John Baker’s Blog

William Kowalski at the Globe & Mail makes the case for Fitzgerald’s Gatsby:

Gatsby the man is a complete fiction, as he admits to narrator Nick Carraway: Just as the United States was carved from the wilderness, he fashioned himself an identity as a wealthy, Oxford-educated gentleman, sustaining it through sheer determination and bravado - that is, the willingness to tell bald-faced lies. He is the shadow of the American dream. Seen through Nick’s eyes, Gatsby is revealed early on as a shallow, self-conscious poseur. This means that the reader gets to play the knowing voyeur, as the sycophants and sybarites of New York and Long Island attend Gatsby’s lavish parties, drink his booze, behave in ways that only the debauched children of the Jazz Age could, and then abandon him. First it’s fun, then it’s boring, and finally it becomes sick.

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