“She’s a biatch. There’s no way to say that nicely.” [LAUGHING] “My queen just came right out there.” “I’m Wesley Morris, and this is ‘Cannonball.’ Today, we’re going to party like it’s 1925, baby.” [MUSIC PLAYING] “You’ve probably heard somewhere that ‘The Great Gatsby’ turned 100 this year. People have been celebrating this thing as one of those profound literary achievements that’s had a big influence on the culture, because it kind of has. People who don’t seem to have read this book have been using it to celebrate. I’m looking at you, world leader, who threw a Gatsby- themed Halloween party. I didn’t want this anniversary to end without, I don’t know, trying to think through it myself, which is kind of nuts, because up until recently, I didn’t think I had a terribly deep or profound relationship with this book. But a few years ago, I got an email from a book publisher asking if I wanted to write the introduction for a new edition of ‘The Great Gatsby.’ It was coming out in 2021, and was I interested? I was like, ‘You want me to do what?’ I mean, everybody’s written about this book. What could I possibly have to say that’s new? What could I possibly say about this book that was important? And then I did some thinking, and I realized, wait a minute, I’ve read this book, at least, three times in three different phases of my life. Huh, why did I do that? The very first time I read it was because I had to. Like most students who grew up in this country, it’s required reading. The second time I read it, I was in my early 20s, and what I realized then is that this book, this book was young once, too. It was once contemporary with the time in which it was made, the so-called roaring ‘20s, during the Harlem Renaissance. And you know who else was young once? F. Scott Fitzgerald, the guy who wrote the book. And when this book came out in 1925, he was 28 years old. I mean, think about that. I sat around, and I had all of these thoughts, and I was like, you know what? I am going to say yes to writing an introduction to this new edition of ‘The Great Gatsby,’ and I’m really glad that I did that. I actually spent that introduction wondering very hard, why is this one of the books that we keep coming back to? So with me today are two people who are also in some kind of long-term relationship with this book, and I’m looking forward to asking them, What is wrong with us, and what is it about this book that lives in us the way that this one has? I’ve actually been talking on and off about these questions, sometimes in public, with the superbly incisive novelist Min Jin Lee. Her books include ‘Free Food For Millionaires’ and ‘Pachinko.’ Her new book, ‘American Hagwon’ —” [LAUGHING] “That title is coming next year, and she also wrote an introduction to Penguin’s 2021 edition of ‘The Great Gatsby.’ As Ben and I were figuring out how we were going to talk about this book for this show, I also learned that my pal and colleague Gilbert Cruz, who runs The New York Times Book Review, he reads ‘The Great Gatsby’ almost every year. And I was like, ‘No way.’” “Who is this Gatsby?” “He’s got to come in here with me and Min and talk about this. Min, Gilbert, hello. Welcome to ‘Cannonball.’” [MUSIC PLAYING] “Wesley, thank you for having me on.” “You are welcome. Thanks for coming.” “Wesley —” “I’m honored.” “Old sports, I’m happy to be here.” “Old sports?” [LAUGHING] “OK, wait — before we do anything, I want you, in the fewest number of sentences you can give me, what is the plot of this book? Here’s mine, North Dakota farm boy creates fake identity and amasses his fortune to impress wealthy city girl. Death ensues. Min, your turn.” “A boy who goes to New York, he becomes friends with a really romantic character, right? And then sort of becomes his Cyrano de Bergerac.” “I like that, yes.” “Kind of like a wingman to Gatsby, to connect with his second cousin, Daisy, and then there’s two adulteries that happen, and then there’s a tragedy, and then the boy goes back to Minnesota.” “All right, Gilbert, what’s your plot summary?” “One summer, in the 1920s, a bunch of people in New York get really drunk, and some of them die at the end.” [LAUGHING] “I’ll take that.” “So I was reading the New York Times wedding section, and I saw this really adorable couple getting married, and it said they had a Gatsby-themed wedding. And all I could think is, Did they read the book?” [LAUGHING] “Yeah, what is that? Isn’t that just a wedding, honestly? Like, does that mean people just got married in flapper dresses and —” “Yeah, it’s Jazz Age attire, flappers. I think that Gatsby has come to stand in for it.” “Chartreuse drinks.” “This is the adultery book. This is like, there’s two adulteries in this book. There are three deaths. I don’t understand, like, how that could be a wedding.” “Three deaths in five pages, even.” “Right.” “And this book, just for a little context, is just — it’s set during the roaring ‘20s, a time of great possibility. And jazz is the trap music, is the pop music of this day. So there are people, like, bringing what they experience in Harlem — when they go — out to Long Island, having these parties and Charlestoning until they can’t stand up anymore. And that energy, that urban energy, creates this suburban or affluent lassitude that these characters are experiencing on page after page of this book, where they don’t do anything, but sit around and talk about how they’re not doing anything. So I’m curious. I’ll start with you, Min. When did this book come into your life? Like, when did your relationship with ‘The Great Gatsby’ start?” “Well, I came to America, I think, when I was 7, right? So —” “From South Korea?” “From South Korea. And at some point in my life, I just had to read every single book that mattered. I just decided, and then, I think, I was in high school, maybe freshman or sophomore year, and then I was told that you had to read ‘The Great Gatsby.’ Not from my teachers, I just had to read it. So then I bought it, and I didn’t really have money to buy books. But I bought it, because I thought this was such an important book. And I read it over and over and over, again, and it has become this really important book to me.” “Who told you? Do you remember who told you to read it, and why?” “Probably librarians and important people in my life just kind of — like, I took my reading cues from cool people in my life.” “OK.” “I know, that sounds so nerdy.” “No.” [LAUGHING] “That sounds — like, I don’t know who the cool people are telling you to read things that aren’t, like, zines, but —” “Well, I mean, I went to Bronx Science.“ ”OK.” “That means that I had —” “Oh, that could have been anybody.” “That could have been anybody. So when I met girls who I thought were really bookish and cool and interesting to me, and they would say, ‘Oh, I’m reading this book,’ and I’d be like, ‘Oh, I’m going to go get that book and read it.’ And, mostly, I borrowed it, but Gatsby, I actually bought. And it was only $2.25, I think.” “Was it this version that Gilbert has on the table?” “It looks like that. But I didn’t bring mine, because it’s so fragile, that I was afraid that it was going to disintegrate.” “I regret bringing this in, because it is falling apart.” “Yeah, and it means a lot to me.” “Gilbert, what about you?” “Also in high school, also in the Bronx, but I did not get into Bronx Science. I went to a Catholic all-boys school, and as is the case at so many high schools, the baseball teacher was also the English teacher, and I remember him. I can see him to this day, because he was a broad- shouldered man who wore shirts that were too small for him, holding this book up in front of all of us.” “That edition, that edition?” “I think it was this edition. This might actually be my mother’s edition, which I remember being —” “Because that one is mine. That’s the edition that I grew up.” “Yeah, had this for a very long time. Holding it up, trying to get us interested in the book, and most of us, possibly even me, being very uninterested in the book. It was only a couple years later, when I returned to it on my own, that I fell in love with it, and then I read it every year for a time. And now, I think, I read it every other year, but I definitely have done this book more than a dozen times, if not more.” “Is there a day or something that you read it on? Like, is there an anniversary?” “It’s often summer.” “Like, April 10?” “It’s a sweaty book. It’s a summery book.” “It’s a sweaty book.” “So it is, it feels like summer to me. There’s that line in the book that I feel like was on social media for a while, when X was Twitter, and when that was still a thing, ‘Do you always look for the first day of summer and miss it,’ or whatever the line is. People would quote that on the first day of summer.” “There are some really good seasonal things here. I’m going to — oh, shoot. Like, it’s just reminding me. There’s a moment in the book — I’ll find it, because I actually do want to read it, because it’s a great line, and it, like, perfectly captures what it’s like to have the seasons change. Fitzgerald describes it this way, that feeling. ‘Now, it was a cool night with that mysterious excitement in it, which comes at the two changes of the year.’ This man, I mean — he can write a sentence. There’s truly, honestly, two days in the entire year, where you have what I would describe as an involuntary reaction to being outside, and just — you’re filled with hope and lust and happiness.” “No, it feels like a caress. Like, you get that sort of, like, warm, weird wind, and then you have the light, and then it feels like someone’s kind of touching you, and then that’s where the lust probably comes in.” “Yes, it is definitely erotic, but it also is transferable, right?” “Yes.” “Because you also suddenly just want all these people that you see, people you don’t really, like under ordinary circumstances, I was otherwise engaged. I don’t want anybody else. But this day, you want everything. You want to eat everything. You want to be with everybody. It’s a strange feeling, and he captures — there are so many inarticulable experiences captured in this book — facial expressions.” “Well, he’s a very sensual writer.” “Yes, yes, yes.” “It’s really, really sensual. You can feel it, you can smell it, you can feel the quality of the air, and he’s so gifted. There are a lot of people who are haters of this book. I have met many.” “I’ve met them.” “Right? And they’re always like, ‘Oh, I don’t want to read that book. Why should I read it?’ I just think, did you really give it a fair chance?” “Yeah, they don’t really have a case against it —” “No.” “— in my experience. They’re just like — but part of the reason they don’t want to read it is that it was given to them. It was an assignment.” “But there are a lot of books that are assigned. You don’t have to hate them.” “Yeah, but there are few books that are called — to use word in the title — that are called ’great‘ as often as this one are. There are many books that we’re supposed to think are great — books by Mark Twain and Faulkner and all these writers — but I think there is something about this book that is often called the great American novel, which is an assignation that has so much meaning, that turn people off.” “It’s definitely one of the great American novels, period, right?” “Oh, I think so.” “And I think one of the things that, I mean, I’d like to come back to later, is the company that it keeps in that class, but also what about it qualifies it as being that. But I want to stay for a second in this habitual relationship that we seem to have with this book. Like, why of all the things that you could be reading, Gilbert, is this the book you read even, every other year?” “A few reasons. One, it’s short, as you said.” “It is short.” “And if you’re going to reread a book, pick a short one, because life is too short. So that helps. Two, it’s just gorgeously written. I mean, there are — I feel like we could spend this entire conversation just quoting lines. But every time I dip into it, I feel like there’s something else that I take out and want to memorize, because it is evocative in a different way. But the real reason I’ve reread it so many times is because it is a book that is about time, or at least about a certain time in one’s life, and therefore, it has meant something to me every time that I’ve read it, something different. And therefore, it has meant something different to me every time that I’ve read it.” “What was the time that you read it, where it meant the most, or surprised you by how much it meant? Maybe that’s the way to put it.” “Well, the first time I read it, the first time I really read it, not for school, I think I fell in love with how intoxicating it made youth seem, how fun it made New York seem, how fun it made drinking seem —” [LAUGHING] “— how fun it made staying up, until 4 in the morning, and then catching a train back from the Pennsylvania Station seem. And as someone who has to commute into Penn Station every day now, it is definitely not that. So that was —” “So you’ve definitely run for some trains in your life.” “So many, too many. So that’s why I initially fell in love with this, and then I re-fell in love with it when I was a little bit older, because I was able to see that that was all the surface stuff. And what it actually was about was hope and disappointment, class in America, and how, as Nick tells Jay, you can never sort of recreate the past, and you can never recapture these things that you think are owed to you. And as they say, it hits different when you are a little older.” “Yeah, yeah. What about you, Min?” “I love the yearning. I love the yearning in it so much, because everybody’s yearning, and they’re really honest about their yearning. But I think that the reason why it is a great American novel is because it does something really complicated. It is satire, tragedy and coming of age. The fact that he can do all three things in this tight architecture is so impressive, because when you actually take this book apart, you’re going, holy shit, how did you do that?” “How did you do that? Yeah.” “And also at 27 — at 27 — to be able to do that in terms of craft? I haven’t seen a book like this, truly.” “Yeah, and this is Fitzgerald’s third novel.” “Third novel.” “The least of those three —” “A total failure.” “It did not do well. Really bummed him out, because he needed the money.” “He really needed the money.” [LAUGHING] “Critically acclaimed. You know, everybody, except H.L. Mencken, loved it, and you call it a tragedy. You call it —” “A satire.” “— a satire and a coming-of-age story. What you don’t call it is a romance.” “Yeah, I don’t think of it as a romance.” “And he thinks that part of the reason it did not do well is because it has no good women characters, and because, I think, people reading it who were looking for romance don’t experience that.” “It does not have a happy ending.” “It is a romantic book, but it is not about romance, right?” “Yeah.” “Well, it is about it is about a nonsexual romance, right? It is about a romance for possibility. It’s a romance between a citizenry and their country, right, or the promise of this country?” “I also call it a bromance between Nick and Gatsby.” “Yes, a bromance. I do want to talk about that. We’ll come back to it, but I also think that it might be useful to just back up and just talk about who the characters in this book are. So Jay Gatsby, of course, the man who builds his fortune to attract this woman, Daisy, who is Nick Carraway’s cousin. Nick is this aspiring bond tradesman. He goes from Long Island to New York every day, and he lives next door on West Egg to Jay Gatsby. And then across the Bay on the other side in East Egg is Daisy Buchanan, who lives with her husband, Tom, and their daughter, Pammy. And the mysterious Jordan Baker comes over every once in a while, lays on the sofa and just spreads gossip and rumors all day long. That’s our cast. Did I leave anybody out?” “You left a couple people out. You left out George Wilson, who’s a man that owns a garage between Long Island and Queens, and his wife, Myrtle, who’s important, because she is the person that Tom is having an affair with.” “How could I forget?” “You also left out Meyer Wolfsheim, who is —” “Oh, of course.” “— someone who pops up occasionally in the story and is sort of the person behind Jay Gatsby, who has helped him become the rich bootlegger that he is.” “A mentor in some ways.” “A mentor.” “But also kind of clever about how he’s mentoring.” “Yeah, I think we hit them all.” “I’m also interested to — I don’t know, talk a little bit about or hear you guys talk about the characters who have changed the most to you, or a character who’s continued to mean something different every time you go back to it, Gilbert.” [LAUGHING] “Boy, I feel like — am I going to get too personal here?” “There’s no too personal, Gilbert.” “Personal is good.” “I think the characters that have changed the most to me are the ones that I have identified with, right? And so, if we’re talking about what, I think, are the two main characters — are the two main characters of the book, Nick and Jay or Nick and Gatsby, when I was younger, I thought of myself as someone who wanted to be Gatsby. I was someone who came from a certain place and wanted to go to another place, wanted to reinvent myself into someone who could be successful, someone who could thrive in America, someone who did not grow up in a lower-middle- class family in the Bronx. And so, the idea of Jay, the idea of Jay Gatz changing himself, reinventing himself, it seemed like something that was a thing you could do in America, and it seemed admirable, possible, even if it didn’t work out for him in the end.” “Right.” “And now, I see Nick as the one that is the person that, I think, has changed the most in my estimation. He starts the book by saying, I’ve never tried to hold judgments against other people.” “Yes, yes.” “He says, at one point — in a profoundly, I thought, reading it, again, a few years ago, arrogant moment, ‘I’m one of the only honest people I know.’” [LAUGHING] “I used to think Nick was, like, solid. He was an honest guy, like he is a good guy.” “Oh, this is a great — I was going to ask you guys about this.” “I sort of think Nick is kind of a chump, actually, now that I think about it. Like, he is telling us the story. So we’re only seeing Gatsby primarily through his eyes and what we hear from some other people, and he is so high on himself, and he believes that he is such a good person, that I don’t know that I trust Nick in the way that I used to the first time I read this story.” “Well, I think that some of that is just how we get trained to read, right?” “Yeah.” “I learned how to read differently by reading this book, because —” “How’s that?” “Well, I mean, have you ever sat multiple times with somebody who keeps telling the same story?” “Yes.” “And the story changes?” “Yes.” “Like —” “Family members, yes.” “They’re just getting stuff wrong. I don’t trust this dude, and I think part of — I don’t think he’s lying. But there are some things, there are some sleights of hand that Fitzgerald tries, where Nick will back up and be like, I forgot to tell you something, basically, or here’s something I did not witness, but it happened. And I’m like —” “Chapter 9.” “Yeah, yeah, I’m just like, you know, sir, no. I mean, I’m going to take it, ‘cause you’re giving it to me. I don’t know if I believe it.” “Well, he’s a real pleaser personality. He even tells you in Chapter 1, that there are times when he has to feign sleep, because he doesn’t really want to hear your personal story, because he’s got a kind of affect that’s a pleaser. So he’s kind of like, don’t get too close, because I really don’t want to be too close. I know I look like somebody you can tell secrets to, but I don’t want to hear it. And you’re thinking, oh, he’s an ass.” “Yeah, he says in — and Tom went to Yale, right?” “Yeah.” “They went to New Haven. He says, in college, he was considered a politician, because he was often a person that people would open up to —” “Right.” “— and give their secrets to, probably because he had a certain affect. Maybe he was not that interesting a person, so he didn’t have much to add to conversations. And I think it leads him to believe a certain conception of himself that may not be accurate.” “Min, who’s changing for you?” “Oh, Myrtle.” “Oh, ooh, Myrtle.” “I know. It’s really odd, because she’s someone I really didn’t notice. She was an object in the plot.” “I mean, nobody’s noticing Myrtle.” “But as I’ve gotten older, I have been thinking about a person like Myrtle, a person who takes less than she deserves, aspires to be someone who she shouldn’t want to aspire to be, and then has a tragic ending. And her husband, she hates her husband, so she cheats on him with a rich guy, Tom Buchanan, who’s kind of a white supremacist.” “Kind of white supremacist? He is recommending works of white supremacy for his friends to read!” “Yes, and eugenics. So he’s a bad guy. Tom Buchanan is a bad guy. So what I found really interesting about Myrtle is that she really wants Tom, but I think she has an obsession with Daisy, or the Daisy archetype. And I found that relationship between these two women, they’re both objects. The women characters in Fitzgerald’s work, they’re not great. He actually thought so, and he actually blames the failure of Gatsby at his time, because the women have really horrible endings, both of them. I mean, Daisy is really, truly an evil woman.” [LAUGHING] “I mean, she’s evil.” “Just say it, yes!” “She’s evil.” “You need to say it. You need to say no.” “No, no, she’s a biatch. I mean, like, there’s no way to say that nicely.” [LAUGHING] “Well, you know what’s amazing? Like, at some point —” “My queen just came right out there.” [LAUGHING] “I got personal.” “I mean, Daisy — well, I’m just curious, but how has Myrtle changed for you over time?” “Well, I didn’t really think about her when I read the book several times, and then as I got older, and then I heard more stories about adultery, I was trying to understand, like why do women participate in these relationships that cannot work? It isn’t like Myrtle ever thought that Tom was going to leave Daisy for her.” “No.” “Right. I mean, she’s smart enough to know that, and yet, she’s kind of saying, I will take the crumbs. And we know, for sure, that Daisy, even though she’s a desired object, she’s the one that is beautiful and wanted and has the voice of money. But here’s Myrtle, and she satisfies something in Tom that Daisy cannot.” “I mean —” “Her fierce vitality, her sexuality.” “Yes, I going to say his penis.” “Sure, it satisfies his penis.” [LAUGHING] “And then at the very end, when she has to be so brutally murdered, it was so interesting. And then the more I learned about Fitzgerald’s biography, I realized, oh, no, Myrtle is also Zelda. And then once I figured that out, I thought, oh, now I understand why she had to be almost hacked up.” “I mean, there’s a really brutal description of her body in the wake of this accident.” “Well, her breast gets lopped off. So I have a lot more sympathy for Myrtle, even though, obviously, she’s not that nice, and she is crass. But she is from Queens, and so am I. So, there you go.” [LAUGHING] “She seems kind of fun.” “I think Myrtle would be, really, a robust, curvy woman, very vital, very sexy. She probably smells like perfume. But there’s a kind of raw intelligence, a kind of animal quality, but then very smart and wants to get what she wants to get, and yet, doesn’t know how to get them, not in a real way.” “She’s wild.” “Wild.” “A feral, sexual being.” “Like hot in bed.” “Yeah, exactly.” “Like, you can totally see her being hot in bed.” “Yes, listening to you talk about Myrtle, I do want to think about Tom, because he is the most fascinating person in the book, in some ways, at least to me at this moment.” “He’s beautifully drawn.” “Yes, and I think that there’s so many moments, where Tom is both a homunculus and a troglodyte, but also a master of the universe, but of nothing, right? Like, think about — I mean, with all due respect to our polo people, think about what polo is. You get on a horse, you ride around, and you smack a ball. Like, you got to make sure you don’t step in any doo-doo, right? I mean, that’s basically his life since he graduated from Yale.” “Tough life.” “Although he does not want to be known as the polo player.” “He does not. He just wants to sit back and watch all the weird people at a Gatsby party. But Tom, to me, is also weirdly the most modern of these characters in that his type is still with us and, I mean, is in various seats of power, right? And there’s this great moment, where you get a sense of both his insecurity and sense of supremacy, and it basically goes like this. This is Daisy, trying to tell Tom to chill out, as they’re having this fight, and it’s in this scene toward the end of the book, which, I mean, if you don’t mind, I will read a little bit of. And this is all just before Gatsby and Daisy jump in the car and accidentally kill Myrtle. ‘”He isn’t causing a row.“ Daisy looked desperately from one to the other’ — meaning from Gatsby to Tom. ‘“You’re causing a row. Please, have a little self-control.“ ”Self-control,” repeated Tom incredulously. “I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife. Well, if that’s the idea, you can count me out. Nowadays, people begin by sneering at family life and family institutions, and next, they’ll throw everything overboard and have intermarriage between Black and white.“’ And you know, I’m sorry. That person is basically hosting cable news shows, issuing executive orders, running branches of our government right now. It’s just, you know who never goes out of style? Tom.” [LAUGHING] “Yeah.” “And there’s something just really fascinating about how weak and strong he is. In every scene of this book, he is both, like, physically imposing, as written by Fitzgerald, but also confused and dupable at the same time. And yet, he’s also in control, in a way that not everybody can see. He actually is playing chess with these people’s lives.” “Is he in control because he has a lot of money, or is it because he’s in full possession of his masculinity? What do you think?” “I think he is in control, because he has a lot of money. I think that no matter how dumb he is, no matter how dumb a lot of people are, if you have a lot of money —” “But Nick thinks he’s dumb. We don’t actually have any proof.” “I mean, there are quotes —” “There’s some proof. There’s some proof.” “— from parties.” “There’s a great line about how often he reads or doesn’t read that is just five stars. But anyway —” “And you get the impression that he went to college to play sports. He didn’t go to college to — and I can’t remember if he went to war. I know Gatsby and Nick went to war. I cannot remember.” “I think he did go to war, yeah.” “Did he go to war?” “Yeah.” “That’s something we haven’t talked about, that all these men have been to war and back. But I think he has a lot of money, so no matter what happens, he can come in and be confident in the idea that he can solve a problem with his money, right?” “But he loves Daisy, right?” “I don’t know if he loves. I think he might be like Gatsby. He might love the idea of Daisy.” “Daisy’s an idea. I mean, like, she’s a —” “What does he love? What is she?” “She’s something to possess.” “So when he gets upset, do you think he’s just humiliated, so he loves his pride?” “Absolutely. You know, I have a theory about men —” “Tell me.” “— and a certain kind of man.” “Wait, straight men, powerful men, white men, Black men, what? Let’s be specific.” “I think there’s a kind of man, and I think it’s interesting, because I think Donald Trump is every single character in this book. I think he, at different points in his life, has been Jay. He’s been Nick. Well, maybe not Nick, but —” “Myrtle?” “I mean, yes, actually, yes. I think that Daisy is somehow — I think that the conflation of him and all these other people is a thing that makes him fascinating, because he’s mostly a Gatsby, right? But he’s got these — I mean, think about — he came from he came from Queens, right? He’s a migrant from a much closer area, right? But his desire to get into these upper echelons, to become a person who has these great parties that people come to, a person to become friends with a Tom and a Daisy, like that’s still in him, right?” “Yeah, he wants to be liked.” “And there’s this great moment, when Jay Gatsby has died, because George Wilson has murdered him —” “Yes, murder-suicide.” “— and then killed himself, George Wilson. And lo and behold, his father shows up. Mr. Gatz —” “Henry.” “— shows up and says the most remarkable thing. And he’s like, you know, my son really could have been like James J. Hill, the railroad magnate, and heretofore, like, really interesting Canadian turned American citizen slash Minnesotan, right? And he could have made something of this country, my son. And I’m reading this in this moment, and I’m like, yeah, the one thing that’s really fascinating about this whole book is that it’s all about waste, and it’s all about things not happening. These people don’t do anything. Like, what is Gatsby’s — where does the money come from? It comes from bootlegging, right? Coming from breaking the law, on what?” “Was the service not provided?” “A service was provided, but think about the service being provided, right? In 1922, it’s like the worst thing you can be. It’s among the worst things you can be. I mean, this is happening during Prohibition. This is a person who — these people don’t make anything. They don’t contribute anything. They just take. These people don’t even pay taxes, right?” “No.” “These are people so in control of the system, that they’re also not beholden to in any way. They’re operating by their own rules. And I just feel like, Jay, to me, there’s something — Gatsby, to me, is in a lot of people, because the story of this book is so much a part of the story America tells about itself, maybe even, in part, because Fitzgerald told it, right? He created a paradigm for people to ascribe themselves in. I mean, you yourself, Gilbert, the paradigm spoke to you.” “Absolutely, the American dream.” “Yeah, I mean —” “Come from nothing, go to something. The appearance that he presents to people is both his own appearance.” “Gatsby?” “Gatsby. The appearance that Gatsby presents to people is what he looks like, but also most people never meet Gatsby, the book. The people that come to his parties —” “He’s a story.” “— never meet him.” “Yeah, he’s a myth.” “So what they see is the house and the Champagne and the pools and the money and the wealth, and I think that is — when one thinks of success in America, for many people, that is what they think of. They’re not thinking of the man, they’re thinking of all the material items around them. You know, if you watch reality TV, if you think of the way that you ask a person, if you win the lotto, what would you do with it? They’d be like, I’d buy a big house, I’d get a nice car.” “Surely.” “I’d buy a pool. That’s what to so many characters in this book, not the main characters, Gatsby represents. He represents the illusion of wealth and material and everything that means.” “And, ironically, Fitzgerald is indicting that dream and saying, therefore, Gatsby must die.” “Yeah, I don’t think a lot of people take that lesson.” [LAUGHING] “But also, I mean, the other thing that people don’t take is that this is a book about people who have all that stuff and are still miserable.” “No, and they make each other miserable, and all that idleness actually hurts them. There is a real critique of that. But if I could add one thing, is that the roaring ‘20s is a period between 1920 to 1929, and it’s marked by a couple of things. It’s marked by the women’s right to vote comes. The silent film becomes talkies. There is incredible, incredible amount of prosperity that’s built, and there’s also a migration from the farm to the city. So all of that is being chronicled. This book is published in 1925, and the most important thing, at the end of the roaring ‘20s, is the Great Depression, which comes in 1929, which Fitzgerald observed in his personal life. But he didn’t know that when he was writing it at the time. So all that lassitude, all that sloth, all that idleness, all this carelessness, it’s interesting that history actually bears out —” “It pre-figures.” “— the damage that will come, that all that selfishness, all that self-indulgence actually creates devastation for everybody — not just the rich, but for everybody. And I think in that sense, all of us, 100 years afterwards, looks at this example and goes, oh, that’s another reason why we think this, because he was writing fiction. But he was also almost like —” “Think this movie is — sorry, think this book is great or important?” “Well, I think that we’re lucky to have this person taking notes on society —” “Yeah, I see.” “— through this narrative. And then the conclusion is this Great Depression, and which he did experience, and then we, now 100 years ago, wow, this person noticed something in the culture, emotionally, psychologically, and he put it in drama. And that’s the reason why we connect to it.” “Yes.” “Don’t you think Fitzgerald is telling us, please do not go be like Gatsby?” “Too late. I just want to talk about the way in which this book lives in our culture now, and I want to start superficially. Because when I was looking — I just wanted to watch one of the movies. I watched two before we spoke today. The Baz Luhrmann aged even worse than I thought it was going to.” “Why?” “The this case, the movie is just stuck being the book, and I don’t think anybody really understands what’s happening in the book, except for Leonardo DiCaprio. And the reason that that performance is so good is because he clearly read the book. He’s identified the sociopath that lives inside this seemingly glamorous mystery. But while I was looking for Luhrmann version — it’s not on HBO Max, where I thought it would certainly live. HBO Max is like, oh, wait, don’t go! We don’t have this, but here’s some stuff we have that’s just like this movie. And here’s what they offered me.” “What did the algorithm offer you?” “Are you ready for this? ‘A Very Long Engagement,’ the Audrey Tautou, Jean-Pierre Jeunet.” “That movie does not exist. Sorry.” “You’ve never seen it?” “No.” “Oh, my God, this is such a Gilbert Cruz movie. It is the guy who made ‘Delicatessen’ and ‘Amélie’.” “I’ve seen ‘Amélie’ many times.” “I love ‘Amélie.’” “I think it’s a World War I movie —” “Oh.” “— with Audrey Tautou.” “So is that because both movies were tagged World War I?” “’Dangerous Liaisons.’” “I like that one.” “Oh, OK.” “As a Gatsby movie or as a movie?” “No, no, no, as a movie.” “So just when you smell a rat say, ‘I smell a rat.’” “All right.” “’Dangerous Liaisons.’” “OK.” “Rat.” “Rat.” “’The Bodyguard.’” “What? No.” “We got to talk to HBO Max.” “Whitney Houston, Kevin Costner?” “’Casablanca.’” “I don’t get that.” “Maybe, you know, like a love from the past that they try to return to, but doesn’t work out at the end.” “Like, what? ‘Bridges of Madison County,’ is that next? Because we’re talking now about romances that don’t work.” “’The Bridges of Madison County.’” “Hey!” [LAUGHING] “Thank you. She’s really good in that. Meryl is really good in that.” “That is one of the great performances anybody’s ever —” “Right?” “— given doing anything.” “She was really good.” “And he is fantastic, his sexiest, sexiest Clint.” “Yeah, I mean, he can be hot. He’s really strange politically, but yes.” “’The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,’ obvious reasons. Based on a Fitzgerald short story.” “Fitzgerald, yeah, the short story.” “’Rebel Without A Cause’ and ‘The O.C.’” “’The O.C.?’” “I’m going to show you.” “What is ‘The O.C.?’ Is that television?” “Is it television? It’s the televisioniest. I circled the winner on my multiple-choice card.” “Oh, wait, wait.” “’The O.C. —’” “Like, poor boy from Chino?” “’The O.C.’ is ‘The Great Gatsby’!” “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.” “It’s unbelievable. I would never have thought of that.” “But the algorithm did.” “Ugh, the algorithm. I mean, but look how many tries it needed.” “A lot.” “It needed, like, a dozen tries to get one right.” “A.I. is getting better every day, OK.?” “But you’re a tough critic.” “But ‘The O.C.‘ — what? You guys smell the rat every time! Come on!” “That’s a stinky index card.” “But ‘The O.C.’ — ‘The O.C.’ is — it’s Gatsby.” “Every story that has the one that got away and what would I do to get that person back? That’s a Gatsby movie.” “That’s a misunderstanding of Gatsby, but a Gatsby movie.” “Daisy says something like, rich girls don’t marry poor boys, and I think whenever you have a romance across classes, as in ‘The O.C.,’ it is reflected there.” “And so, yeah, I think that is part of it. But I also think that it’s deeper than that, right? Like, this book just exists in the world. I mean, we’ve kind of talked about it a little bit.” “It’s a hair gel in Japan. I know you wanted to know that.” “I’m sorry. What did you say?” “Gatsby is a hair gel in Japan.” “That makes sense, Gatz-z, Gatsby.” “No, it’s just that Gatsby is so popular, and it’s permeated every aspect of Asia.” “Oh, wait.” “This book is really important globally.” “No, no, I mean, I —” “Like, it’s this book and Anne Frank. Everybody’s read it.” “Wait, wait, say more about Gatsby in Asia.” “So if you go to most cities — and I’m just going to speak for the East Asian countries, because I can’t speak about others right now. I just haven’t been to them enough. You will find a cafe called Gatsby.” “I believe it.” “And in Japan, they have hair products, and they’re called Gatsby, and they are trying to point to this book. So if you’re aspirational, if you want to remake your personality, you put this stuff on your head. But of course, I’m thinking, you’re going to be dead.” [LAUGHING] “If you read the book, you’re dead in a swimming pool. It’s not good.” “But your hair looks good.” “Yep.” “But I think as a brand, its brand is strong.” “Very strong.” “The ways in which this book, it so captures of, like, an aspect of the American experience for white people, right? And you can graft yourself onto it, but you’re only going to get but so far, right? The train — there’s a key that you need to be able to drive the car that far. And for as much as you aspire, this is the kind of comedy of the American dream in some way, right?” “Yeah.” “Like, you can do everything that you want to try to get it, but it really only belongs to, like, one person.” “In Fitzgerald’s indictment of the American dream and of those and what you just said about how one person can get away with the architecture and the creation of all this destruction for his own purposes, it really reminded me of Audre Lorde.” “Ha! Preach!” “So the idea that when she says the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house, like, we can all get this education. We can all ape their behavior. We can even have their dreams, and yet it will not work. And I think Fitzgerald, when he saw that, what he was saying is what Audre Lorde was saying, is that you cannot become something that you’re not. It will destroy you, and you will not get what they can get. Like, you cannot be Tom Buchanan. Tom Buchanan can only be Tom Buchanan.” “Yeah, only Tom can be Tom.” “I really hope that people give this book the kind of due that it deserves. I mean, I know that — I was really thinking about this. I thought —” “Is it underrated?” “No, no, no, I think it’s because it’s so revered. And I’m a pretty critical person, but I think that for me, the architecture of it, the formation of this, it’s really hard to do what he did. So you have to give him his flowers, as they say.” “I hope that this 100th anniversary, like, it spurs people on to revisit. I think a lot of people have read this book. Maybe they haven’t read it in several decades.” “Read it as an adult.” “Pick it up. As I said, it’s short, beautifully written. There is a lot of pleasure to be found in this book.” “And do that exercise that you made us do, is to see which character changed for you at this moment of rereading, because I do think that’s a very valuable exercise.” “Min Jin Lee, Gilbert Cruz, I would do this every week. This book should turn 100 every week. Thanks for coming.” “Thank you, Wesley.” “You’re welcome.” “Thank you so much for having me. It was really fun.” [MUSIC PLAYING]