The Great Gatsby

“The greatest American novel of the 20^th century.” This is what my flowered shirt white bearded teddy bear of a philosophy professor said about “The Great Gatsby”. I don’t remember how or why it was relevant to our class. We were reading stories and writings belonging to existentialism. The essays of Camus, the underground man of Dostoevsky, the theorizations of Nietzche, have since all faded from my brain. Yet somehow I’ve always remembered that I should go read the Great Gatsby.

That was 5 years ago. Since then there have been multiple failed attempts at reading that book. I borrowed copies from the library only to get as far as Chapter 2… and each time having to start over, because I would forget what I had read already. I finally bought a copy from the bookstore, hoping that seeing it lying around everyday would somehow induce me to pick it up… Of course we all know that tactic usually has the opposite effect. And so I gave up, and actually left the copy at my parents’ house in Taipei.

One sunny day this Spring, after a bike ride downtown to the farmers’ market, I stopped by the used bookstore to cool off and rest. And there was Gatsby on sale. Actually there was a whole pile on sale. It seemed to be a sign. And so I picked up another copy and packed it in my suitcase for Italy.

During the course of my train ride to Milano and plane ride flying out of Europe, miraculously I finished it. I finished the last chapter as I was sitting on a flight that had just taken off, and the flight attendant was making this annoying 5 minute long announcement in both English and French. I felt I needed some quiet to fully appreciate melancholy last scenes of the book. But I couldn’t put it down. So between wanting to tell the flight attendant to shut up, and being swept by a wave of emotion, I read the last paragraphs:

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter- tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther… And one fine morning—

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

And I don’t know whether to feel sorry for Gatsby who clung on so hard to his elusive dream he died, friendless, or Nick who saw through the emptiness of it all or for every one of us who beat on in our little boats against the current.