Why I Read Gatsby Every Year
If you’re a writer, any writer, you’ll learn something every time
“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter– tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…and one fine morning–
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Those words end one of the finest books written in English and are themselves iconic, perfectly mirroring the American desire to find an idyllic past that never existed. The Great Gatsby is a full course in writing fiction, an MFA in 182 pages that can easily be read in one sitting.
Reading it inspired Hemingway to try to rescue Fitzgerald from his self-destruction and insecurity. Unfortunately he failed and Fitzgerald drank himself to death, adding to that myth of the writer who is too close to his subject.
I read the book once every year or so. In part out of admiration, but mainly because it is simply a great story, a story that captures the optimism and ultimate failure of that optimism during the soon to be declining twenties.
This is not a review and I am not going to provide a synopsis of the plot. You likely know it…
