from the archives: April 15, 2005
So, it’s book report time.
I recently finished a couple of “classics”. On my way back from san diego, I tackled The Great Gatsby. Known to me heretofore as the one book I never cracked and still managed to get a B on the section in junior english, I picked it up in the airport because it looked more interesting than Joan Collins. I also think junior english was the first time I learned to never listen to my friend Marc, but that’s not really here nor there. And, more recently, I finally finished Pride and Predjudice, which was more of a self-imposed penance than anything else.
The books had at least one thing in common – they depict a social class I have absolutely no knowledge of. The servants in both books are barely there – in Prejudice the Bennets aren’t even revealed to have servants until book 2. The help is just assumed. Can you imagine? 150 pages later, and oh hey, there’s this housekeeper that’s been here the whole time. In Gatsby, they’re less invisible, but still accepted as what people do. Both books are also filled with annoying reminders of woman’s second class citizen status for the large part of our history, but it’s hard to get mad at Jane and F. Scott, they wrote what they knew. And, both books empowered the women in their stories within the constraints of their culture. I mean, daisy caused a few deaths, so what if she did it while feigning dainty?
Another thing they both have in common is a density of language. In Prejudice, I had to marvel at early 19th century sentence structure – how in the hell did they ever finish a conversation? In Gatsby, I just feel I missed some excellent lines. Both authors created characters I cared enough about to rush through to the ending, but in doing so, you tend to miss the lines like, “…while trying to look pleasantly interested and a little deaf, I followed Daisy…” I actually caught that one, and laughed out loud on the plane, but what else did I miss?
I’m not sure where this is going. I think I’m reverting back to school – read a book, write a paper. but since I didn’t take notes, I’ll just say the following: check out Gatsby if you get the chance. It’s dark, and though I’ve never seen the Mia Farrow version, I’d love to see someone talented tackled it on the big screen. As for prejudice, I’ll have to read it again, because I’m pretty sure there’s whole chapters that I missed. So, I’ll let you know.
That’s it for now.
Oddly enough Gatsby IS being made into a movie again…Starring Leonardo DiCaprio I believe.
haha…that’s perfect.
The part about not listening to me is totally valid. In our first period class our teacher told us that, contrary to popular belief, the pilgrims did not move here for religious freedom. I saw Meghan and told her that when she had the same class later in the day she should answer religious freedom as soon as the pilgrims came up. She did. It was hilarious.
I might write a list of times that Meghan should not have listened to me because she definitely did not fully learn from this incident.