity in a new place all reflect the coarse combination of pioneer individualism and uninhibited materialism that Fitzgerald perceived as dominating 1920s American life."