The Great Gatsby. I know of many friends and fellow readers who hate the book, the characters and possibly everything about it. But I can't think beyond Gatsby, nothing beyond him. Gatsby is that person I normally wouldn't want to think about, given all my ideologies, thoughts and whatnots. But I am so captivated by him that all my reasons go futile.
It's a delicate thing to admit but admit I will, honestly. Vociferously going to the extent of crying, shouting, quoting to establish the validity of my argument and finally when the stubborn listener accepts halfheartedly or succumb to my argument, a part of my mind arises in rebellion to my own ideas and asks a formidable so-what's-wrong-in-that question. That was how I felt while reading Gatsby and precisely what I feel about the book and the characters too.
I have written a detailed review on this book too, and so I wouldn't go into the plot and what it did to me in detail. But I wouldn't mind fangirling De Caprio the soul reason behind my reading this book. Those were days when I was member of an online library. And those were also days when I could sit down to watch only a passing few moments of any movie that didn't show robots, dinosaurs, self-proclaimed guardians and super heroes, and in those few minutes did I catch the glimpse of the pool scene, his eyes, they were a pool themselves, like the narcissistic pool of Oscar Wilde.
I doubt if everyone or anyone would feel the same. But that is what I feel even this very moment writing. This is one book that is more about the sensual impact it had on me. Fitzgerald's prose was scintillating, honest and just blowing me apart, though I haven't read his other works, that I am looking forward to doing sooner.
Had I been a man I wouldn't have been Gatsby. As this (over)thinking woman that I have grown up to, I wouldn't desire Gatsby, but Gatsby... would be my buddy, the friend I could talk to, and give a thumbs up to, who would understand me. Probably it's not Daisy's character I would have done, but Nick Carraway's. I would have admired Gatsby even better and more than him.
If I ever get tattooed, now that depends on the pain that I can bear, and so if at all I get it done, it would be J or Jay Gatsby or the closing line -
"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
And as I am reminiscing those wonderful moments of reading this book, The cover forms a character in the story, and there is lots to it than it really is :-)
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