Word: fitzgeralds
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...postwar America that Fitzgerald was writing of is in many ways similar to the 1990s, that barnyard decade between the Cold War and the new, and as yet unnamed, era that our new historians will judge as an interlude of easy fortunes, rampant optimism, and unbridled greed. It was one big party...
This led, predictably, to a kind of spiritual emptiness: restless, confused beings who sought crude material fulfillment. For Fitzgerald, the nouveau riche were vulgar and ostentatious, and the old aristocracy not much better. Though graceful, he found the latter bored (Jordan), shallow (Jordan, Daisy), or thick (Tom). All were confused; all were unhappy. The title then, is ironic, and the “great” refers less to reality than to Gatsby’s misguided ambitions, most of them unfulfilled...
...Fitzgerald was on to something...
...Harvard students are the winners of the 90s. Perched atop the American meritocracy, we are supported by good families, decent educations, and above all, futures. Yet I sense a kind of spiritual aching for something more, some transcendence that people currently attempt to stuff with work, achievement, or wealth. Fitzgerald knew of these pangs firsthand. To the end of his days he flirted searchingly with his Catholic faith and clung to a cloying obsession with the way others perceived...
...Fitzgerald was lamenting an age that we today, to a large degree, still aspire to. Fitzgerald himself wasn’t entirely innocent; he was still sometimes fascinated by the decade that he chronicled. But there was also an unmistakable aversion, a palpable yearning for transcendence in his writings which said: there’s more to life than this. At Harvard, we are, I suspect, less perceptive creatures. Around me I see all the attraction and little of the repulsion...