The Great Gatsby (2013)

Content by Tony Macklin. Originally published on May 11, 2013 @ tonymacklin.net.

I went into a dark tavern after I saw Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby. I wanted to get over the stilted, garish glitz - the 1920s embalmed in bloated bronze.

Slumped over the bar was a familiar figure - I did a double take. It looked like Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald.

He seemed smaller in person. I sat down at the bar.

Over the years, I probably learned more about writing from him and his classic novel The Great Gatsby (1925) than any other writer.

Not style. I'm no stylist. But I learned how truth lies beyond the surface. Fitzgerald is a sly, symbolic interpreter of reality. His prose is sleek and subtle.

"Not your father's Gatsby,"I blurted.

"What?" He turned a bleary eye toward me.

"The movie - they say, "It's not 'your father's Gatsby.'"

"Not mine either," he said.

I didn't ask why. I knew why.

"Jay was not a boy," he said suddenly.

"Leonardo DiCaprio is not a boy," I said.

"He's not exactly a man of mystery either," he said.

"What about Daisy?"

"Daisy - for me she was an ideal. Gatsby realized her essence. She wasn't empty. She was very human. Vulnerable. Fallible." He paused. "Very human,"he repeated softly.

"They've made her all quirks and superficiality. She has no magic," he said. "The real Daisy knew how much men wanted to protect her."

He smiled wanly. "She was special. One of a kind. She was the most intuitive person I've ever known."

"What about Nick?" I asked.

"Nick would never have gone to a psychiatrist. It's just a cheap shot by some hack at Zelda. Maybe me. But not Nick. In my novel Nick was writing a manuscript, not talking to a shrink. Max Perkins didn't have a sanatorium." He scowled.

I wanted to support him. "It's ironic how in a 3D movie, they've made the characters one dimensional," I said. "But you'll sell a lot more books."

"How many readers today will be prevented from understanding my novel because of this facile movie? Nobody gets it to begin with."

"Of course they do," I insisted.

"Let me ask you a question."

Scott Fitzgerald was going to ask me a question. "Sure," I said.

"The crux of my novel is this: Is fulfillment of the capacity for wonder - which is the American Dream - still possible?"

"Do you mean is the American Dream still alive? Sure, it is."

"Do I say so in The Great Gatsby?"

"I think so."

"You've read my novel?"

"Several times."

"Where do I say so?"

"You suggest it," I said.

"No," he was exasperated. "You're a movie fan, so I don't expect you to get it. You're no Sheilah."

"Did she get it?"

"No. But she had other compensations," he chuckled wryly.

"In your novel you named Daisy after Henry James's Daisy Miller."

"Partially."

"And she was faith - Daisy Fay."

He nodded.

"In your novel at least I got that the people at the party are named for animals and vegetables. And I got the raft with Gatsby on it symbolism at the end. The raft isn't even in the movie."

"Good for you," his thin lips smiled.

"Are you saying that in The Great Gatsby you explicitly wrote if and when the American Dream could be fulfilled?"

"Yes."

"Nobody gets it even though you stated it?"

"That's right."

"Is it in the movie?"

"Of course not."

"That's the essence of your vision, but it's nowhere in the movie?"

"You got it." He signaled the bartender for another drink.

He leaned forward toward me. "Buzz Lightyear directed a movie that lacks my heart and soul," he whispered. "And mind."

"It's a visual treat," I offered.

"To use a Hemingway line, "Isn't it pretty to think so?"

"Explain it to me."

"I don't explain. I write and I drink. My novel speaks for itself," he almost snarled.

He may have been about to get nasty, so I left the bar.

I went home and found the novel. I read several passages at the end over and over again.

Then I found it - the passage in which Fitzgerald expresses utter pessimism. It was the passage in which he says the Dream can never again be fulfilled.

Fitzgerald wrote that the "last time in history" when the "capacity for wonder" could be fulfilled was when the Dutch sailors came to the new world of America.

But the sailors didn't realize and seize the opportunity. Instead they let it expire.

Baz Luhrmann is a cinematic Dutch sailor. He doesn't get it.

I had to tell Fitzgerald.

I raced back to the bar to tell him that I finally understood.

But F. Scott Fitzgerald was gone.

Across the room, 3Drunks flamboyantly were playing a hip-hop ditty.