The trees are long gone, replaced by vulgar mansions and the wasteland of ash heaps next to which poor George and Myrtle Wilson live, “contiguous to absolutely nothing”. What is left is what was always there – the imagination. But even this Fitzgerald undercuts: pandering, after all, is ministering to mere gratification. The idea that America panders to our fantasies is the precise opposite of the American dream. We are forever chasing the green light, a chimera, a false promise of self-empowerment in which we are desperate to believe. And yet although it is a lie, we can’t survive without it, for we always need something commensurate to our capacity for wonder, even if it compels us into a contemplation we neither understand nor desire.
And so we falter forward, lost in the aftermath of wonder that follows The Great Gatsby.
- What makes The Great Gatsby great? Guardian.co.uk, May 3, 2013.
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