THE GREAT GATSBY:

'Her voice is full of money'

The current fanfare about the new film version of F Scott Fitzgerald's novel prompted me to reread it after nearly half a century. Not that I should have needed such a reminder. After all, TS Eliot had hailed the novel as "the first step that American fiction has taken since Henry James."

'Gatsby's' context is the affluent society of the twenties. America had just emerged from the upheaval caused by the first world war and had yet to experience the economic collapse of the end of that decade. This was when American capitalism shed its veneer of Puritanism and openly acknowledged its devotion to Mammon. A generation had grown up during the war that had become disenchanted with pre-war traditionalism and had no intention of reviving it. A culture of materlialism, hedonism and amorality set in among those who came to be known as the Lost Generation. Fitzgerald himself characterised the period as 'the Jazz Age." Jazz music had begun to make its presence felt, and was embraced as the facilitator of a new culture that boasted new fashions not only of music, dance and dress but of interpersonal communications and relations generally.

The centre of gravity of this lifestyle was New York and the twin peninsulas of Long Island where the wealthy were settled. This is also where the action of the novel takes place. Its main characters are Jay Gatsby, Nick Carraway and his distant cousin Daisy Buchanan. Nick the narrator has moved from the mid-west to better his prospects as a bond salesman. Daisy lives with her millionaire husband Tom in their mansion on the Eastern peninsula fictionally known as East Egg. This is where the respectable members of the affluent society are established. Nick has taken a modest house on the adjacent peninsula known as West Egg, where the less respectable nouveau riche society have settled. Next door to him is the mysterious Gatsby who seems to be the grandest and wealthiest of them all but whose origins are shrouded in mystery. Every weekend his palatial house and park-like gardens are the scene of a colossal open house. Hundreds of both the invited and uninvited gather as if at a resort to partake of the food, liquor, live music, dancing and outdoor entertainment including water sports laid on by Gatsby. Yet the majority hardly know their host and speculate wildly and unkindly about his background.

We soon learn of Gatsby's raison d'etre. He has come to Long Island to be close to Daisy who was his pre-war sweetheart in the mid-west. She was a beautiful, wealthy socialite and he a dashing army officer. When the war took him away for overlong she grew insecure and married the even wealthier Tom Buchanan. Gatsby wants to win Daisy back by impressing her with his acquired riches and status. This has been the driving force of his quest for wealth and his zest for displaying it. The story is about how he achieves his heart's desire and loses it almost as soon as he does, losing his life in the process. It is a tour de force of writing where context and character evolve as the plot unfolds through a skilful combination of satirical observation, evocative description and insightful dialogue.

Fitzgerald's portrayal of the Jazz Age corresponds to Evelyn Waugh's, notably in 'Vile Bodies', of the 'bright young things' of London's Mayfair set of the same period. It is a useful point of comparison because, although Waugh's presentation is sheerly satirical and Fitzgerald's more complex, it is as a satirical portrait of a section of society that his novel succeeds in the first instance. Fitzgerald's satire is neither as savage nor as subtle as Waugh's but it is effective in its own way. Consider the way we are introduced to Daisy and her friend Jordan Baker:

"The only stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room, and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor."

This early passage tell us a lot about Daisy and about Fitzgerald as a writer.

We see Daisy in white as an almost ethereal being, which is part of her appeal for men, but with an ethereality that is artificial and hollow like that of a balloon.

The wind in her wings is plainly the wealth about which we have already been informed. This is what keeps her afloat, but as soon as the wind dies she balloons to the floor. The suggestion is unmistakable that if ever what the wind represents were to fail she herself would fail. Thus the satire is accomplished through evocatively figurative language with a modicum of symbolism. It makes Daisy along with her friend seem ridiculous but, at the same time, there is a great deal that is attractive about her. This is obviously not lost upon Nick.