The Great Gatsby

Starred review from December 2, 2002
Audio reviews reflect PW's assessment of the audio adaptation of a book and should be quoted only in reference to the audio version. Fiction THE GREAT GATSBY F. Scott Fitzgerald, read by Tim Robbins. Caedmon Audio, unabridged, six cassettes, 7 hrs., $27.95 ISBN 0-06-009890-2 Readers in that sizeable group of people who think The Great Gatsby
is the Great American Novel will be delighted with Robbins's subtle, brainy and immensely touching new reading. There have been audio versions of Gatsby
before this—by Alexander Scourby and Christopher Reeve, to name two—but actor/director Robbins brings a fresh and bracing vision that makes the story gleam. From the jaunty irony of the title page quote ("Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover, I must have you!") to the poetry of Fitzgerald's ending about "the dark fields of the republic" and "boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past," Robbins conjures up a sublime portrait of a lost world. And as a bonus, the excellent audio actor Robert Sean Leonard reads a selection of Fitzgerald's letters to editors, agents and friends which focus on the writing and selling of the novel. Listeners will revel in learning random factoids, e.g., in 1924, Scott and Zelda were living in a Rome hotel that cost just over $500 a month, and he was respectfully suggesting that his agent Harold Ober ask $15,000 from Liberty
magazine for the serial rights to Gatsby.

goals - For my literature class we were assigned to write a "Found" poem. This is where you only use words and phrases from a certain text. Ours was to be from the Great Gatsby and written on the topic of the American Dream. I would like to share what I came up with right here: I had a moment there before I realized. You can't repeat the past. Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light, to him the light was an extraordinary gift for hope. He could hardly fail to commensurate the greatest of all human dreams. His dream must have seemed so close. He knew he had a big future in front of him. He was very generous, people liked him when he smiled. But he was uneasy. What foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams. His heart was in a constant, turbulent riot. A doubt had occurred to him as to the quality of his present happiness. There must have been moments when his dreams tumbled short of his imagination. It was lonely. But life was beginning over again with the summer. I remember much later when he told me, His real name was James Gatz. As a little boy his parents were unsuccessful, So as a seventeen-year-old he had invented the meretricious Jay Gatsby. He turned out all right at the end. To me, he was a matter of infinite hope He had come a long way. James Gatz’s destiny eluded me then. Gatsby believed in the green light. He did not know that his dream was already somewhere back behind him. I had a moment there before I realized.