Gatsby's GrrrrrEAT!

I hate the book "The Great Gatsby."

There! I've said it!

Or, I mean, hated. I hated Gatsby when I read it for the first time 15 years ago. As a 20 year old who was super into "Bridget Jones's Diary" and had just discovered David Sedaris, it's very possible that I didn't have the life experience and depth to understand the glory that is Great Gatsby.

Very, very possible.

But this summer, I revisited a bunch of the books of my youth! And since my mom and my sister and a bunch of my friends who are all much smarter than I am, love Gatsby, I decided to take another whack at it!

And... um... I still don't get why it's a thing.

There! I've said it!

Or, I mean, I don't personally get it. I understand the reasons why other people like it.

Usually they like it because it's a glitzy, perfect snapshot of the flapper generation. And because it's a searing indictment of the affluence and indifference of blah blah whatever.

And, of course, because it's a bummer of a story. (SPOILER ALERT! Gatsby ruins his life trying to get a woman who is just so not worth the effort and then he dies and nobody cares.)

I get that there's a universality to the idea that there was a group of shallow, image-obsessed people who didn't seem to care about anything real or substantial, because narcissists have always existed. But there's a poignancy to this era of narcissism because the Great Depression and World War II were right around the freaking corner. So there's a certain level of societal schadenfreude where we look at the shallow people in the book and think, "Have your fun now, because you're about to enter your very own Grapes of Wrath phase." and then we look at the people we follow on Instagram and think, "Have your fun now, because history shows there will be some sort of disaster that will lead to your downfall, but because my life sucks now, it will just be a lateral move for me and, I don't know why, but somehow that makes me morally superior to you."

(There! I've said it!) (I'm not entirely sure what exactly I just said... but I said it.)

I obviously don't disagree with any of these points. The Great Gatsby is a beautifully written novella with very cool flapper vibe to it. But any poignancy or depth is due to the timing, not the story. The Great Gatsby isn't book that stands on it's own. The book itself isn't dynamic. All the depth comes from outside of the book. It comes from knowing that the Great Depression was right around the corner. And it gets it's depth especially from knowing all the details of F. Scott Fitzgerald's life. Because that is the real story.

Zelda and F. Scott Fitgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald was a freaking genius. I know this because, after railing against Gatsby at the family dinner table for about 15 minutes without taking a breath, my mom recommended that I read "So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why it Endures" by Maureen Corrigan, and that book has made me fall in love with F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Fitzgerald was a dynamic, fully-formed, real version of Jay Gatsby. He was brilliant and tragic and at one point described himself as being in a state of "emotionally bankruptcy" which is a phrase that I cannot get out of my mind.

He also said really quotable things like, "The test of first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, an still retain the ability to function."

So I get the obsession with the Fitzgeralds, but I can't think of a single favorite book of mine, where I need to know the in-depth history of the author in order to enjoy it.

I guess what I'm saying is, skip the "The Great Gatsby" and read "So We Read On."

Or read and love Gatsby.

I'm not the boss of you.