Nick is in love with him.
The character of Gatsby is...incredible. How would a grown man who had gone through a war, and been a real hero, gone to Oxford (even if for just 5 months), and then been involved with organized crime and be as romantic as a 17-year old?
After the Crash, Fitzgerald and THE GREAT GATSBY were seen as sentimental trash. Very well--written, but sentimental trash. Honestly, there is more intellectual fiber and wisdom in one paragraph of a good Faulkner short story than there is in the entirety of THE GREAT GATSBY.
Then there was the Fitzgerald revival of the 1950s and '60s. And you can take GATSBY, which is a novella (in which Fitzgerald said he left out the psychology and other factors that could have served as the basis for a seperate novel) that doesn't really DIRECT you..... You can hang your own interpretation on it, since there is so little..... It's like a beatifully made Hostess Twinkie.
As Andy Warhola showed us, a Hostess Twinkie or its equivalent can be "art" if you bring that to it, from your POV, viewing it. (A kind of variation of Heisenberg's theory where an atomic particle is affected by the viewing of it.)
Until he was canonized in the 1960s, F. Scott Fitzgerald was considered a stylist who had no moral or intellectual maturity at all. A kind of artistic Candide. Clueless.
Now that Fitzgerald was considered a consummate artist, the flaws in his work (of which GATSBY is considered supreme, although I like the unfinished THE LAST TYCOON, which the literary establishment worked over and now calls THE LOVE OF THE LAST TYCOON to get a new copyright -- Fitzgerald gives the establishment power as they can mold his work and change it to their ends, something you cannot do with an artist of the rank of Hemingway, for instance -- better; THE LAST TYCOON is better as he actually has grown up and has something to say) were turned -- through some kind of alchemy -- into virtues.
Thus, Nick becomes an "unreliable narrator," instead of Fitzgerald being sloppy about dates, geography, and disingenuous about Nick's homosexuality.
James Gatz/Jay Gatsby is a great romantic. It makes no sense for a man of his background to be so, or to behave in such a way. But this is Nick's characterization of him.
Homosexuality at the time of Fitzgerald was characterized by Fred as an adolescent stage of sexual development, and Nick -- and his view of Gatsby -- are adolescent.
F. Scott Fitzgerald himself was not 30 when he wrote it, had been famous since he was 24, and had never really grown up emotionally (at the time). He was adolescent, in a way, his sensibility. He was scored viciously for this at the time.
When the 1960s came, and YOUTH was suddenly apotheosized by the culture at large (as it had been by the advertising industry after WWII as adolescents are so easy to manipulate, trends and consumption could be manipulated), suddenly Fitzgerald becomes a great American writer and THE GREAT GATSBY -- and immature work, though stylisticly "gorgeous" to use a Fitzgerald adjecive -- are enshirned as a master and his masterwork.
A good title for a look at this process would be THE GREAT GASBAG.
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"Why do people always laugh in the wrong places?"
--Maxwell Perkins
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WarpedRecord
16 years ago
That is a fascinating analysis. Others might go so far as to call it gorgeous, but I won't go there.
It has been decades since I read Fitzgerald's novel, but the fact that it was easily digestible for a junior high schooler attests to its superficiality.
The major flaw in the book -- and even more so in this film -- is that Fitzgerald hides behind Nick instead of exploring the real reason behind Gatsby's "greatness." The love that dare not speak its name doesn't even merit a whisper here, so the heavy lifting is left to the reader and the viewer. For many, that's more weight than they can handle.
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Anglik
13 years ago
I've just rewatched the movie after many years and have come across this thread. I find your comments on the homosexuality and adolescence of Nick, the narrator of both the novel and the movie (and the immaturity of the novelist at the time), as well as the points on how advertising business targeted youth in the post-was era, very interesting and insightful. Thanks a million!
BTW, I suppose you mean "Freud" instead of "Fred" and "scourged" instead of "scored", correct?
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