The Great Gatsby – Ripple Effects

Proust Read-Along: The Swann and Gatsby Foil

“He knew perfectly well as a general truth that human life is full of contrasts…” Swann’s Way, P. 510

While plowing through Part 2, ‘Swann In Love’, I happened to reread The Great Gatsby. Thanks to Baz Luhrmann’s new movie adaptation, I’m sure many more are doing the same. And oh what interesting contrasts Swann and Gatsby make.

Both are deeply in love, yearning for a woman who seems to be utterly elusive. Gatsby frantically maximizes to attract Daisy; Swann willingly minimizes to reach Odette. From a poor background, Gatsby grabs whatever means he can to build his wealth; Swann whose niche belongs to high society, has to pretend that he is nobody special, stooping to ‘a lower social sphere’ (P. 285) to be near Odette.

That distance is more than social. Swann is willing to forsake his cultured tastes of art and music, to lay aside even his own research and writing on Vermeer (Odette: I’ve never heard of him, is he alive still? P. 279). Swann is willing to lay down his interests and privileges for a woman who is uncouth in the sophistication of high society, who has superficial views and flashy tastes, and alas, even promiscuous.

However, love transforms all deficiencies and blemishes into ethereal beauty. Here’s how Swann visualizes Odette. To him, she is like Sipporah, Jethro’s daughter, Botticelli’s fresco in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel:

Following Odette to her ‘little nucleus’ at the Verdurins, Swann downplays his association with prominent people and tries not to be so outspoken with his knowledge and opinion about art and music.

When he is alone with Odette, he has taken her values and interests:

he tried at least to ensure that she should be happy in his company, tried not to counteract those vulgar ideas, that bad taste which she displayed on every possible occasion, and which in fact he loved, as he could not help loving everything that came from her, which enchanted him even. (P. 348)

Is this measurement of incompatibility in tastes inherently snobbish? Yes, Swann (or Proust) is sensitive enough to analyze this in depth. What is ‘taste’ anyway, or the intellectual beliefs with which he has been raised from the days of his youth?

… the objects we admire have no absolute value in themselves, that the whole thing is a matter of period and class, is no more than a series of fashions, the most vulgar of which are worth just as much as those which are regarded as the most refined. (P. 350)

So, all for love of Odette, Swann is willing to give up going to the Jockey Club, lunching with the Prince of Wales, or his love of Holland, or a visit to the Versailles (‘which bored her to tears’):

And so he denied himself the pleasure of visiting those places, delighted to tell himself that it was for her sake, that he wished only to feel, to enjoy things with her. (p. 350)

Those colorful shirts Gatsby has hoarded, Odette would have loved them, just like Daisy, and his mansion too… if only Swann had resided in a more prestigious address, somewhere ‘more worthy of him’ instead of his house on the Quai d’Orleans. (P. 346)

Odette’s fondness of Swann begins to wane as Forcheville enters into the picture. She becomes even harder to get. Swann is burned with jealousy, anger and bitterness. Yet he cannot forget her. His love even grows stronger for her, despite receiving an anonymous letter defaming her. Why,

People often say that, by point out to a man the faults of his mistress, you succeed only in strengthening his attachment to her… he had begun to desire the possession — as if that were ever possible — of another person. (P. 517)

Perhaps that is a mark of love: the demand for exclusivity. This is exactly what Gatsby wants Daisy to admit, that she has never loved Tom, that she has always loved him. “Oh, you want too much,” she cried to Gatsby.

But Swann is more fortunate. He knows he must gain back Odette’s full and exclusive devotion and somehow he does. I’m glad to read in Part 3 that eventually Odette does become Mme Swann. I’d be curious to know how that comes about. (Proust’s strategy to get us go on reading the next volumes?)

Part 3 is an enjoyable and much swifter read as the narrator remembers his childhood in Paris drown in unrequited love (so far, not sure about how this unfolds later) for Swann and Odette’s daughter Gilberte. Because of his love for Gilberte, the boy is infatuated with M and Mme Swann as well. His crush on the elusive Gilberte parallels Swann’s love for Odette in their earlier days.

The last sentence in Volume 1 of In Search of Lost Time, like that in The Great Gatsby, ends with a haunting remark on memory and the past:

The places we have known… were only a thin slice, held between the contiguous impressions that composed our life at that time; the memory of a particular image is but regret for a particular moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as fugitive, alas, as the years.

There are much more to be said, but nothing can replace the actual experience of reading Proust first hand. From March to May as I plowed through Swann’s Way, there had been up’s and down’s. Numerous times long sentences entangled, yet the very next moment could be so beautiful and lucid it dissipated all frustrations. I now look forward to Volume II.

Thanks for joining me in this Read-Along. Finish or not, you’re welcome to share your thoughts. Throw your two pebbles into the pond and make some ripples. If you have written a post, do let me know so I can link it here.

Bellezza of Dolce Bellezza

CLICK HERE to my post on Part 1 of Swann’s Way: Combray

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The Great Gatsby (2013): Movie Review

In just 172 pages, F. Scott Fitzgerald has captured the zeitgeist of the Jazz Age, and told the stirring story of love and loss. In this new adaptation of the book, director Baz Luhrmann has used an estimated $127 million, glamorizing with 3D and over the top cinematic effects.

Here is a prime example of ‘the medium is the message.’ Instead of depicting extravagance and excess, the production has become that.

I went in with an open mind. After all, I had expected a mashed-up, postmodern fusion Luhrmann style. So, even the Jay-Z curated hip hop selections a la Gershwin cacophony was fine with me. After all, it was the unruly Jazz Age, so be it. Gatsby’s creamy yellow roadster speeding towards Manhattan, zigzagging its way through busy streets, Fast and Furious 1920’s version is still acceptable. By the way, the movie was shot in Australia. So, all the Manhattan scenes are visual remixes.

But the main issue for me is the 3D. Not much to be gained there but hindrances. The effects make me feel like I’m looking into a View-Master, artificial and gratuitous. For Gatsby, the extravaganzas in his mansion are only means to an end, to attract his love, Daisy; in Luhrmann’s hands, they are an end in themselves. The flamboyant and ostentatious parties, like their uninvited guests, overstay their welcome in the first part of the almost 2.5 hour production.

If Luhrmann had only used more of his wealth of resources: the rich and talented cast, to explore the story more and go deeper into characterization, and less partying, the movie would have been a wonder.

After all the glitz and glam in the first act, my enjoyment begins when Gatsby meets Daisy in Nick’s humble abode, a set up masterminded by Gatsby. It has taken him five years to this very moment. It is this scene that draws me in from being just an aloof onlooker. From without to within, it is the story and the characters that engage me more than the visual spectaculars.

Leonardo DiCaprio is a fine Gatsby, convincing and comical at times. Carey Mulligan may not be the Daisy I had conjured up from reading the book, but she has mastered her role well on her own terms. She’s a much sweeter, less careless Daisy than I had in mind. Elizabeth Debicki is an apt Jordan Baker. Joel Edgerton as sneaky and snobbish Tom Buchanan needs to smile more, and Tobey Maguire as Nick Carraway less. The veteran actor Amitabh Bachchan is a good choice for Meyer Wolfsheim. Isla Fisher as Myrtle Wilson, what a change from a shopaholic, and Jason Clarke too much a hunk to be wimpy Wilson.

One major alteration that I’ve appreciated is Nick writing out the story as a therapy recommended by his doctor, apparently a psychiatrist. The story of Jay Gatsby is also Nick’s own story as a writer. By articulating his experience in words he pays tribute to an unforgettable character, a dreamer who always sees the green light. Without giving out a spoiler, let me just say, the little twist at the end is a nice touch to this new adaptation of The Great Gatsby.

Does it worth a watch? I’d say yes, even in the 3D version. Curiosity is insatiable. And hopefully, the visual spectaculars can draw the viewer back once again to the literary offering Fitzgerald had first created.

~ ~ ~ Ripples

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A related Post I wrote 3 years ago at the announcement of this new adaptation. My open letter to Baz Luhrmann:

The Great Gatsby: A New Version

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Great Film Expectations

For an updated list of 2012 premieres of film adaptations, CLICK HERE.

With written works from Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games to Shakespeare’s Coriolanus materialized on the big screen, what else can we anticipate in this year and next?

Here’s an update of some upcoming film adaptations from literary works. Great choices for book groups too.

A Most Wanted Man by John Le Carré

On the heels of the acclaimed “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy”, this time, Philip Seymour Hoffman is the man. Directed by Anton Corbijn whose last film was the deep and thoughtful “The American“, a film I found to be much better than the book.

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Finally, dates are set for the premiere: Sept. 7 in the UK, Nov. 9 in the US. I look forward to this one: Tom Stoppard screenplay, Joe Wright (Atonement, Pride & Prejudice) directs, Keira Knightly as Anna, Matthew MacFadyen Oblonzky, Jude Law Alexai, Aaron Johnson Count Vronsky, and Downton Abbey‘s Michelle Dockery (Lady Mary) as Princess Myagkaya, plus many other British stars.

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

Winner of multiple awards and shortlisted for a Booker in 2004, the apocalyptic novel is adapted by Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run) and The Wachowski’s (Matrix’s). Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Susan Sarandon, Ben Whishaw (Bright Star), Hugh Grant, Jim Broadbent. Here’s Susan Sarandon’s take on the production.

The Emperor’s Children by Claire Messud

Some big names affiliated with this project are Richard Gere, Eric Bana, Keira Knightly, Emma Thompson, Rachel McAdams. Director Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart) on board. But I can find no more news after this announcement, which is fine, gives me more time to get to the book first. It’s been on my TBR list for a few years now.

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

To coincide with the 200th birthday of Charles Dickens and the Olympics in London, Mike Newell (Enchanted April, Four Weddings and a Funeral) directs, screenplay by David Nicholl (One Day, Tess of d’Urbervilles, When Did You Last See Your Father) who may be also writing the third Bridget Jones movie. Ralph Fiennes is Magwitch, Helena Bonham Carter Miss Havisham, Jeremy Irvine, Pip.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

What will F. Scott think when he sees his masterpiece produced in 3D in the 21st Century? Woody: do give us a sequel to “Midnight In Paris” with your brilliant imagination. Australian director Bez Luhrmann is poised to bring us this new version of Gatsby in 3D, which I’m sure will stir up lots of discussions. It has already. But no matter how I dislike 3D (except Hugo), I want to see Leo DiCaprio play Jay G., Carey Mulligan, Daisy B., and Tobey Maguire, Nick C. Do Click Here to read a Guardian preview close to 3D.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

Kenneth Branagh will direct Kate Winslet in this popular novel about the power of literature in desperate wartime. This is a reprise of their cooperation from 1996, when Branagh, as Hamlet, also directed Winslet as Ophelia. No dates have been set for its production or release, but something to keep in mind.

The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien

Coming out in three parts. “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” in 2012, and “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug’ in Dec. 2013, and ‘The Hobbit: There and Back Again’ in July, 2014. Peter Jackson attempts to reprise his Rings Trilogy magic. Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Cate Blanchett, Orlando Bloom… the whole gang. Again, we’ll get to see beautiful New Zealand as setting.

The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens by Claire Tomalin

Claire Tomalin’s account of Charles Dickens’ affair with the young writer Nelly Ternan will be brought to screen with script from Abi Morgan (Shame, The Iron Lady) to be directed by Ralph Fiennes, who will play Dickens himself. To add to the rave, Kristin Scott Thomas is also on board. Felicity Jones will be playing Nelly Ternan. Fiennes never ceases to amaze us with his versatility, after directing Shakespeare’s Coriolanus in postmodern style.

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

Tom Hooper of “The King’s Speech” directs an all star cast in this musical offering. Hugh Jackman as Jean Valjean, Russell Crowe as Inspector Javert (is he going to sing too?), Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway join in the chorus. Just too bad Geoffrey Rush and Colin Firth are missing here. Release date for North America is Dec. 2012, which means it can be a contender in next Awards Season.

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Director Ang Lee picked 17 year-old Suraj Sharma of Delhi, India, from 3,000 teenagers to play Pi Patel. Interesting that Tobey MacGuire will play Yann Martel, the author of the book which won the 2002 Man Booker Prize. The film to be shot in 3D has a December 2012 release date. Again, films opening in December usually have eye on the next Awards Season. Will keep our eyes peeled.

Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

The Booker of Bookers winning work will see its author Salman Rushdie team up with acclaimed Canadian director Deepa Mehta in the film adaptation. Mehta in a recent interview hinted it will debut either at the Venice or the Toronto Film Festival this fall. You can still join us for a slow Read-Along of Midnight’s Children before the film comes out.

Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier

On the drawing board of Dreamwork and Working Title. Who can take the helm to reprise an adaptation made famous by Alfred Hitchcock, and actors to replace Sir Laurence Olivier as Mr. de Winter and Joan Fontaine as the new Mrs? Now, why does Carey Mulligan emerges in my mind… and Michael Fassbender…

What Maisie Knew by Henry James

Looks like a good classic to read before seeing the movie. Julianne Moore and Alexander Skarsgård lead the cast. I’ve enjoyed previous Henry James adaptations of The Wings of the Dove, The Golden Bowl, and The Portrait of a Lady. Look forward to this one.

Books to be turned into TV series:

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

To be adapted into an HBO TV series with an all-star cast under the helm of Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale). Stars include Ewan McGregor, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Rhys Ifans, Dianne Wiest, Chris Cooper and Greta Gerwig. But, will the author be involved in any of the writing?

A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

Again, HBO has bought the rights to this one. The 2011 Pulitzer Prize winner is to be adapted into a half-hour TV series.

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

Yet again, it’s HBO that will be developing the novel into a TV drama series, another project by the “uber producer” Scott Rudin, who also oversees “The Corrections.”

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What are some of your most anticipated films or books in the coming year(s)?

A Moveable Feast (Restored Edition) by Ernest Hemingway

Reading A Moveable Feast is like walking along the sea shore. On the fine sandy beach you see many attractive shells, but you don’t have a bucket with you. You pick the finest ones and put them in your pockets, until they’re full. But every step you take further, you see more that you want to keep. This post is too limited for me to display all the shells I’ve collected, but allow me to just pour them out from my pockets, without sorting, sand and all.

I first read about the term “Moveable Feast” while sitting in an Anglican church in Vancouver, flipping through the The Book of Common Prayer. After some googling later, I got the idea. A feast in the liturgical calendar that you commemorate no matter which date it falls on year after year. In the Foreword of this restored edition, Hemingway’s son Patrick (with second wife Pauline Pfeiffer) writes:

The complexity of a moveable feast lies in the calculation of the calendar date for Easter in a given year, from which it is simple enough then to assign a calendar date to each and every moveable feast for a given year. Palm Sunday is seven days before Easter.

A memorable experience that will follow you all the years of your life. You’ll cherish it whenever and wherever you are. Hemingway’s friend A. E. Hotchner suggested this title. Author of the biography Papa Hemingway, Hotchner recalls Hemingway once said to him:

If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.

Like Rick says to Ilsa in “Casablanca”: “We’ll always have Paris.” Same sentiment.

A Moveable Feast is Hemingway’s memoir written from notes he had forgotten in two steamer trunks stored at the Ritz Hotel in Paris since 1928. In 1956 he repossessed the treasure trove, upon the urging of the hotel management. The book details his experience while living in Paris from 1921 to 1926, when the author was in his early 20’s. The memoir was first published posthumously in 1964. The Paris Years was a period when Hemingway, just married Hadley Richardson, young and care-free, decided to give up journalism to strive at being a novelist.

He would write in a rented room or in a café over café crème,
meet Gertrude Stein for critique of his writing, go back home for lunch with wife Hadley, or have oysters and wine in a restaurant, socialize with Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, and other expats, borrow piles of books from Sylvia Beach’s library in her bookshop Shakespeare and Company, visit Luxembourg gardens and museum…

Two people, then, could live comfortably and well in Europe on five dollars a day and could travel.

No wonder Gil in “Midnight in Paris” dreams of such a life.

What strikes me initially is Hemingway’s frankness, sometimes blatant description of his opinion about the people he met. Like the first time he saw the artist Wyndham Lewis through Ezra Pound:

I watched Lewis carefully without seeming to look at him, as you do when you are boxing, and I do not think I had ever seen a nastier-looking man… I tried to break his face down and describe it but I could only get the eyes. Under the black hat, when I had first seen them, the eyes had been those of an unsuccessful rapist.

According to grandson Sean Hemingway who edited and wrote the introduction of this restored edition, Hemingway developed his sharp eye and ear during these Paris years. Here’s an account of Scott Fitzgerald when Hemingway first met him in the Dingo bar:

Scott was a man then who looked like a boy with a face between handsome and pretty. He had very fair wavy hair, a high forehead, excited eyes and a delicate long-lipped Irish mouth that, on a girl, would have been the mouth of a beauty. His chin was well built and he had good ears and a handsome, almost beautiful, unmarked nose.

This is only a little excerpt in a two page description of Scott’s appearance. It’s sentences like these that stand out for me. They all point to the writer at work: observing.

I kept on looking at him closely and noticed…”

“I kept on observing Scott.

And putting down in words later:

I wasn’t learning very much from looking at him now except that he had well shaped, capable-looking hands, not too small, and when he sat on one of the bar stools I saw that he had very short legs. With normal legs he would have been perhaps two inches taller.

But it was Scott’s talents despite his eccentricities and alcoholism that formed the building blocks of their friendship.

When I had finished the book [The Great Gatsby] I knew that no matter what Scott did, nor how preposterously he behaved, I must know it was like a sickness and be of any help I could to him and try to be a good friend. … If he could write a book as fine as The Great Gatsby I was sure that he could write an even better one. I did not know Zelda yet, and so I did not know the terrible odds that were against him.

It is perhaps with such candour and devotion in writing that he constantly sought to “write one true sentence.” Woody Allen has grasped the essence in this juicy line from “Midnight in Paris”:

No subject is terrible if the story is true, if the prose is clean and honest, and if it affirms courage and grace under pressure.

The restored edition brings back sections missing in the earlier 1964 publication which was edited by fourth and last wife Mary. According to Sean Hemingway, this restored work represents the content that Hemingway himself had intended the book to have, with the chapter “Nada y Pues Nada” (Nothing And Then Nothing) written three months before his suicide.

The second last chapter “The Pilot Fish and the Rich” shows he was remorseful over the breakdown of his first marriage to Hadley towards the end of his Paris days. A mutual friend they both knew, journalist Pauline Pfeiffer, came in between them. “You love them both now… Everything is split inside of you and you love two people now instead of one.”

But A Moveable Feast belongs to Earnest and Hadley and their young son Bumby. “… this is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy.” As a reader, I feel a sense of loss as I come to the end, for Earnest and Hadley were so much in love the first few years in Paris:

She: ‘And we’ll never love anyone else but each other.’

He: ‘No. Never.’

Their 2-room rental walk-up with no electricity and no hot water had been a haven of warm meals and intimate talks. It was the time when he was “a young man supporting a wife and child … learning to write prose.” Their short marriage lasted only six years. In 1927 Hemingway married Pauline, four months after divorcing Hadley.

The last section at the end of the book is entitled “Fragments”. These are “false starts”, beginning paragraphs of an introduction Hemingway tried to write for this book. Interestingly, every one of these attempts starts with: “This book is fiction.” Many include this sentence: “I have left out much and changed and eliminated and I hope Hadley understands.” In another fragment he wrote: “No one can write true fact in reminiscences…”

I’m baffled. But maybe unnecessarily. From our very subjective mind, our often hazy view of what did happen and what we wish to have happened and what could have happened, we conjure up a fusion. Should there be a clear line separating them? It’s because the demarkation of fact and fantasy is fluid that we can appreciate the arts, such as the film “Midnight in Paris.” The events that happen to Gil after midnight would remain fondly with him as reality, so real that they change his decision regarding his future. Facts or fiction… or fusion?

~ ~ ~ 1/2 Ripples

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A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition by Ernest Hemingway, published by Scribner, NY, 2009, 240 pages. Foreword by Patrick Hemingway, introduced and edited by Sean Hemingway.

This post is to participate in the Paris In July blogging event hosted by Karen of BookBath and Tamara of Thyme for Tea. You can also find another review of A Moveable Feast here at Dolce Bellezza.

To read my review of “Midnight In Paris”, CLICK HERE.

Click on the following links for some insightful interviews:

National Post Interview with Sean Hemingway on the restored edition

Interview with Woody Allen on making “Midnight In Paris”

The Great Gatsby: A New Version

UPDATE: To read my review of The Great Gatsby (2013), CLICK HERE.

Well… not yet. But seldom has a movie generated so much buzz even before it is made. The debates take on several fronts.

First off, there’s this argument of whether we need another Gatsby adaptation. There have been three full feature film versions of the classic novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, as early as 1926, then in 1949. The most familiar for us modern day viewers is the 1974, Francis Ford Coppola screenplay, Robert Redford and Mia Farrow version. So more than thirty years now. It would be interesting to see what a 21st century interpretation is like.

Then there’s the cast. It’s been reported that Leonardo DiCaprio is the new Jay Gatsby, Tobey Maguire the narrator Nick Carraway, and stirring the frenzy, director Baz Luhrmann’s announcement of Carey Mulligan as Daisy Buchanan.

I’m totally delighted with the cast selection. While he may not be very convincing as an aging Howard Hughes (The Aviator, 2004), DiCaprio could make a very natural Jay Gatsby. Tobey Maguire’s quiet, observant demeanor, like his role in Cider House Rules (1999), would be a suitable Nick Carraway, although he might not have the poise as Sam Waterston back in 1974.

I’m all for Carey Mulligan, but still I feel she would have to fight against type to play Daisy Buchanan. Far from the innocent school girl in An Education, or the caring and sensitive Kathy in Never Let Me Go, it could be a challenge to portray a frivolous and capricious Daisy. But if she could beat out names such as Natalie Portman, Abbie Cornish, Michelle Williams, Blake Lively, Scarlett Johansson, Amanda Seyfried, Rebecca Hall and Kiera Knightly in her audition to get the part, I trust she has what it takes to deliver. I’m excited to see her given a chance to extend further her acting talents.

That leaves us with the debate of whether the new interpreter could do Fitzgerald’s novel justice. Director Baz Luhrmann’s previous works seem to embody a Gatsby house party: Moulin Rouge (2001), Strictly Ballroom (1992), Australia (2008), and his very postmodern take of Romeo + Juliet (1996), which, I admit, is one of the few movies that I had to quit watching after the first 15 minutes.

The online arguments against Luhrmann’s directing surround his over-the-top and superficial renditions of his previous movies. His ability to translate the layered and nuanced descriptions of this literary classic into film is challenged outright.

That leads us to a more fundamental issue. In my review of the film The Hedgehog (2009), one reader has left this thought-provoking question in the comment:

Is it possible that, no matter how well or poorly the job is done, there are some books that simply don’t make the transition from print to film with their essence intact?

As the postmodernists would have it, books and films are two different textual entities. Fidelity is no longer something to strive for, but the appreciation of intertexuality. Both ought to be taken in its own right, can’t be literally tranlated, can’t be compared. And if Barthes has the final say, you just have to take it as is with whatever Luhrmann brings us since that’s his interpretation. The author is dead… here literally and metaphorically.

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No matter what, I won’t judge before it’s even being made. Nonetheless, I do have a few words to appeal to Mr. Luhrmann:

Please don’t waste a talented cast, and a brilliant literary work. Offer us quality and depth of interpretations and not just the frothy splendour of the Jazz Age. Consider lines like these and create the complexity and ambivalence in your characters:

I wanted to get out and walk eastward toward the park through the soft twilight, but each time I tried to go I became entangled in some wild, strident argument which pulled me back, as if with ropes, into my chair. Yet high over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening streets, and I was him too, looking up and wondering. I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.

While there’s no doubt you are capable of capturing the “gleaming, dazzling parties,” reveal also the undercurrents of anxiety, sadness, and ennui. And in the midst of the seeming conviviality, give us the nuanced actions of inner quest, the search for real relationship in a mansion of party crashers, and the lingering hope of love:

A wafer of a moon was shining over Gatsby’s house, making the night fine as before, and surviving the laughter and the sound of his still glowing garden. A sudden emptiness seemed to flow now from the windows and the great doors, endowing with complete isolation the figure of the host, who stood on the porch, his hand up in a formal gesture of farewell.

And above all, do justice to Jay Gatsby, honor his deep devotion for his love and not mock his attempt. For behind the façade of materials and wealth, he is the one with the heart. Show us how “the vague contour of Jay Gatsby had filled out to the substantiality of a man.”

Remember, it is the heart that gratifies your viewers, not the glitz and glamour.

And please, not a musical.

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The Great Gatsby on my iPhone

Two years ago I posted about reading Pride and Prejudice on my BlackBerry. At that time, I was receiving free installments of the book, sent to me daily via email from DailyLit.

Well, I’ve moved on since then. I’m using an iPhone now, and with the application Stanza, I get access to several online catalogues with over 100,000 selections of classics and contemporary titles and periodicals. I must add though while the Stanza app is free, some of the eBooks in these catalogues, especially the contemporary ones, are not.

But I’m just interested in the free ones, and there are more than enough to choose from… mainly through Project Gutenberg’s catalogue of 30,000 eBooks in the public domain, classics of over 20 languages. Not that I’ll be reading one in Icelandic, or Portuguese, or even Esperanto, but it’s good to know that they are there in case you might need them. All the titles are free to download due to the expiry of their copyrights. I’ll just stick with the 22,000 English selections for now, from Austen to Zola, from anarchism to zoology… yes, they allow you to search by authors, titles, languages, genres, topics.

Regarding the concept of ‘free’, the Project Gutenberg Website has this important information: ‘Free’ here means both free of charge and freedom to use the titles in whatever way a reader chooses, teaching, adapting, distributing…

So, what has been my experience of reading The Great Gatsby on my iPhone?

First off, unlike the Kindle, which is the size of a paperback, or larger, the iPhone screen is just 3.5 inch diagonal. While you can adjust the font size to suit your visual comfort, it just means the inconvenience of turning the pages more often the larger the font. Reading it horizontally, my setting is about 10 words per line, 14 lines on each page. I can choose my own style of font and the backlit format.

Compare with reading a hard copy, the iPhone has its convenience, that being smaller, easier to carry. You have your whole library at your fingertip, literally. But the major advantage over a hard copy, I feel, is the lighted screen. In other words, you don’t need to turn your bedside table light on to read. In a way, it brings back that childhood experience of reading under a covered blanket with a flashlight. Ready accessibility, even in the dark. What a fantastic treat for insomniacs.

Now to something totally different, the affective element of the reading experience. Strangely enough, reading on the iPhone makes Roland Barthes’ theory a step closer to reality. Just a recap, I’ve written a post on Barthe’s ‘The Death of the Author’ idea. The text is the thing, he argues. Let it speak without any reference to its author. Reading digitally transported me onto that path, whether intentionally or not.

When you’re reading a book, you’re holding the physical object called a ‘book’, with all its cultural meaning and significance, the reality of print on paper, the design and aesthetics of the object itself. More importantly, from the outset, before you dig in, you’re looking at its cover art, jacket info on the author and the work, with the sometimes additional excerpts of reviews, author bio, introduction to the work… etc. In other words, you cannot avoid knowing who wrote those words you’re reading, his or her background, literary achievement and perspective.

But reading digitally, you’re only seeing the text, unless of course you change the screen to check info about the author or the work. If you just stay with that screen, you’re only seeing the words per se, unmoved by any of the author’s background, literary style, devoid of any context. And because of the small screen, you’re only reading a few lines at a time. Instead of a complete whole that you can hold in your hands, you are confronted with the fragments, the digitalized, desensitized, deconstructed units of a literary work.

I have read The Great Gatsby before, in hard copy format, and now in the digital mode. Reading it on the iPhone, I sense that my imagination is more reined in. I encounter more ‘text’ than ‘images’, and feeling less for the characters. Interestingly, some details of the plot are clearer this time, but the emotional impact is attenuated. Of course, one could argue it’s because this is the second time around I read the story… but then again, it has been some years between the two readings.

There’s no perfect solution for everything. You have the convenience, but the desensitizing of the reading experience. Nevertheless, the free downloads of world classics at your fingertip is just too good to pass.

My next read from my iPhone library? Well, there are quite a few choices. I’m thinking of Proust’s Swann’s Way: In Search of Lost Time Vol. 1. Reading Proust on the iPhone… how much more postmodern can you get? Roland Barthes would have been pleased.

But it might be too daunting a task to attempt, imagine reading 400 plus pages on a 3.5 inch screen, 14 lines at a time.

And for now… let me just head out to the bookstore. Nothing can compare to the sensation of being surrounded by books, and actually feeling them in your hands, cover, spine, and all.

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Photo Source: The Great Gatsby book cover at artistquirk.com