Rationale

My Written Task is based on my Part 3 study of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby.

The idea for this task comes from a lesson where we discussed the IB Learner Profile, the idea of reflection, and how we could use feedback and failure to develop aims for improvement. We considered the importance of resilience and perseverance. At the end of the lesson, we read a few, brief rejection letters to famous authors, and were then asked to write our own insightful and amusing rejection letter to Fitzgerald.

At the same time we were doing this, we were studying The Great Gatsby, and we read some letters that Fitzgerald wrote to his editor, Maxwell Perkins, as he was redrafting his novel. Here, in this Written Task, I have attempted to imagine what kind of letter Perkins may have written back to Fitzgerald.

I realize that Fitzgerald’s editor probably provided him with advice. However, I used this task as an opportunity to show my awareness and appreciation of the novel. I decided that Perkins would write hyperbolically and would lavishly praise the novel. I wanted it to be intimate too, so there are many instances of direct address. Also, Perkins seems to suggest that he has foresight into the Wall Street Crash and the novel’s later canonization.

I have tried to show an understanding of how the novel treats the American Dream; that is, as an important ideology, but as a futile ambition. I also aim to show my knowledge of the novel’s style – a form of Romantic Modernism. I have devoted a lot of space to discussing characterization. Finally, I have attempted to show that the novel is hard to fully understand. There is a sense that Perkins, like me, only partly comprehends the novel.

300 words

 New York

02 June 1924

Dear Scott,

I hope the climate on the Riviera is to your liking and you are moving towards completion of your book.

I read in one sitting the latest draft of your new novel with enthralled delight. The change of title from Under the Red, White, and Blue to The Great Gatsby is a touch of brilliance. It adds to the complexity and myriad meanings the novel has. I adore Gatsby! He is the last romantic, a man determined to secure the woman he loves. We live in a world that is on the move and changing rapidly. Automobiles, trains, the telephone, your novel captures all of this; you understand how these technologies are reordering space and time. Yet, in Gatsby, you have a character trapped in his pursuit of the past. How idealistic! How quixotic! Of course, I understand the irony. Gatsby is seen for what he is – a gauche and superficial criminal. He is a pretender, and his gaudy opulence is apparent to all but him. But, Scott, I love him; he is a romantic – a man out of time, charged with desire and emotion, not reason and intellect. Keats would have loved him, would he not?

And you must know, Scott, you have captured the zeitgeist of the period. History will show your novel to be the defining work of our age – the Great American novel. As Americans, what are we if not dreamers? There is a Gatsby in all of us. We may have moments of rationality, but we do believe, just like Jay Gatsby, that we can transcend our beginnings. Our aspirations are boundless! But for what, Scott? The American Dream, this bastardized notion, so central to our common identity, is a figment of fantasy. The last lines of your novel make this clear. Like Gatsby, Myrtle, and George, the American Dream is dead. And it is certainly ironic that, given this, ‘we beat on, boats against the current…’

The true genius of your novel, Scott, is the invention of Nick Carraway. I simultaneously love him and loathe him – he is, like your book, contradictory. And it is he, Nick Carraway, not Gatsby, that really gets my attention. He is, of course, an observer of events, not an actor, and it is through him that the reader can observe, as it were, events from afar. Through Nick we see modern America for what it is – a soulless, spiritless, vacuous place. But, Nick intrigues me. He claims moral authority, and yet, in his vicarious existence, all he does is observe lives falling apart. He does ‘reserve judgment’ to the detriment of most, and still his retrospective narrative is full of criticism. He is reserved to the point of repression (is he gay, Scott?). The contradictions and absences in Nick’s story are the most brilliant narrative creations. Nick is the real mystery, not Gatsby. For me, the ultimate coup de grace is the way Nick, just like Daisy and Tom, having caused so much harm, leaves the novel unscathed. So much for the American Dream!

Of course your novel is full of memorable characters Scott – not only Gatsby and Nick. Tom is cruel,and brutal. You give him the right name too. Say it: Tom. So hard, so abrupt. He is a misogynist and a racist – I love the way you refer to him as ‘hulking’! His class doesn’t really depend on ancient wealth, does it? In fact, his status depends entirely on his ability to bully. Is this the true reality of America, Scott? The illusion of opportunity, and the reality of a polarized, class obsessed nation. Is America a country full of Toms and George Wilsons, a country of haves and have-nots? I believe it is. Unrestrained capitalism won’t improve things. You’ll see!

And your women, Scott. Oh your women! How beautiful they are and often entirely vacant! Where did dream up Daisy?! So seemingly empty and so simultaneously complex. She mirrors the duality of the novel. Like your book, Scott, you can’t pin Daisy down. You keep returning to her voice; at once it has a seductive quality, a ‘singing compulsion’ and, as Nick tells us, is simultaneously ‘full of money’. Why wouldn’t Gatsby desire her? Money, glamour, and promising excitement forever. She is a modern American Siren – no wonder Gatsby dies in a swimming pool! And yet, Scott, Daisy is so fragile and vulnerable. She isn’t a woman – our country is cruel to women – she is a girl, a mere child. But this is her choice, right? Daisy knows better than most her circumstance. Her carelessness and decadence are superficial. Like Gatsby, Daisy is a metaphor for our time.

Jordan is complex too, and not like the other women, especially not like Daisy. Colour imagery is so important to your book – Daisy in white, Gatsby pursuing green, and Jordan you tell us has ‘slender golden arms’. In other words, Jordan is sexy and deceitful; an out and out fraud. Nick sees through her – doesn’t he? – but what does it matter? Jordan may be young, but golf isn’t the only game she’s playing; she’s also playing the game of modern American life and it’s one big lie. But, so what? Everyone needs to get by, and we know that Jordan will. I despise her and desire her, Scott. Like everything else about your book, I never fully understand her.

Scott, I could go on. Your book is brilliant in its complexity – so very Modern. It’s a like a jigsaw that fails to settle. Like a Gestalt image, it changes before your eyes. The voices in the novel are very contemporary – we hear the Jazz Age. And yet, the novel has another quality; it is lyrical, and one may say Romantic. But, as for your condemnation of America, that’s without equivocation.  

Give my love to Zelda. I hope to see you on this side of the pond soon, Scott. Your novel will be sensational. You know that.

With admiration,

Maxwell Perkins

1000 words

Works cited:

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. 1925.