Director of Programs and Education, Martha Williams, recommends The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
It’s been at least ten years since I last read The Great Gatsby. Like many, I first read the novel in high school, where some of my peers adored the story while others adamantly hated it. I remember being mesmerized by Fitzgerald’s language, impressed by narrator Nick Carraway’s observations of humanity, and appalled by the rich and “careless” Buchanans and the wreckage left in their wake. I honestly didn’t know what to think of Jay “The Great” Gatsby himself—the self-created man who yearns for Daisy Buchanan and a revival of their young love.
Upon re-reading the book in my 20s, I saw new complexities and felt a fresh tenderness for Jay Gatsby, who risks everything for a dream. On this most recent reading, now in my late 30s, I saw anew the “infinite hope” for possibility that Gatsby stands for, even as we know he is doomed from the novel’s opening pages. I felt drawn to Gatsby’s belief – “Can’t repeat the past? … Why of course you can!” – even as I am now (somewhat) wise enough to know better. Despite the darkness hanging over Nick’s telling of what happened that dangerous and thrilling summer in 1922, when he met his neighbor Gatsby and attended his extravagant Long Island parties…
…I soak up the story every time of this dreamer chasing what is already behind him.
If I had to say what The Great Gatsby is about, I’d say it’s about hope, about longing and nostalgia; but it’s also about class and disillusionment, memory, and performance. Do you see how I’m avoiding summarizing the plot for you? I find it nearly impossible to summarize in a few sentences all that Fitzgerald captures with this slim masterpiece. He captures a period 100 years distant from our own—the wild Jazz Age of 1920s New York—but alive with the same concerns of today: class mobility, race and immigration, the realities of the “American dream,” and the dangers of seeking a past that has already slipped away. And even through this weight…
…I am born aloft with each reading, courtesy of Fitzgerald’s myriad layers and the beautiful language that unfolds with each visit.
Join us this winter as we read The Great Gatsby together as our 2024 community-wide Winter Read. Our programs January 31 to March 15 delve into the novel’s history, examine why it still resonates (or doesn’t!), how it was reborn and became standard classroom fare decades after being published, and how contemporary writers are reimagining the story today and connecting new readers to this timeless tale. Through these programs and discussion groups throughout the valley, I hope you’ll embark on this story for the first time or revisit it with us, engage in conversation with your neighbors, families, and friends, and…
…experience how stories bring us together and give us ways to talk about America and our place in it.
Find The Great Gatsby in print, ebook, eaudiobook, and CD here.
