#214 | What Makes 'The Great Gatsby' the Great American Novel?

episode SUMMARY:

Douglas Vigliotti discusses the acclaimed classic “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, a story of the enigmatic Jay Gatsby and his pursuit of the elusive Daisy Buchanan and the American Dream. Tracing the complexities of social class, wealth, and the very essence of the American spirit, this literary masterpiece remains a timeless testament to the allure and fragility of the human condition—a cautionary tale about the power of the stories we tell ourselves and believe.

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Welcome back to “Books for Men”, a podcast to inspire more men to read and bring together men who do. So this week I have a classic piece of literary fiction to share with you, “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald. There's a lot that's been said about this book over the last hundred years, believe it or not. It was originally published in 1925, so next year will be its hundredth year anniversary. It's a shorter novel, around 200, or 210 pages or so. But before I share anything more about the author and the book and some of my larger takeaways, I wanted to make a bigger announcement, and that is that I have a new book coming out in November titled “Aristotle for Novelist: 14 Timeless Principles on the Art of Story”. Now, I don't want to bog down this episode with more information on that, but if you are interested, you could find out more information about the book at AristotleforNovelists.com.

(01:05)

I will be sharing a lot more in the coming weeks and leading up to the release of that work. Also, I wanted to remind you the number one way that you could support this podcast is by clicking the subscribe button on whatever podcast platform you're listening to this on. That is the best way to put this show in front of more eyeballs and ears and in return, inspire more men to read. Also, there is a companion newsletter that goes with this podcast, and you could sign up for that on the website BooksforMen.org. It is just one monthly email that rounds up all of the episodes from that month complete with full book and author information, all the best quotes, episode summaries, and newsletter-only book recommendations. So again, if you're interested in that, you could find out more about it and sign up for it at BooksforMen.org.

(01:54)

Okay, with that being said, let's jump right into the episode for the month. So, “The Great Gatsby”, there's a lot that has been said about this novel over the last hundred years, so it's going to be hard to add to that conversation, but I will do my best. Many consider it to be the Great American novel. And if you look at the greatest novels of all time, this is right up in that conversation and I will share my 2 cents on why I think that's the case momentarily. But first I should probably talk a little bit about the author, F. Scott Fitzgerald, right? Obviously, he's a novelist. He's published four novels. His debut was in 1920, and his last novel was in 1934, so it was over the span of 14 years or so. He's written many, many short stories. I think it's north of 150 or something of that nature.

(02:43)

Some say his last novel actually the one that was published in 1934, “Tender is the Night” is his Best Work. I know that that's kind of a tough pill to swallow considering the LinkedIn that I just mentioned with “The Great Gatsby”, a book that has had cultural impact and acclaim and has been really a mainstay. But I should mention that Fitzgerald himself, I believe is the one who has said he believes “Tender is the Night” is his best work. Take that for what you will. I figured this was an interesting tidbit to share with you. Just some other things that he's historically well known for, or I should say are well documented are his involvement with the expat community in Paris in the early 1920s most classify this as the Lost Generation, along with artists and writers like Hemingway, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein. There's actually a pretty fun Woody Allen movie called “Midnight in Paris”, starring Owen Wilson that documents this time period in a fun narrative sense.

(03:50)

Fitzgerald's relationship with his wife. Zelda is also a very well-documented thing. You could read their letters there, I believe there was a TV show created around this. I actually saw an interesting documentary recently about a reconsidering how the novel that I'm sharing with you today, “The Great Gatsby” was actually based on, so most people consider it based on his time spent in Long Island, but this documentary makes a compelling case that it was actually his time spent in Westport, Connecticut, which was actually the first place that he and Zelda lived when they first got married. And as I mentioned, the documentary makes the case that this was the inspiration for the novel. I believe it's called “Gatsby in Connecticut”, if you want to search for it, sort of lo-fi in its production. But in a way does that take away from the legitimacy of the filmmakers?

(04:53)

It just has a more DIY type of feel to the documentary all to say that. I think it's a great addition to reading the book that I'm sharing with you today, “The Great Gadsby”. So if you're interested in it, go check that out. Alright, so now let me turn to the novel in the second half of this episode. It is, as I already mentioned, an iconic novel and it is set in the Jazz Age, which is essential to the theme of the novel. It was a very flamboyant and excessive time period. Some call it the gaudiest time period in history. It was the prohibition era. So alcohol was not allowed, so to speak. This ties into some of the theories on who Jay Gatsby is, the main character, and how he made his fortune. I should note that for anyone who isn't a history buff, and I don't consider myself one, the Jazz Age was following World War I up into the stock market crash of 1929.

(05:57)

So right around the late 1910s, so 1918 or so into 1929. So this novel takes place during that time period documenting the life of Jay Gatsby through the eyes of Nick Carraway. This is really important to how the novel reads and how it's set up something that we'll talk about in just a moment. Basically, Nick moves to a small cottage in West Egg, which is a fictional place on Long Island, and it's supposed to represent money and wealth, but new money and wealth as opposed to East Egg, which is wealthy but represents old money. So the cottage that Nick moves into is next to this extravagant large estate owned by the mysterious, as I already mentioned, Jay Gatsby. Nobody is quite sure who he is or what he does for a living or how he made his money, but he throws these lavish and extravagant parties with the who's who's of celebrity and everything.

(07:01)

But ultimately, Gatsby is trying to win back the heart of Daisy Buchanan, who is a distant relative of Nick, and that's how he ends up meeting Jay Gatsby and Daisy lives in East Egg with her philandering husband, Tom Buchanan. The story is basically what happens to all of these characters, most importantly, the protagonist of the novel Gatsby. As I just mentioned moments ago, this novel is a really good example of a novel that is set up with a narrator who isn't your protagonist, right? So Jay Gatsby is the main character, but the narrator of the book is Nick Carraway. And I think that that choice, or if it was a choice or just happened, I don't know. I think that that adds to the complexity of this novel a great deal because it shows layers and levels to the larger thematical element that this novel represents, which to me, it's about yearning.

(08:09)

So Gatsby yearns to be part of old money, and no matter how much money or fame or deception he creates, he'll never be part of that while Nick sort of yearns, or at least is compelled by Gatsby in a sense of, I want to be like that, right? So it's this triangle of yearning, I guess, or triangle of desire to, I'm using air quotes now. Climb the ladder of life. While there are so many things that you could take away from this novel, to me, this gets at the core of the American dream or the idea that we call America, that anybody can create themselves here and create this story and build a life that is completely different than the one that they have. Probably one of the most prominent scenes of the novel is the first time that Nick sees Gatsby staring at the green light across the bay, which is the ultimate symbol or metaphor for yearning to be part of something.

(09:30)

And as I've already alluded to the major thematical elements in this novel around social class and wealth creation and inherited money versus being self-made, and the dynamics of everything that's involved with that is what accounts for this novel to be considered one of the great American novels and potentially the Great American novel. And one of my favorite quotes actually from this novel is a very short one when Nick thinks or says it's part of the narration. “When I looked once more for Gatsby, he had vanished and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness.” And it was just that idea that what's there cannot be there very quickly, especially considering that everything is based on narratives and stories that you or I choose to believe, whether it's an individual or a company or a corporation or money in general, the melding of all these ideas when you read a book like this just makes it a super compelling, interesting book.

(10:44)

One of the things that actually helps this book as one that you could read over and over again is that it's written with a very lean structure making everything essential. So it has almost a page-turning quality to it. There's just nothing extraneous in the novel, and at least for me, this makes the book a lot easier to read and enables me to read it over and over again, and I can't say the same for novels that don't have that quality, at least for me. Okay, so I'll close this with one of my favorite quotes from the novel. It is: “There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.” To me, more than anything, this quote is the ethos that rests at the heart of the American dream or the chase for the American dream, or America more generally. All right, that just about does it for the episode.

(11:42)

I want to thank you so much for listening. If you did enjoy this episode, please remember to click that subscribe button on whatever podcast platform you're listening to this on. Also, if you're interested in checking out my upcoming book, then you could do so on the website, AristotleforNovelists.com. If you want to connect with me, there are two ways to do so either on Instagram @douglasvigliotti, it's the only social media that I have, or by visiting my website, DouglasVigliotti.com. Lastly, if you want to listen to some of my recent work, you can by checking out the podcast “Slightly Crooked: Good Stories, Told Well”. Seasons one and two feature both of my last two works, “Tom Collins: A ‘Slightly Crooke’ Novel, and a raw and unorthodox mini-memoir of sorts that is in poetry form titled “mini heartbreaks (or, little poems about life)”. The links for all of these things will be in the show notes. And as for this podcast, always remember that if you want more information, you can always visit BooksforMen.org.