3. The Great Gatsby: Old Money, Murder, and the American Dream

This episode is brought to you by the Folio Society, and we are delighted, aren't we, Tabby,

to welcome them as the new presenting partner of the Book Club, which could not be more fitting.

Absolutely, and Dominic, you actually gifted me a Folio Society book for Christmas, and it's

absolutely beautiful. Every detail feels considered, it's a work of art, and on the third of March,

they are launching the Great Gatsby as part of their Spring Collection, and I actually have that

beautiful edition here with me now. Look at that, beautiful illustrations.

Fitzgerald lets the gold gleam and then quietly shows you the cost, which is why it's worth

returning to the novel, spending a bit more time in those bright rooms and staying after the orchestra

stops. It feels like the novel itself, the sparkle on the surface, the silence beneath.

The Folio Society is a small, independent publisher, owned by their employees and based in South

London. Folio's design captures the shine of Gatsby's world, lingering just long enough for the

holiness to surface. You can order the Great Gatsby and explore the other books that we keep coming

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I turned again to my new acquaintance. This is an unusual party for me. I haven't even seen

the host. I live over there and this man Gatsby sent over his chauffeur with an invitation.

For a moment, he looked at me as if he failed to understand. I'm Gatsby. What? Oh, I beg your pardon.

I thought you knew all sport. I'm afraid I'm not a very good host.

He smiled understandably much more than understandably. It was one of those rare smiles with a

quality of eternal reassurance in it that you may come across four or five times in life.

It faced or seemed to face the whole eternal world for an instant and then concentrated on

you with an irresistible prejudice in your favour. It understood you just so far as you wanted to

be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself and assured you that it

had precisely the impression of you that at your best you hoped to convey. Precisely at that

point, it vanished and I was looking at an elegant young roughneck, a year or two over 30,

whose elaborate formality of speech just misbeings absurd.

Sometime before he introduced himself, I'd got a strong impression that he was picking his words

with care. So hello Dominic, the man whose own smile launched a thousand podcasts,

that was a crucial scene in the Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald published in 1925

and it is perhaps the most celebrated of all American novels. It's a very short book

which I think people are always slightly taken aback by, it's less than 50,000 words,

and yet it's seen as perhaps the classic example of the great American novel and it's emblematic

of the jazz age, flappers, speakeasies, highball cocktails, rebellion against the status quo,

and so because of that it's generally taken to be a very frivolous and light-hearted book,

but actually it's got a core of real tragedy to it.

Yeah, absolutely, so it ends with the deaths of some of the key characters and it ends with

the total disillusionment of the narrator, and actually the Great Gatsby in many ways is a book

about the tragedy of characters who are destroyed by their own dreams. So it's a book about wealth

and pleasure of course, as you say, the kind of the fast cars and the high living and the parties

and stuff, but also the human costs of that. It's a book about the American dream, the idea

of reinventing yourself and being reborn, but also the fear of that dream being punctured,

and the fear that we all have actually of being found out, the sort of fate that awaits us all,

Tabby, and terrifying prospect. And something that actually I think people don't bring out very

often about the Great Gatsby, I think it's a book about nostalgia and about the past and about

the dessert. It definitely is. To turn about the clock and to clutch onto something that's

vanishing out of sight, and that's something that this character Gatsby, who I have to say,

I felt like I even in a few words, I think I really captured a really massive charm of a man,

but the fraudulent old sport. Yeah, the fraudulent, the essential fulseness of the man,

I feel like later in the episode we'll be meeting Tom Buchanan, so maybe his cruel power,

you reckon I can do that as well. British violence, yeah. So before we get into, we'll be

discussing the book. We'll be discussing the context of the 1920s and F. Scott Fitz showed

himself. But first of all, Tabby, your first impression to the book. I'm guessing you've seen

the film as well, the Baz Lerman film. I have. So like a lot of people, I studied it for my GCSEs,

and the movie came out actually in the run up to the exam itself and then I watched it afterwards.

And I loved it. You know, I loved the surface value of it, flappers, fast cars, all of that,

and but it didn't, it didn't make a massive impression on my mind, it didn't really stay with me,

it didn't sink that deep. And then I watched the film and I was kind of outraged by its adaptation,

but actually the film had done just what I had done with the book and because it's all about the

surface, it's very blunt, it's all about like jazz music. And at one point, for instance,

Nick, the narrator says, oh, we all drunk too much, which is always implied in the book,

but never stated. And then rereading it, I mean, we'll discuss what we made of it this time, but

it definitely didn't make a massive impression. I enjoyed it, but it didn't go much further than that.

Yeah, so for me, when I first read it, I remember being struck by how much stranger it was than

I was expecting. So I thought it would be a book about cocktails and parties and hedonism and

whatnot. And of course, those things are in it, but it was much more haunting and kind of a bleak,

I guess, than I was expecting. Yeah, everything's beneath the surface, isn't it? It's all the things

that aren't said, which is why I actually think it doesn't lend itself to movie adaptations. It's

really one of those books that's almost impossible to do justice to. I totally agree. And we're not

going to spend ages on the film, but the Bass Lerman film, the Leonardo DiCaprio film, the one thing

that strikes me is it's so glitzy, yeah, so sensual, so over the top, but actually it doesn't capture

the subtleties and the nuances of the book in particular, the writing. Well, we'll see how our

impressions change by the end of this episode. But let's start with some of the context.

Bass Lerman actually has a wonderful montage of this at the beginning of the film, because it's

jazz age America. Yeah, exactly. So that's the period from the end of the first war in 1918 to

the Wall Street crash in 1929, massive economic growth in America, it's the rise of the city and

mass consumerism. In the popular imagination, this is the roaring 20s. 100% like one of the most iconic

epochs ever. Yeah, exactly sort of art deco fashion and all of that. However, you know, there's

definitely a dark side to it, because it's the decade of the second Coocus clan. You see a hint

of that in the racism of one of the characters, Tom Buchanan, which we'll come onto. It's the decade

of prohibition, which has been enforced since January 1920. But the paradox is on the one hand,

you have prohibitions that the outlaw ring of alcohol, but at the same time, you've got bootlegging,

which is smuggling of illicit alcohol. You've got illicit bars called speakeases. Yeah.

It's seen at the time as an age of excess to the point of destruction. So the New York Times

in 1922 had an article on the new phenomenon of the cocktail party. And it's said, you know,

the end of cocktail party is basically somebody always gets shot or stabbed. This sort of sense of

danger, you know, of hedonism and danger going hand in hand. It's really very exciting. It's like

going to go hang out, get together. That's exactly how all of our parties end. But the jazz age

label, obviously jazz, the emblematic music of the era. And that's popularised by one writer

above all, F. Scott Fitzgerald. He writes a short story collection called Tales of the Jazz Age,

published in 1922. And actually, Tabby, that takes this very neatly too Fitzgerald himself,

doesn't it? Yeah. And I think Fitzgerald is definitely one of those writers who it's really,

really important to understand in order to kind of see the inspirations behind his book,

because he's everywhere in the Great Gatsby. And he really did live the jazz age. He was in

the very middle of it all, but had a fairly mixed relationship with it. So this is Francis

Scott Fitzgerald born to a middle class Catholic family in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1896.

St. Paul. Yeah. Didn't you spend some time there? So unbelievably. I lived in St. Paul, Minnesota

for a year. What were you doing there? I was doing the research, my PhD. Right. It's very cold.

Like I was there over the winter. Yeah. It's, it's very, so you weren't being a kind of

on-forn terribler at the very heart of it. Do you know what this is?

Rabilation scene of Drinking and stabbing and gambling. I can't describe how different my life was

from that. So basically, I remember really vividly, there was a moment where I had spent all day

like at the archive, and then I was walking back to my window. He rocked. It's my rented basement.

And through the snowdrifts, and I genuinely thought if I fell into a snowdrift now. No one would

notice. I thought my body wouldn't be discovered for ages, but also no one would miss me. No one

knows how it exists. He's getting eaten by Alsaceans like the next summer. That's very great

gasp, though, in a way. So that gives you, yeah, a man who know, Mr. Nobody from nowhere has

disappeared. All right. In this snow. Exactly. So yeah, my life was not like for this. Yeah, not,

not one bit. He was actually, this is a really fun detail. He was actually named after a guy

called Francis Scott Key, a cousin and he wrote the Star Spangled Banner. Yeah, which had not yet

been adopted as the American national anthem. Yeah, which I didn't know. 30s, I think. I didn't

realise it was so recent. But Fitzgerald, he has a kind of his middle class, so he's not, you know,

a super establishment or elite, but he still goes to private schools, doesn't he? He has quite a

charm to life for sure. He goes to private school, you know, he's clearly a gifted writer even from

that stage. And then he goes to Princeton, where he's made to feel like a bit of an outsider,

because he's a Catholic. And again, there's echoes of that in the Great Gatsby's narrator.

And now we come to what is definitely one of the key moments of his story. So during a Christmas

holiday, he met and fell in love with a 16-year-old girl called Geneva King. And their doom

romance is just a massive inspiration for the Great Gatsby. People often think that it was his wife,

Zelda, who will come to in due course, who's kind of the main inspiration for the book. But it's not,

it's this romance that he has with this Geneva King. And she's a very rich debutant. She's

one of what was called the Four Debs, or something like that. And over the four most sought after

wealthiest, most attractive debutants of that season. So she's very rich from posh lake forest

Chicago, you know, it's all about tennis, golf, finishing schools. And her father though, when

Fitzgerald was courting her, allegedly said, poor boys shouldn't think of marrying rich girls.

Oh my gosh. And that's very, very harsh. Yeah, very. And he's absolutely gutted by this. I mean,

he's almost suicidal. And so he enlists in the US army to fight in the first world,

we're hoping that he'll get killed. But he never actually goes to France and ends up spending

the war in a series of army barracks. Is that where he meets Zelda? So this is where he meets

the iconic Zelda Fitzgerald. So he's it's 1918. He's at Camp Sheridan, Alabama. And he meets another

rich, fashionable, slightly nuts, debutant. And then she's a southern bell with very intense

feelings about the Confederacy and the old South. Okay, that's a bad sign. Very, very, don't you

sign from the start? And she's called Zelda Sair. And he's clearly in love with Geneva. In fact,

I think he's probably in love with her the rest of his life. You know, he's still writing to her.

He's begging her to get back with him. But then she writes to tell him that she's married a rich

Chicago businessman. And three days later, so obviously massively on the rebound, he tells Zelda

that he loves her and they become a couple. But she won't agree to marry him either until Fitzgerald

makes something of himself, till he makes a bit of money. So he tries advertising in New York

after the war. He and Zelda have this very turbulent on off sort of relationship going on.

He considers suicide again. And this will also kind of continue for the rest of his life.

And then he decides to have one more go at becoming a novelist. And he finally finds success

with a very famous book. And this is called This Side of Paradise. And it's a huge hit.

And it comes out in 1920. And it's very much based on his time at Princeton. So it's like

love affairs parties. Yeah. You know, right from that stage, he's drawing on his own life.

So finally, he and Zelda get married and they become the fashionable literary couple of the early

1920s. They're constantly in the papers for partying. Zelda is the definitive flapper. She even

writes along essay and defense of flappers. And then in 1921, she gives birth to their daughter,

Francis Scottie Fitzgerald. This poor child has a very turbulent life. And there's a really

interesting story about how when she emerges from anesthesia, she says, isn't she smart? She has

the hiccups. I hope it's beautiful and a fool, a beautiful little fool. Oh, that's a line from

the Great Gatsby. That's a line directly, yeah, taken from the Great Gatsby. Right. So let's move

forward to the summer of 1923. Fitzgerald is 26. So he's or, you know, he's quite a handsome guy

in a kind of slightly fey way. But he's in the photos of him. He's quite attractive. But he's already

beginning to sink into dissipation, isn't he? Even at that stage. Zelda, clever, witty and whatnot. But she's

she's she's quite hard work. I think it's yeah, say I mean, obviously it's big spoiler. She's

going to end up in a lot of kind of institutions, mental institutions and so on. Can I have a fun

fun detail about Zelda? I'd like a fun detail. I love a fun detail. You live for it. I named my

dog after Zelda Fitzgerald. Oh my God. Yeah. A blonde, deeply neurotic spaniel. So yeah, it's

apt. Very apt. Yeah. There you go. And they're both massive drinkers, aren't they? I mean,

this is the this is the core of their their issue is that they're basically functional alcohol

I mean, functioning alcoholics. Zelda was so notorious that when they were living in New York,

the police detained her near Queensborough Bridge, I think, because they thought that she was this

person called the Bob Ted Bandit, who was an infamous spree robber, because she was so famous

and notorious that they were like, oh, it must be Zelda Fitzgerald. Wow. And it wasn't

her. And it wasn't her, but she was very shaken by the whole thing. And that's why they ended up

moving to Paris. Well, but before they go to France, they're living on Long Island, which is where

the Great Gatsby is since they're living in a place called Great Neck. And Great Neck basically

is this hangout. It's a former fishing village. It's now become a massive celeb hangout in the

early 1920s. So movie stars and whatnot. People call it the Hollywood of the East. And Great Neck

in the book is a place called West Egg. Across the Bay is a sort of slightly more at marketplace

called Sands Point, which is in the book East Egg. It's kind of more old money and less flashy.

And when he's there Fitzgerald is clearly, you know, he's fascinated by these issues of class

and status and exactly where you sit in the hierarchy. And as we'll see, you know, there's a big

party lifestyle and he throws himself into it and he's always, you know, first to the drinks

cabinet. But at the same time, he's kind of repelled by it. And I think there's a self-loathing

about all the party scene that comes through. The Zelda doesn't have, I don't think. I think

she very much, you know, leads him astray in that regard. But to go back to the Great Gatsby,

because this is when he starts thinking about the Great Gatsby, the big inspiration for this really

is that doomed romance with his first love, isn't it? Yeah, definitely it is. He writes to a friend

at one point, actually, which is so telling. The whole idea of Gatsby is the unfairness of a poor

young man not being able to marry a girl with money. This theme comes up again and again because I

lived it. And actually, interestingly, during their relationship, Geneva wrote a very Gatsby-like story

and sent it to Fitzgerald in which a female character is trapped in a loveless marriage with

a wealthy man who cheats on her. But all the while she's pining for this young love of hers.

So she's pining for him too? Yeah, I think she's pining for him, but I think he kind of

represents an escape that is not really a reality. And they actually ended up reuniting in later life

when she left her husband. And it's a disaster because Fitzgerald's so nervous that he gets really,

really drunk and messes all the whole thing up. Yeah, it's really interesting. God, such a shame.

Such a shame. So, but he's still married to Zelda at this time, which shows you how to

mulch your stare relationship was. Anyway, so he ends up writing a first draft of the Great Gatsby,

but he isn't happy with it. And then in spring 1924, he and Zelda move to the South of France,

and he tries again, and their marriage is in total crisis at this point. Zelda's had an affair

with a French aviator, or allegedly, the guy himself totally denied it, said she'd made the whole

thing up. And then as a result of this, she ends up overdosing on sleeping pills. And this,

again, will recur throughout their life. Yeah. And so in that, I think that's a

inspiration on the Great Gatsby. It's like the idea of shattered romantic illusions and

ideal of love that can't ever live up to one's hopes for it, I suppose. And he's still working on

the book, isn't he? Because he originally had been thinking about setting it in the 19th century.

Yeah. And now he's, and he was going to call it among the ash heaps and millionaires, which is

I think a terrible title, but not as bad as some of the titles he later, with which he later flirts.

I don't think it's a bad title. I think it's been, it sums up the book quite well.

It does, I guess. So the other thing is when he's in France, he's got, he becomes interested in

this idea of it, basing it on a great ton of Roman classic, which is Patronius's satiricon,

which is from the late first century AD. And there's a whole section of satiricon, which is about

a guy called Tremauchio. Yeah. Tremauchio is a former slave who has basically got his freedom and

his nouveau reach is a kind of parvenue. He's very vulgar. He has this huge dinner party to show

off his fortune to other kind of top Romans. Top Romans. Top Romans. And he's telling, I'm sure

there must be some more specific expression for this, but I'm just going to call them top Romans.

Nice. So he's telling loads of tall stories about himself, Tremauchio, and showing off. And he

actually adens with him talking about his own death and staging a mock funeral for himself.

And Fitzgerald found all this really interesting and suggestive. And he wanted to call the book

Tremauchio in West A. This is mad. Which I think is a bad title. And when he sent him to his

publishers, he made a huge fuss saying, I want to call the great Gatsby Tremauchio in West A.

And they basically said no. And then his other suggested titles. Did you see this?

Yeah. So he wanted to say he said I could call it gold-hatted Gatsby, which I think, I think

Hatted doesn't belong in a title. It sounds like a Bond movie title. Oh, well, this really is a

Bond movie title, or at least the song from a Bond film or something. The high-bouncing lover.

Yeah, that's like a PG Woodhouse pastiche or something.

Oh, I guess it is. Totally mad. Yeah, anyway. So he finished his book in 1924, in October 1924.

His editor is a guy called Maxwell Perkins. Really, really famous editor. He was Tom Wolf's

editor as well, wasn't he? Oh, was he? Yeah. That's a very famous relationship.

So Maxwell Perkins is one of those editors who's very into American editors,

always more interventionist than British ones. So his very interventionist gets to do loads of

rewrites and actually deserves a fair bit of credit for the finished book. Yeah, he definitely does.

I mean Fitzgerald always kicks back against the title, which is a really good one, the great Gatsby,

but he never, he never makes his peace with it. But another really interesting, massive

inspiration was the cover of the book. And it must be one of the most famous book covers ever.

And it's called Celestial Eyes. And it's kind of this art deco image of these two massive eyes

floating in a deep, deep blue sky. And it's like the blue landscape. Yeah, blue landscape,

the eyes of a flapper. And then you have this quite sensual mouth underneath. And it was by a very

unknown Catalan artist called Francis Cougar. And Fitzgerald's big mates Ernest Hemingway said that

it looked like the book jacket for a book of bad science fiction. And there's so many interesting

tidbits about Hemingway and Fitzgerald's relationship. But yeah, nevertheless Fitzgerald absolutely

loved it. And he actually revised the great Gatsby to match the cover. Yeah, that is so rare.

It's so rare. And that plays up. No, never. It must be plays up the themes of kind of eyes and

blindness. And like there's this omniscient watcher or whatever it is. But we'll come back to that.

We'll come back to that. Just on the Hemingway thing to be, I think we'll be really remiss of you,

not to tell you anecdotes, you're ready to share it with me. Is there not some issue with

Hemingway and Fitzgerald having to go into the gents to inspect each others? Yeah, there is. So

basically Hemingway and Zelda Fitzgerald absolutely loathed each other. Right. He thought she was nuts.

Yeah. And she thought she used to say that his overt masculinity hid his secret homosexuality

and she used to mock him about it all the time. And so he started saying that she was trying to

destroy F. Scott Fitzgerald. And the way that she was going about this was by going to parties

and telling everyone that he had a very small penis. Oh my gosh. So Hemingway said, no, no,

this is absolutely not right. I'm going to be a top friend. And I'm going to prove everyone

that this is not the case. So he took F. Scott Fitzgerald into a public glue,

examined it and came out and confirmed to everyone that he had an average sized penis after all.

God, I think you enjoy telling me so much. So I don't know so much. But I don't know if that makes

it worse. You hope to like stage a robust defense. And you have to tell everyone that you're

a friend. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. You were like, Fitzgerald standing there next to my face falling.

That's the best part of this whole episode. I've been building up to that days.

Anyway, back to the great cats. That's a great guest, B. Actually, we should just say what happened

to Fitzgerald and Zelda because, you know, we can talk about the book for the rest of the thing.

But it is sad, isn't it? Because Zelda, basically, she was in and out of mental hospitals

for the rest of her life. She had electro shock therapy. And actually, she died of a fire

in a mental institution. Yeah. They think now that she probably had bipolar, by the time they

said that she has schizophrenia. And Fitzgerald, he basically just drank himself to death.

He sank into complete alcoholism. And he died of failure in Hollywood in 1940. And at that point,

basically, people said he's just a footnote in history. No one will care about him.

Because his books had stopped selling. Do you see this fact about his royalties?

Yeah, it's absolutely tragic that in the last 12 months of his life, his royalties came to

exactly $13.13. So my royalties, Tubby. Oh, God. I know. Let's hope that you're half a million

word, historical tomes. Yeah. Remain the best sellers that they are.

Also, they have a better funeral than Fitzgerald. His funeral, he had an Episcopalian funeral,

only 20 people went. And the minister said afterwards, the only reason I agreed to give

the service was to get his body in the ground. He was a no good drunken bum. And the world was

well rid of him. Yeah. And there's a terrifying tragic symmetry there with

with the great Gatsby, actually. And the thing is, he was always criticized for trying to be too

commercial with his writing, for writing to make money. But he said that with the great Gatsby,

it was going to be a work of art. It was going to have nothing to do with money. And then it was

it was quite negatively received. Yeah. Yeah. Which broke his heart.

As we'll get on to you. All right. So let's talk a little bit about a book.

Yeah. I guess the first thing about it that strikes you is the sensuality of it. Do you think

it's overwhelmingly so? Yeah. Yeah. So it's kind of full of music and colour and kind of,

you know, I don't know, shimmering dresses and stuff and people, you know, parties with cocktail.

I mean, that's the, that's the, that's the stereotype of it. But when you first read it,

it's hard to kind of miss all that. But also he has these minute details. He's an incredible

builder of kind of tension. And you know, there's a very fraught scene where he sort of describes

a sweating bottle of whiskey. And it just, it creates a very sort of tense atmosphere. Yeah.

It's masterful, actually, I think. And yeah, you're right. But there is this kind of general impression

of kind of beautiful women shimmering dresses. People kind of wondering through shady gardens,

bottomless cocktails. It's quite impressionistic. Like, I always think there's Renoir's painting,

the luncheon of the boating party. And it's kind of lots of figures in and around each other,

kind of lounging. And their faces are never articulated. You never see specific details,

but it's kind of a mass of bodies and colour. And that's very, the great gap to be.

Yeah. So I think that, that style reminds me a little bit of somebody like Joseph Conrad,

who actually was one of Fitzgerald's favourite writers. Like, it's always a little bit elusive,

and it was a bit at the edge of your vision. Nothing is ever quite and focused and clear.

And actually, Nostromo Conrad's brilliant book was one of Fitzgerald's, I think was Fitzgerald's

fate. He said it was his favourite book of the last 50 years. And what he got from Conrad was this

idea of a narrator, so Marlow in Heart of Darkness. It's a very famous narrator. A narrator

who's sort of telling, he's telling you the story. And he's also telling you what he thinks the story

means, but at the same time, he's not necessarily reliable. So, so you always have to be a little bit,

you know, skeptical of what an narrator is telling you, which I guess brings us to the central,

you know, the person who's telling us the great Gatsby, which is this guy, Nick, Nick Carroway.

And it's so interesting, because in the initial drafts of the great Gatsby, he wrote it

as having an onnissian narrator. It wasn't from Nick's perspective, and that totally transforms

the whole story. Because Nick is actually, he's almost a version of Fitzgerald. You know,

they're both from kind of middle class, midwestern families, both Ivy League, but they're both

kind of somewhat outsiders to the worlds that they are a part of, the worlds that they're describing.

And Nick says of himself, I'm one of the few honest people that I've ever known. But then

everything that happens in the book kind of leads us to question that. Right, because he doesn't

necessarily behave in an honest way. No. He's a participant in a lot of the deceptions

that happen. They're looking at a love triangle, the sessions. And actually, it's an interesting

thing, because the class is such a big thing in this whole book. Nick boasts about his family at the

beginning. He says, oh, we've been prominent in the midwest for three generations. But then he

goes on to say that they are kind of a bit of a fraud in themselves. So the Carroways, he says,

we have a tradition that we're descended from the Duke's abruptly. But then he says, well, actually,

I've had the founder of our family came to America in the 1850s. He sent a substitute in his

place to the American Civil War. He basically started a hardware business. In other words, quite a

fraudulent and banal beginning. And actually, at one point when Nick, he moved to work in finance,

doesn't he, in the East Coast? And he says how he's bought all these books, these books, some banking,

red and gold, like new money from the mint. And actually, that is what Gatsby is going to do later on,

is have all these sort of flashy books to show off learning that he doesn't really have. He's like a

later restoration of what Gatsby is trying to be. Exactly. I think Nick and Gatsby, I mean, Nick is

fascinated by Gatsby, but they're kind of versions of each other. Yeah, I don't know.

I don't know. So Nick, in the book, he moves to Long Island from the Midwest as Fitzgerald did.

And that brings him into contact with these two people, Daisy and Tom. So Daisy is his cousin,

second cousin once removed, and he knew Tom in college. And he's very impressed by them because

they are like a secret society to him. Might as well be actually the secret history, which we're

going to be doing on the show. There are echoes of the great Gatsby throughout the secret history,

which we both kind of need to be reading recently. Yeah, it's so true. Because also, I mean,

Tom and Daisy are properly like they're it. They are old money. They're everything that people

like Gatsby aspire to be. So and Tom is kind of like, he's a bit of a classic ruggalard, I guess.

He plays polo. He plays polo. Yeah, he's stupid, brash, very violent. He's played by Joel Edgerton

in the film very well actually. He's from a very rich Chicago family, went to Yale, played football,

he has shining arrogant eyes, enormous power in his cruel body. And there's an ongoing joke

in the book that everyone the Gatsby refers to him as as the polo player. And he doesn't like that at

all. So just straight straight out of your university friends. Yeah, thank you. I'm sorry, there's no

data in my mind. Yeah, you love polo. You know loads of people like him. Come on. I shouldn't have

invited you. You shouldn't have opened up Pandora's Box. But he's married to Daisy. And then Daisy,

yeah, now Daisy, do you see yourself and Daisy? I don't know, I just think of myself as more of a

Jordan Baker swing. Yeah, I've said, do you see yourself and Daisy? Then looked at the notes and

saw the words brittle, comma, insubstantial, both sarcophisticated years. God, that's uncanny,

actually. It's like looking in the mirror, terrifying. And Daisy has a voice full of money. No one would

say that. Have you? No one would ever say that with me. Yeah. But they're terrible people,

aren't they? But there's something utterly, utterly alluring about Daisy. Like there's an

immaterial, immateriality to her because it's always about her voice. We never really hear what

Nick looks like. But equally, we never really know what Daisy looks like. And yet everyone has

such a strong sense if I have been this kind of waif with big eyes. She's described as, she's very

slender kind of immaterial, but she's also unhappy in her marriage to Tom because Tom is having

an affair. And there's this scene at the very beginning when Nick first meets them all at this

very elegant lunch party and her friend Jordan Baker whispers kind of waspishly in Nick's ear that

all about this affair and that the mistresses was calling. And actually, John Baker is based on

a real person too. Right. So she's the great, what's she goalph? Is it golf? Yeah, Edith Cummings.

And she was Geneva King's best friend in real life. So she's the character of every

relationship with Nick. Yeah. And she cheats. No one is what they appear to be. No. And actually,

a couple of quick things about Tom and Daisy. Tom is a racist. So Tom is reading these pseudo-scientific

racist books. He's wittering on constantly about the white race is going to be submerged.

Now, she Daisy agrees with him on this and she says at one point, we've got to beat them down.

Yeah. She's sort of jokingly, she's very carelessly flings it away. And that's this wonderful,

wonderful quote about them is one of my favorite lines in the whole book. And it's, they were

careless people, Tom and Daisy. They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into

their money with their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together and let other

people clean up the mess they had made. And that is sums them up perfectly. It does, yeah,

the careless people. And to be frank, I mean, there are lots of people like that. I mean,

that I can think of people I know who are like Tom and Daisy. Yeah, I'm sure. I think we all do.

And then there's Gatsby himself. So let's talk a little bit about Gatsby before we get into the

break. Gatsby in the first couple of chapters of the book, he's alluded to, he's a neighbour of

theirs in Long Island, but he's a mystery. He doesn't really exist as a physical being. He's just

a sort of compilation of rumours and anecdotes. A lot of which are kind of mad and wrong, right?

Yeah, like at the parties that Nick attends before he meets Gatsby, there are all sorts of things

like people say he's the cousin of the Kaiser. Somebody thought he killed a man once. He was a

German spy during the war. No, it can't be that because he was in the American army during the war.

No one knows anything about him and no one knows where or how he got his money from. But there is

gossip that he's a boot like her. And yeah, and people people think that he may have been the

nephew of Von Hindenburg or whatever it is. Yeah, yeah. And that sort of mystery reflects what Fitzgerald

himself said about Gatsby. So Fitzgerald later said to a friend, the friend had complained about

Gatsby and said, I can't work out who he is. And Fitzgerald said, you're right about Gatsby being

blurred and patchy. I never at any one time saw him clear myself. He started as one man I knew

and then changed into myself. And the man he knew, you know who this bloke is, you've done some

taking on this. I thought this was so interesting. So Fitzgerald's neighbor while living on Long Island

was a guy called Max Gerlach. And he'd been a major in the American Expeditionary Forces during World

War I. But then he later became a gentleman bootlegger who operated speakeasies for the Jewish

mob boss in New York, Arnold Rothstein, and we'll come to him more later. He lived like a millionaire.

He kind of flaunted his wealth by having the massive parties. He famously never wore the same shirt

twice, which is a detail about Gatsby. And apparently he referred to everyone as old sport,

which is like, so he's very Gatsby. Very, very, very Gatsby. And he used to spread very

outlandish myths about himself. Like he once said, I'm a descendent of the Kaiser. So I mean,

that has Gatsby written all over it. Yeah. So interesting. And then we first see Gatsby physically

in this very, very famous scene at the end of the first chapter when he's, I mean, maybe

Tabby, you want to read a little bit of it. He's gone outside and he's Nick sees him. He's standing

looking at the stars and looking up at the heavens. And in this very, very memorable and strange

kind of posture, right? Yeah, very odd. So it's written, a figure had emerged from the shadow of

my neighbor's mansion and was standing with his hands in his pockets regarding the silver pepper

of the stars, something in his leisurely movements and the secure position of his feet upon the lawn

suggested that it was Mr. Gatsby himself come out to determine what share was his of our

local heavens. And then this is the amazing bit. He stretched out his arms towards the dark

water in a curious way. And far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily,

I glanced seaward and extinguished nothing except a single green light minute and far away

that might have been the end of the dock. That green light is the thing that guides him

to the whole book. And the color green recurs again and again. I think people who don't know much

about the great Gatsby, they're everyone's heard of the green light. And it's meaning, as you say,

it's hard to pinpoint, you know, it's kind of the embodiment of hopeless yearning. And it's

something that anyone who reads the book can kind of transpose their own hopes and desires onto.

It's symbolic of kind of longing, isn't it? Yeah, a green, the color of money, of envy.

But the green light as we discover is kind of also daisy Buchanan, right? And he's got this

he's got this kind of yearning for daisy Buchanan. Anyway, they first meet in person Nick and Gatsby

at that party. That's the passage that I think we read or performed so magnificently at the

beginning to be. And he's never really physically described. He's just like almost like a

version of Nick as me. So he's, you know, he's a year or two over 30, he's elegant, but he sort of

feels insubstantial. And actually, weirdly, when Nick talks to him, Nick says, often Gatsby had

nothing to say that there was nothing there. He's like an outline of a man, isn't he? Yeah.

And he kind of tries to fill it in for other people, rather than letting people make their own

judgment of him. And he tells all these wild, fantastical stories. So he says, I'm the son of,

he's trying to tell Nick about himself. He says, I'm the son of some wealthy people in the

middle west all dead now. I was brought up in America, but educated at Oxford because all my ancestors

have been educated there for many years. After that, I lived like a young rager in all the

capitals of Europe, Paris, Venice, Rome collecting jewels, chiefly rubies, hunting big game, painting

a little things for myself only and trying to forget something very sad that happened to me long

ago. That's the one honest thing that he said because that one tragic thing was his, his love for

Daisy. Yeah. So the love for Daisy, Nick's girlfriend, Jordan Baker tells him the whole story,

doesn't she? She basically says, you know, Gatsby was an officer. It's, this is very Fitzgerald and

Zelda. Gatsby was a young officer and Daisy was a kind of posh girl, rich girl from Louisville,

Kentucky. He fell in love with her. He courted her. He was posted overseas, but her family wouldn't

let her go and see him off. You know, he was too poor. She pined, she got over it, she married

this guy, Tom Buchanan. And so the question is, what's Gatsby been doing in the interim?

Why has he taken the house across the bay? How has he got all his money? Yeah. And what is his

plan? What is this? And what is this kind of yearning for this green light all about? Well,

the answers to these intriguing questions are coming for Nick and also for our listeners in just a

moment. But first, in true 1920s style, we'll take a break to hear from Dr. T. J. Ehlberg and some

of our other beloved advertisers. All right. See how to the break.

Welcome back, Dominic. You promised us answers to all these burning questions about Gatsby's

money and his plans. And obviously people who've read the book will know what's coming,

both for everyone else. And I'll just tell all. Tom Buchanan at one point, who's actually Gatsby's

love rival, describes him as Mr. Nobody from nowhere. And it's a phrase that says a lot about

Tom's snobbery and his arrogance, but he's actually right. Gatsby is Mr. Nobody from nowhere.

He's originally James Gats from North Dakota. We discovered this about two thirds of the way through

the book. And coming from North Dakota, you could not find a place in the United States that's

more provincial, more far from the Neutropolis and the bright lights, a more banal kind of background.

But also North Dakota, interestingly, it was a key kind of pipeline for illicit alcohol during

prohibition from Canada. So right away, the fact that he comes from North Dakota is a little

signifier that he's involved in bootlegging and smuggling, just as actually Tom had predicted. So

Tom is horrible and just a terrible person, but he's also right about Gatsby. Gatsby's parents,

we discover were Lutheran farmers. He went to college in Minnesota, like, you know, F's got

F's show, of course, of course, but he dropped out. And one day, he was walking along Lake Superior

along the sort of the coat, the lake shore. And he saw a yacht in trouble. And this yacht

belonged to a copper tycoon called Dan Cody. Now, Dan Cody's name, you know, Dan Cody's obviously

an invented character, but his name Cody. And the fact that he has made his money on the frontier

from copper in the west, recalls Buffalo Bill because Buffalo Bill's name was Cody. So the very

name of Dan Cody tells you that he's out there on the frontier in the west and he's made his

fortune. And a bit Georgie. Yeah. Cody adopts him because he saved the yacht almost as a pet and

a protiche. Sorry, all these kind of theories that they're sort of lovers or whatever, but I think

that's very much projection. Yeah. So Gats goes aboard. And over time, he renamed himself

a more, what seems like a more prestigious name, Jay Gatsby. Although that name too, I think,

the name Jay to an American reader in the 1920s, the most famous Jay in American history was a guy

called Jay Gould, who had been a corrupt railroad magnate and financier and Robert Barron in the 1870s

and 1880s. And he had become a byword Jay Gould for fast wealth concealing immense corruption and

crookedness. So again, the name Jay Gatsby kind of is a clue to American readers in the 20s,

right? Yeah, because also the thing is we never do find out exactly how he does make his money.

And you know, they're all sorts of he thinks he's going to be inheriting Cody's millions after

he dies, but it all ends up going to his mistress Ella. So instead Gatsby, the implication is

goes into crime of some kind, bootlegging, maybe fixing, maybe something to do with the mafia,

because they're all these kind of dark illusions to it throughout the book, because he constantly has

butlers coming up to him, saying, oh, Chicago's calling. And he says, no, not now, not now. Great

American accent, by the way. Thank you very much. Yeah. Well, I mean, you heard a sampler of it in

the opening reading. The interesting thing about him is not really that he's a crook though to me.

Yeah, he's not crooked at his soul and he's definitely not crooked to Nick. No, no, he's not,

I get, although, although he does tonnick some tall stories, doesn't he? And he does try to recruit

Nick into his sort of funny dodgy schemes. But the interesting thing about him, the thing that

everyone takes away from the book is that Gatsby is a dreamer who's committed to this project of

reinvent, of remaking himself. Yeah, absolutely. You know, shedding his skin and taking on a new

identity that becomes a very kind of familiar archetype in American fiction. So I think, for

example, the most, one of the most famous ones is Ripley in the talent of Mr Ripley. So many

echoes of a talent of Mr Ripley. Completely. Yeah. Or as we'll come onto, when we come to it in the

later episode, the secret history, Donna Tarts book, these characters who are playing it being

something they're not. It's a really, really common theme in American, in modern American writing,

and he has invented a character for himself crucially that he thinks will appeal to Daisy,

because just like Fitzgerald himself with his first love, Gatsby has never, ever recovered

from that initial disappointment with Daisy. And everything that he's doing is about turning

himself into the kind of rich character that he thinks will win Daisy's heart. Yeah. So I mean,

he gets the house that he gets because it's across the bay from Daisy. And it's revealed that he

throws these massive parties in the hope that Daisy will come to one of them one day, fundamentally

actually misunderstanding their, the, the castle between old money and new money, because his parties

are very new money. And when Daisy finally does go to one, she's slightly appalled by it all.

But so there's something very apparently romantic about that, you know, it's a kind of romantic

idealism to it. But the further we get into the book, we kind of see that it's not very romantic

at all, because it's kind of more of an obsession. His feelings for Daisy are, sorry, you know,

unhealthy. He's built a whole life around them. And it's all about the pursuit of a dream.

Yeah, rather than about Daisy herself, right? It's about the idealized vision of Daisy.

It's a flawed ideal. He doesn't actually see Daisy for what she is. She's just a symbol of like

wealth, sophistication, status, all the things that he wanted as a child, but have always been

beyond his reach. And in the realization of that dream, from the moment that they first reunited

and then as their kind of love affair unfolds, you increasingly get the sense that it's, you know,

all the glitters isn't gold. It's, it's not quite what he hoped it would be. And he's sort of

trying to get round that and trying to make it this perfect ideal that it could only be from a far

in the living. Yeah, really. So this takes some to the question what the book actually,

in a, but in capital letters means. If anything. Right, well, this is the interesting thing,

because when it was first released, a Gatsby had this Gatsby. I mean, the fact that I've

called him Gatsby. I know. Brilliant slip. Yeah. Very, very foreign in slip. First Gerald thought

that this book would absolutely make his name that this would be the kind of masterpiece. And

actually, most early reviewers said, it's not that great. And actually, they said it's very superficial.

The great critic and satirist, HL Menken famously said, it's a glorified anecdote, which I don't

think anybody would say now, not certainly not all these hundreds of thousands of people studying

it as teenagers in their English literature classes. Yeah, it's one of the most written about

study, but I mean, even preparing for this episode, I mean, never ending things about this book.

Exactly. And just to pick up on a couple of things that really striking about it. So first of all,

I think what most people take straight away is that it's actually just a brilliant, brilliant

window onto the, the sense of modernity of the 1920s. So the technology and the cars and all of that.

And I think, you know, what I read one reviewer from the time who said that it was a,

it described a world that most people couldn't relate to because this is actually a period of great

poverty in America, etc. But from the safe, you know, distance of today, it doesn't matter to us

that we can't understand it. It's, it's glorious, it's glorious looking into a world, you know,

at a time. And as you say, it is so modern, you know, it's very fashionable, all the clothes,

all the characters wear, but also, you know, it's electric lights, it's got telephones,

Gatsby's got speedboats, he's got a sea plane. You know, it's all about, you know,

the movie massively plays into this fast cars, gas stations, commuter trains. And Gatsby himself

is a very, very modern figure. You know, he's a bootlegger, a bond market speculator. And it's also a

book of the new mass media and consumerism, newspapers, magazines, cars, advertisements. Yeah,

all of which. So we mentioned before how Fitzgerald loved Joseph Conrad, the other writer that

sometimes Fitzgerald reminds me of a little bit, because the way he charts all the,

these very rich characters and their kind of love affairs is Henry James, another great

American writer. But if you read, I mean, there seems to be a massive chasm between Henry James

and Joseph Conrad on one side and Fitzgerald on the other, his, his books seem to belong to it,

well, they do belong to a different century, even though the time it laps is not that great.

It's, it's as though time has really speeded up, and you're studying in the world of telephones,

and, you know, cocktails and all of this kind of thing. And yet, at the same time, I think one of

the things that I find so interesting about is it's a book about, it's very present-minded,

it's set in the 20s. But all the characters are looking backwards the whole time. I mean,

even somebody as unreflective as Tom Buchanan, which holds right away that basically he's constantly

dreaming of some irrecoverable football game that he played at college.

Tosy, but also for characters like Tom and Daisy, it's kind of like the last stand of that old

world for people like them, a world in which you have, you know, servants everywhere, and people

bring you cocktails and stuff. So, and he can feel Tom the sense of incursion, the incursion of like

new money and, and modernity. Yeah, for sure. And I think one of the most iconic lines in the

whole book is, is when Nick says to Gatsby, oh, you can't really live the past or something like that.

And Gatsby says, well, of course, you can old sport. Yeah, yeah, and he's, and it's we, I'll discover,

he's wrong. And actually that, so there's a bit when Gatsby first remeats Daisy, when he meets

Daisy again, Nick has arranged for him to meet at Nick's house. I find that quite romantic.

At the beginning of that meeting, Gatsby knocks over, or almost knocks over, a defunct mantel piece

clock. And that sort of sense of like time has stopped in the clock, right? But also something is

broken, you know, there's, there's a, there's something flawed at the center of his vision,

this idea that you can turn back time and recover something that was lost because you can't.

Yeah, it's actually quite sort of tragic foreshadowing that moment. And the idea of something

being, being broken brings us to a part of the book that always stuck in my mind. I'm sure it

sticks in lots of people's minds. And this is the Valley of Ashes. And so obviously this is a book

really preoccupied with class. These, these are the working class people, the people that people

like Tom and Daisy kind of use and abuse. And they're very firmly delineinated. The three classes

you have like East Egg West egg, you money or money, and then you have the Valley of Ashes. And that's

like where the, the sort of working man lives. And it's inspired by the real life Corona dumps,

which are huge mounds of ash and rubbish four miles long. And this is where we come back to

the eyes that we talked about on the front cover, because there's this massive advertising billboard

above this huge gray desolate land, you know, and it's described as being worked by Ash Gray men

with lead and spades. And on this billboard are the gigantic eyes of Dr. T. J. Eklberg. No face,

just these terrifying, enormous yellow glasses. And it's not entirely clear what it means. I mean,

I, it could be like God watching over all the sin unfolding before his eyes or, or is it maybe

the false god of consumerism and advertising? Yeah. There's one point where George Wilson,

who is the husband of Tom Buchanan's mistress, Mertle, he pulls over to the window. And he gets her,

you know, and he says, God is, is God sees everything. And they're directly in front of Dr. Eklberg's

eyes. I found that thing when I first read it, the idea of these two weird eyes overlooking the

whole scene over this valley of ashes really, really, I mean, that to me was the image that I

remembered most from the book. I think a lot of people. Yeah, it's so strange, right? It's so weird.

And actually, this is so interesting, because this actually reflects not just the cover, but also

one of the other big inspirations for Fitzgerald, which is the poem The Wasteland by T. S. Eliot.

I know you're a massive fan of The Wasteland. I'm a huge fan of The Wasteland. That's my favorite poem.

Well, well, so Fitzgerald, like you, was a huge fan of it. And he sent a copy of the great

Gatsby to T. S. Eliot. And he dedicated it to, and I quote, the greatest of living poets

from his enthusiastic worshipper. No way. And in The Wasteland, as you remember, there's a character

Tyrese S. This is called Blind Sea. The Sea. It seems the future. And T. J. Eklberg, T. S. Eliot,

they're not so different. And at one point, Nick wonders if Eklberg, and I quote, sank down into

eternal blindness, like Tyrese S. So this clearly, you know, this, I mean, this is the value of

ashes. Is the wasteland from T. S. Eliot's great modernist poem, which is basically, for people who

don't know, it's a poem written in the Alliance in Twenties that's trying to capture the experience

of Western civilization after the First World War, kind of broken into fragments and whatnot,

and it's haunted by death and despair and all of this kind of. Yeah, definitely. But I mean, you

made a very impressive observation, didn't you? Oh, thanks. Yeah. Thanks. Just fabulous piece of

fresco the narrative. I know. I've got a reason I had to remind you. You're so thrilled to

this. I told you about this the other day, and I was so proud of myself. Yeah. So there's a bit

in the book when Nick's talking about Gatsby's parties. And he says, in the Blue Gardens, men and

girls came and went like moths among the whispers and the champagne and the stars. And that reminded

me of a line in a T. S. Eliot poem called Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, where he says in the,

what's it in the something the women come and go talking of Michael Angelo? Yeah. Right. And

in Prufrock, the Eliot poem, he's basically Eliot is saying all those parties are very

insubstantial and everybody's actually alienated and then they can chitchat, but actually their lives

are empty and hollow, you know, and that's a good time. But that's what the that's true of Gatsby's

parties as well, right? And I love the way that Fitzgerald writes the party scenes and the great Gatsby

because I think I remember reading when I reread them this time, I thought that is like what parties

are like, they're succession of slightly disconnected images, the more you drink. You can't remember

now why you're talking to this person and suddenly you're in a different place entirely and you

don't know how you got there and all of this. I think this is your unique experience of parties

to be honest with. I just have, I just have really fun parties. Yeah, really, really fun calls to

mind some of your journeys back to Chipping Norton from our team get-togethers, but it's, you know,

sitting on a 4 a.m. train wondering how you got there, but you are actually right. There's such a

hollowness at the centre of these parties and even Gatsby's massive ones and there's this enormous

sense of excitement and everything's so beautiful and it's colours and there's vast trays of

peeled or like oranges coming and going, but there's a creeping sense that either this kind of joyous

balloon is going to just deflate and you're going to feel every second of it and feel utterly hollowed

out as a result. Oh, it's going to burst. Yeah. And then again, everything's destroyed.

There's nothing at the centre and people come for the wrong reasons. People don't really know

each other. The people who are there are painted in the most kind of scathing possible terms,

aren't they? So they all have the most ludicrous names. There's a great passage. The chest

of beckers and the leeches and a man called Bunsen who are in a new Yale and Dr. Webster Sivitt who

was drowned last summer up in Maine and the hornbeams and the Willie Voltares, the cat lips and the

Benburgs and G. Earl Maldon, brother to that Maldon who afterwards strangled his wife.

And they've got ridiculous American names, I mean obviously, but also their lives are absurd

and dark and violent and yeah. And I guess you could say in this passage, so much of the book is

very sensitive and nuanced, but there are moments where Fitzgerald kind of tips into caricature.

So not just with the parties, but also, you know, you mentioned the mob and all of it.

So there's a character called Maya Woolshime and he really is a very unappealing caricature

of a corrupt Jewish gambler. Yeah, I think Fitzgerald lets himself down there.

He does. His cufflinks are human teeth. Yeah.

He fixed the World Series in 1919. He's obviously based on the character you've already mentioned

on a Rothstein who was the head of the Jewish mob in New York City. But the portrait of him

is frankly antisemitic, I would say. Yeah, I would definitely agree with that.

But the interesting thing is well about the parties is, is they are actually, you know, we described

how there's nothing really at the centre of them, they're sort of fake and there's a confusion to

them. It's actually during the course of these parties that we get the first hints that Gatsby's

life is false and that he's a fraud. And you know, if if F. Scott Fitzgerald strays into caricature

from time to time, this is done with immense skill and subtlety. So, for instance, we start

like his house. It sort of, it's described as an imitation of some hotel deville in Normandy

with a tower on one side. That was at most excellent French accent. Thank you so much. Yeah.

Actually, I make a point of really exacerbating my Englishness when I speak French.

Adel de ville in Normandy. Continue. With a tower on one side. Spanking new under a thin

bed of raw ivy and a marble swimming pool. And so, this may have been modeled on Thales,

who was Harry, that's Harry Guggenheim's mansion across the bay at Sands Point and it's kind of a

mock gothic castle. But the thing about Gatsby's houses is it's trying to be what the Buchanan's

house is. And like, for instance, it's covered in ivy to try and make it look old, but the ivy is

brand new and bright green. He doesn't understand that you can't be in that world unless you're born

into that world. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can't. It's like, people used to say of the Tory politician,

Michael Hessertine. Because that was a bridge out in the sea coming. This is an unexpected link.

He's the kind of man who buys his own furniture. No, in other words, yeah, other tourists would say

this off him, right? Yeah. So, and actually, there's a wonderful scene in the library. I love this.

So, with a man with massive allied spectacles. So, he's like Dr. Ekelberg or he's like God or whatever

he's a man who's kind of see things. Yeah. And he's looking at Gatsby's books and he's amazed at

their real. He says, I thought they'd be cardboard. He says of Gatsby's library, it's a triumph,

what thoroughness, what realism. He knew when to stop too. He didn't cut the pages. In other words,

he hasn't actually read the books. Yeah. And there's a sort of, you know, it's fake. It's a set,

holy, it's a Hollywood backdrop. And the whole thing is, is designed. And even Gatsby's clothes

are fake, aren't they? Because Tom says one piece. So hot. Do you want to, do you want to do the line,

Tubby? An Oxford man, like Heli is, he wears a pink suit. And in fairness, I mean, who wears a

pink suit? And I'm an Oxford man. So, you know, yeah. Yeah. I'm canny. And you have dodgy

dealings with the mafia. Exactly. So it all fits together. Tom's very snobbish comment there. It

brings us back to the class thing, which is just through, it's everywhere in this book. And it's

the sense that Gatsby can just never transcend this outside of status. You know, he'll never fit in,

he'll never make it. And I think that deep down, that's kind of what Daisy is for him. It's not that

he loves this woman necessarily. You know, the nuances of her personality. It's what she represents.

She, and I actually think maybe Scott Fitzgerald had that little bit with Geneva King. You know,

it's a ticket into a gilded world that is always out of reach. That feeling that is so,

well, I'd be so comments and lots of listeners, so comments to all of us. Yeah. There are so many

seen moments in the book where there's a Nick thinks of somebody outside the party looking in

through the windows. Yeah. Something and that feeling that we all have sometimes that there's

there's an exclusive party going on and we're not invited and we'll never get in and we'll never

be accepted because even if we're not wearing a pink suit. Even if we're not wearing a pink suit.

Our essential pink suitiveness will will identify us as an outsider. It's writ large all over our

faces. Yeah, exactly. And there's a very sort of almost a poignant moment at the end when

Oh, yeah. Big spoiler. Gatsby's father turns up and he shows Nick this book that his son had when

he was a boy with a kind of timetable in which he said, you know, practice electrocution poise and

how to attain it, read an improving book or magazine once a week. They're basically quite touching

that actually. Yeah. Gatsby had this sort of to-do list to try and improve himself. And what that's

doing, of course, is it's mocking all these characters in kind of late 90th century early 20th century

books. There's a character, there's kind of a writer called Horatio Alger who's specialised in this

characters who improve themselves and rose up and climbed the ladder, the American dream they made

something to themselves. And actually, one of the lessons of the great Gatsby's, you can't.

You can try to do it, but you'll be dragged back, you'll be found out, and it will end horribly.

Yeah, definitely. Which brings us to the end of the book, Tabby.

Yeah, and I love, I think this is just such a brilliant written scene because it's a boiling hot day,

so quite like the go between. So there's this relentless beating heat and it reflects the

emotional temperature, you know, all the characters. It's basically a moment of real revelation for

everybody and it's building to this massive crescendo. But ironically, what triggers this massive

denouement is that it's a lunch at the Buchanan's house that Gatsby is attending. And Daisy says to him,

oh, you're so cool, you always look so cool. Which shows that she actually does know him and I actually

think, you know, did always slightly love him. The way that she and Gatsby are looking at each other

is Tom Buchanan finally realises that there is something going on between them and he's

absolutely appalled by this. He's very shaken by it. Even though he's always had affairs,

he possesses Daisy. Yeah, he realises that they have a connection, doesn't he? Exactly, exactly.

And they have passed. Exactly. And then they all go bizarrely. I mean, slightly, perhaps,

slightly implausibly given what's just happened. Yeah. They all say, well, we're going to go on this

massive drive across the Valley of Ashes into New York City. They get to New York City and then

they all meet up in New York City and they have a big showdown, don't they? Tom has this rant

about Mr. Nobody from nowhere and says, you know, as this is the fashionable thing now, you know,

people can sleep with your wife. And then he really lets himself down. He says the next thing,

you know, people will be throwing everything over board and we'll have intermarriage between black

and white. So there's the ugliness of Tom coming back out. But Gatsby still is, there's still

something contrived about him because I think at this point he sounds like someone from a soap

opera or from a sentimental melodrama. She never loved you. She only married you because I was

poor. She was tired of waiting for me. It was a terrible mistake in her heart. She never loved

anybody but me. And it always, it almost feels a bit trite, I think, a bit hollow. What are you saying?

Nick says at one point during this confrontation that he can see that Gatsby knows it's all unraveling.

You know, he knows it's gone. He knows it's too late. So once again, there's this massive clash

between the sentimental ideals and the reality because, you know, Daisy admits at one point,

she did love Tom and that actually she loves them both. And while this is enough for Tom,

because he's from this old money world where basically people hurt each other, they throw

themselves up against the rocks, but they never, ever break up because tradition demands that you

stick together. But for Gatsby, it's not enough. Gatsby wants to sort of own Daisy entirely

because that's the only way that his dream can kind of reach fruition. Tom says about he

and Daisy, there are things between us that you'll never know that these words seem to bite

physically at Gatsby. And I always wondered that thing. There are things between us you'll never

know if that was kind of a call back to F. Scott Fitzgerald's relationship with Zelda. You know,

they'd hurt each other so many times. They'd had portions, miscarriages, terrible drunken, you know,

shenanigans. But they're fundamentally bound by these terrible, terrible things that both witnessed

by their suffering. Yeah, by their kind of mutual suffering. Yeah. And they're kind of

brutality with each other. Yeah, you know, completely. So we've probably run out of time. So we

can't really get into the absolute ending. I mean, there's an amazing line, probably one of the

lines of the book that always sticks in my head. We drove on toward death through the cooling

twilight because they then drive back to Lyle and this is when the great tragedy happens,

which if you've read the book, if you listen to the audio book, you will know maybe we shouldn't

spoil the story for those of you who haven't. There is this incredible moment at the event.

I think it's a brilliant piece of writing, one of the great pieces of writing in the 20th century,

when Nick and Arata sort of widens the focus out and he turns the whole thing into a metaphor

for the American dream and for the story of America more broadly, doesn't it? Because he thinks

about Long Island. Oh, it's beautiful writing this. And he says, the old island here that

flowered once for Dutch sailors eyes, a fresh green breast of the new world. It's vanished trees,

the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest

of all human dreams. And that dream, the dream is not just the dream of Daisy or the green light,

it's the dream of becoming new, of starting again, of reinventing yourself and the world.

And that's Gatsby and Gatsby's dream throughout, hasn't it? But it's turned out

disastrously as we'll discover at this point in the book. Yeah, it's a tragedy.

Because it's a dream that kills people. Yeah, it destroys people's lives and Gatsby

pays a very, very high price for building his whole life around a single hope, a single desire

and a single dream. You know, it's this theme again that runs throughout the book that you can't

turn back the clock, even with the kind of force of will that Gatsby has at his disposal,

the determination that he has from being a young boy. You just can't do that. You can't

undo the past. Yeah, it's a very melancholy. I mean, actually, this is the one thing I really

took from it. It's a really, really melancholy book. And actually the last lines, the most melancholy

of all, one of the most brilliant passages I think in all literature. I could not agree more.

Yeah, I totally agree. Do you want to give us, do you want to give us a burst tabby?

Car, of course you do. But don't do it, but don't do it in your America. No, I won't, I won't,

I won't as far too poignant. I don't want to make people sob. And as I sat there,

brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the

green night at the end of Daisy's dock. He'd come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream

must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was

already behind him, somewhere back in the vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark

fields of the Republic rolled on under the night. Gatsby believed in the green light,

the all-geastic future that year by year recedes before us. It alluded us then, but that's no

matter. Tomorrow we will run faster, stretch our arms out further, and one fine morning.

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

and that final line, the boats against the current, is what was written on F-Scott,

Fitzgerald's headstone. Oh, wow, that's a good detail. I didn't know that. Wow, it's very

poignant detail. Yeah. All right, so we have to always give these things marks out of 10, don't we?

And what are we marking in this week? I thought initially that we should do it in green lights,

but actually, given that this episode has been really about you, maybe we should do it in

pink suits. Wow, I didn't see that coming, but yeah, I agree with pink suits is the best thing.

So who's going to go first? Should I go first? You go first, yeah. I'm actually going to give it,

do you know what? I've actually, this is a matter thing, but during the recording, I've actually

increased my mark. Wow. So I've increased it from, I've been so persuaded by the power of your

analysis. Thank you, Dominic. So I've increased it from eight to nine. Oh, wow. I'm going to nine,

because I think I'm docking a mark only because I don't really care about the characters,

particularly. All right, fair enough. I don't find it has an massive emotional heft with me,

but I think in terms of pure writing, line by line writing, it's as good a book as was written

in the 20th century and as good a book as you'll ever read. And I, I, yeah, I think the, the layers

of nuance are tremendous. So yeah, nine out of 10. Yeah, I, I, I hate to admit by totally agree. I,

I think this is one of the great books. It's just definitely one of the greatest books that's

come out of America, if not the greatest. So I'm going to give it nine out of 10. I just couldn't

believe this time as well. Yeah, but it's the power of the writing and the nuance and the

subtlety. I'm going to dock a mark, though, because he does flirt with characters. Okay, so we're not,

we're not doing what we should be doing, which is disagreeing agreeably. No, but that was never

the tagline. We're agreeing disagreeably. Exactly. We're reluctantly agreeing. Yeah, okay. So

remind us, tabby, what's coming up? So next week, we are doing hamlet. So if you've seen the movie

that's just come out. Yeah, Matthew. Very intriguing. Yeah, I, I can't wait to do that. G is one of my

favorite books. Wonderful. Lots to come. Right. Lots to come. Thank you so much, tabby. Everybody

enjoy your cocktails and your pink suits. Thank you very much. That was really good fun. Bye-bye. Bye.