Gray Floral on White Screen – watercolor and acrylic on paper

Empty Room, Yellow Bench – watercolor and acrylic on paper

Empty Room, Pink Chair – watercolor and acrylic on paper

Blue Building, Purple Door – watercolor on paper

An orthodontic chair with a panoramic view.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

As I move on to Book 2 of my 50 book challenge, I have decided this is a good opportunity for early reflection.  I’ve read The Great Gatsby before, as many people have.  It’s pretty standard public school book list material.  But I wanted to put F. Scott Fitzgerald on my list of ten authors, as I’ve never read any of his other works, and it was tough curating  five works of his without including this one.  Plus, they are making a movie version of it, and I thought it might be nice to have a little refresher before Carey Mulligan has a crack at Daisy Buchanan.

More than any of that, though, I realized when making my list that I remember almost nothing about this book, because I read it my sophomore year of high school, a whopping eighteen years ago (shudder).  I remember liking the book.  I remember thinking it was full of pathetic, hopelessly flawed characters, my favorite kind.  I remember thinking the writing was sexy.  But I was 15 and what did I know?  Now I reread it at 33 and find out if it can still light a spark in me.

“It isn’t fun any more.”

He was afraid to look at Marjorie. Then he looked at her. She sat there with her back toward him. He looked at her back. “It isn’t fun any more. Not any of it.”

She didn’t say anything. He went on. “I feel as though everything was gone to hell inside of me. I don’t know, Marge. I don’t know what to say.”

He looked on at her back.

“Isn’t love any fun?” Marjorie said.

“No,” Nick said. Marjorie stood up. Nick sat there, his head in his hands.

– An excerpt from “The End of Something”

That was published in 1925.  It is now 87 years later, and it is still exactly right.  That is precisely how it goes down when one person no longer loves someone they once thought they did.  I know, because I have been on both sides of that conversation.  In its most recent appearance in my life, I am heartbreak’s Marjorie.  That is what prompted this task of reading 50 classic works of American literature in a year.  My heart is broken and it needs a distraction.  I want to get lost in a world outside of my own.

William Faulkner - The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Absolom! Absolom!, Light in August, Go Down Moses

F. Scott Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby, Tender is the Night, This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and the Damned, The Crack Up

Ernest Hemingway – In Our Time, For Whom the Bell Tolls, A Moveable Feast, Garden of Eden, Across the River and Into the Trees

Toni Morrison -  The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Jazz, A Mercy

John Steinbeck – Cannery Row, East of Eden, The Winter of Our Discontent, The Red Pony, Travels With Charley

John Updike – Rabbit Run, The Centaur, The Coup, Roger’s Version, In the Beauty of the Lilies

Kurt Vonnegut – Slaughterhouse 5, Cat’s Cradle, Breakfast of Champions, God Bless You Mr. Rosewater, The Sirens of Titan

David Foster Wallace – Infinite Jest, The Pale King, Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, Girl With Curious Hair, The Broom of the System

Tennessee Williams – Battle of Angels, The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Orpheus Descending

August Wilson – Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Two Trains Running, Seven Guitars, Gem of the Ocean

Up first:

In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway