Kill Your Idols: "The Great Gatsby"

Oh, I'm not saying anything bad about the Fitzgerald the writer. I would agree with you; Fitzgerald's greater than all of those folks. But Fitzgerald the man does little for me.

 

English Romantic lit. was long my bailiwick, so that's part of my view, although I don't believe that inspiration and the creative act itself are the only important elements of artistic expression.
I don't dig most free verse poetry or abstract expresionist painting. Art still requires incredibly strong elements of crasftsmanship and artisanship. Fitzgerald had those in abundance, as did Michelangelo.

If you look at Michelangelo, though, there is more going on than what he is commissioned to do. With the Sistine Chapel, he was commissioned to create beautiful frescoes that would also be instructive the faithful.
Had he delivered only what he was commissioned to do, the work wouldn't be as revered as it is. He transcends any pedagogy.

Art reveals things about truth, beauty, the condition of existence, but it does not instruct.
It shows us something we sense with seeing or feel without grasping. It doesn't deliver a message.



'Mont Blanc yet gleams on high:--the power is there,
The still and solemn power of many sights,
And many sounds, and much of life and death.
In the calm darkness of the moonless nights,
In the lone glare of day, the snows descend
Upon that Mountain; none beholds them there,
Nor when the flakes burn in the sinking sun,
Or the star-beams dart through them. Winds contend
Silently there, and heap the snow with breath
Rapid and strong, but silently! Its home
The voiceless lightning in these solitudes
Keeps innocently, and like vapour broods
Over the snow. The secret Strength of things
Which governs thought, and to the infinite dome
Of Heaven is as a law, inhabits thee!
And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea,
If to the human mind's imaginings
Silence and solitude were vacancy?'

 

Don't good writers let the story tell the story? Because to me there is social commentary in Fitzgerald's writing. He doesn't "instruct" or pronounce judgement but he surely creates characters, setting, dialogue and a narrative that reveal not just "things about truth, beauty, the condition of existence" but also a point of view that seems, in turns, disdainful, empathetic and amused. Truth, eye of the beholder, etc.

 

I think we're in agreement, but I think a lot is left to the reader. He's not telling you what to think. He's creating characters, a setting, a story and letting the reader come to what it's about.

There is social commentary because the writer and the story don't exist in a vaccuum, but there's no pedantry.
And I don't mean to say Dreiser or Wharton were pedantic, although that's how I'm coming off.

But there's more going on in 'Gatsby' than messages like 'the Jazz Age is morally bankrupt' or 'rich people are bad.'

 

We're in agreement.

 

A wise man once said: 'Art can include social commentary, but when it is motivated by social commentary alone it becomes pedantic, even base.'

 

Maybe she's just a bad mother. And rich. And got the vote.
One doesn't have to lead to the other.
Having the best of everything doesn't make you the best of anything. It's what you do with what you have that matters.

 

Now we're talking about the book. Gatsby is in love for all of the wrong reasons. He aspires to success for the wrong reasons. He pursues success in the wrong manner. That's not social commentary about the idle rich or the American class system.

 

Someone finally killed the idol:

Actually, 'The Great Gatsby' Is Trash

 

That is not even decent sophistry, just juvenile contrarianism.