PROSE
F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby
“I couldn’t forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Why this book?
Dismissed by many critics on first publication in 1925, The Great Gatsby went on to become the defining novel of jazz-age America. Almost a century later, the book continues to sell millions of copies each year and is widely acclaimed as one of the greatest novels ever published in the English language.
The story
No one knows who Gatsby really is, his background and the source of his wealth is a mystery that inspires gossip, speculation and suspicion. But almost everyone is willing to enjoy the fabulous hospitality he offers at his Long Island mansion. Told in less than 50,000 words, this is a story of obsession, enchantment and, ultimately, disappointment and destruction.
The writing
Whether you are reading The Great Gatsby for the first or the umpteenth time, the book offers a delicious immersion in a shimmering world of beauty, wealth and excitement. But there is corruption beneath the glamorous surface and even our honest – non-judgemental? – narrator discovers anew how dangerously seductive beautiful people can be.
To read this work deeply we must sit close enough to the narrator to be in his world while allowing ourselves the space necessary to gauge the critical perception of the writer. To me, as an American, there is something really key here. Fitzgerald uses the close proximity of the narrator – how Nick is seduced by Gatsby – to reflect how so many of us can be seduced by wealth, high-style romance and all that glitters. While Nick wants to condemn Gatsby, he is at the same time enamoured of him – his money, his power, his single-minded pursuit. I propose that this continues to be a deeply American conflict: the awe of high society, alongside the recognition of the cost and conflict that accumulation of wealth requires. We are a country of dreamers.
This book has a particular poetic language that feeds the pleasure of the reader, even as it exposes the tawdriness of what is described and, eventually, the death of hopes and dreams.
The reading
This is a deceptively short novel. Yet again, we recommend slow reading to appreciate the evocation of a glittering but brittle world and its inhabitants. If time allows, re-reading can help to illuminate the subtlety of both meaning and the author’s intentions.
Some questions you may wish to consider while reading:
- Narrative perspective: how does Nick’s involvement in the story shape our understanding, empathy and judgement?
- Can blind desire and implacable will be seen as heroic?
- Careless people – what self-justification sustains them? Are these products of a particular society? How effectively does the work comment on class divisions?
- Structural pairings and narrative echoes: two affairs, two parties, two trips to New York, two deaths . . . How do these reflections illuminate the ideas at play? What other echoes are subtly included and how do these pairings influence structure and meaning in the work?
- Do symbols – the green light, the broken clock, the Eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleberg – resonate beyond a superficial equation? The proposal of the symbol (from the Greek meaning to throw together) is to connect the lived world of objects and material to a higher world – an eternal ideal, or perhaps the uncharted depths of the unconscious – in art forms. The most resonant symbols point towards something that resists easy expression; do the symbols employed here function in this way?
- Is there ultimately a judgement on the world of the careless rich? The narrative at times seems enraptured by the freedom and possibility that great wealth offers – is this Nick’s confusion? Or Fitzgerald’s? Or our own? As fallible and moral beings, how do we balance our moral judgments with understanding of human dreams (and failure)?
- How does this work read in 2022? Are there parallels with contemporary lifestyles and culture?
Recommended edition: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Penguin Modern Classics, ISBN-10: 0141182636.
The author
Born in Minnesota in 1896, Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American writer of novels, short stories and essays, renowned for popularising the term the ‘Jazz Age’ to describe the time and milieu he chronicled. He completed four novels and left a fifth unfinished, as well as writing dozens of short stories dealing with themes of youth, despair, and age. His marriage to the wealthy and beautiful Zelda Sayre was famously tempestuous and doomed. He enjoyed temporary popularity and success in the 1920s, but it was only after his death in 1940 that he attracted critical acclaim. Today he is regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the twentieth century.
Content courtesy of Toby Brothers, Founder and Director of the London Literary Salon & Nicky Mayhew, Associate Director.
POETRY
Gerard Manley Hopkins
The Windhover
The Windhover
to Christ our Lord
I cáught this mórning mórning's mínion, kíng-
dom of dáylight's dáuphin, dapple-dáwn-drawn Fálcon, in his ríding
Of the rólling level úndernéath him steady áir, and stríding
Hígh there, how he rúng upon the réin of a wímpling wíng
In his écstasy! then óff, óff fórth on swíng,
As a skáte's heel sweeps smóoth on a bów-bend: the húrl and glíding
Rebúffed the bíg wínd. My héart in híding
Stírred for a bírd, – the achíeve of, the mástery of the thíng!
Brute béauty and válour and áct, oh, air, príde, plume, hére
Buckle! ÁND the fíre that bréaks from thee thén, a bíllion
Tímes told lóvelier, more dángerous, Ó my chevalíer!
No wónder of it: shéer plód makes plóugh down síllion
Shíne, and blúe-bleak émbers, áh my déar,
Fall, gáll themsélves, and gásh góld-vermílion.
Gerard Manley Hopkins
As Gerard Manley Hopkins’ style was so radically different to his contemporaries, few of his poems were accepted for publication during his lifetime. The Windhover was written in May 1877 but not published until 1918 when it was included in a collection of poems published by Hopkins’ dear friend and fellow poet Robert Bridges. The first print run had little impact, not selling out for nine years, but it was subsequently discovered by a new generation of poets on whom it was to have a major influence. So The Windhover can seem to be both a mid-Victorian and a modernist poem. It also expresses not only the Romantic approach to nature but also the older tradition of explicitly religious nature poetry.
The Windhover was written in May 1877, when Hopkins was a student at St Buenos Theological College in rural Wales. During this period, when he was training to become a Jesuit priest, he wrote many of his most famous nature poems.
Hopkins’ style is very much his own in both his form and use of language. In his correspondence with Robert Bridges he explained some of his experiments with form, language and meter, most famously the “sprung rhythm” used in The Windhover. There is a LOT of debate about how he made sprung rhythm work, so this should be regarded as a very basic explanation but I hope it will be enough to start our discussion.
Traditionally, most English poetry has been written in iambic pentameter: five sets of two syllables with the stress on the second syllable. You can hear this in a line like Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day.
With sprung rhythm Hopkins makes two major changes: the stress moves to the first syllable, and although the number of stressed syllables is the same for each line (in The Windhover he uses five stresses) there are varying numbers of unstressed syllables. This lengthens the lines, so the 14 lines of The Windhover has (by my quick count!) 182 syllables, whereas a sonnet written in iambic pentameter has 140. Hopkins felt that sprung rhythm brought his poetry closer to the cadences of ordinary English speech.
The copy of the poem reproduced above has the stresses marked. The stress marks are very small so I find it helpful to use a highlighter pen to make them visible when reading the poem – you need to look closely to find all five stresses per line – some of the i’s have stress marks instead of dots.
Finally a bit about the Windhover (or Kestrel) itself. The European or Common Kestrel is found throughout Europe and North Africa, in a range of habitats from moor and heath to farmland and urban areas. It hovers over motorways, in London’s parks and along the coast. In fact, sea cliffs are some of the best places to watch kestrels; they like to hover over the landslips and you are level with them as you walk. Their ability to remain suspended in the air as they look for prey is sometimes called diagnostic: there are several smallish falcons resident in the UK, but once you see it hovering you know – it’s a kestrel!
For a good general introduction to Gerard Manley Hopkins’ life and work, I’d recommend the In Our Time programme on BBC Radio 4.
Content courtesy of Caroline Hammond, Poet and Salon Facilitator.
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