Literature & Spoken Word Community | Southbank Centre

 By Anita Sethi

I watch the London Eye revolve and through its slow oscillations Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament gleam beneath a fleeting patch of sunlight.  The Level 5 Function room of the Southbank Centre offers a splendid view over London, and watching the Eye revolve I am reminded of another wheel turning, though in literature rather than in life: a poignant scene in F Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night in which Nicole has a breakdown on a Ferris Wheel.

To keep the wheels turning on cutting-edge discussion of F Scott Fitzgerald, gathered here are writers Geoff Dyer and Sarah Churchwell, author Kathleen Tessaro, and artistic director of Elevator Repair Service, John Collins, whose company has staged the  West End performance Gatz.  Together they discuss the enduring appeal of The Great Gatsby, still resonant today, in the context of the wider work of F Scott Fitzgerald, its contexts, and its legacy.

“It’s a book defined by its miniatureness”, pointed out Geoff Dyer, going on to explore the paradox of how although it is short (only 48, 588 words), the felt experience of reading it is much larger since it embodies all of the big themes: morality and the lack it; money and consumption; madness; glamour and grit.

Asked whether her experience of teaching The Great Gatsby differs in the UK from in the USA, the American academic Sarah Churchwell picked out some interesting, culturally specific details from the text, such as the symbolism of the colour green which flashes throughout the narrative. Whereas students in the States might pick up on the fact that green is the “colour of money”, our own banknotes adorned with the Queen’s head might not lend themselves to such associations.

One theme resonant universally is that of failure, purposeful failure, and how The Great Gatsby is a book that “failed to fail”.  Fitzgerald was so obsessed with the idea of failure that he was almost longing for it.  Does failure replace the idea of tragedy and epic grandeur in the book?   It is essentially a book about the fact that “reality is disappointing compared the image that we have in our heads”, about the great gulf between dream and reality, about what it feels like to have our illusions stripped away.

There was also an interesting discussion about the varying virtues and vices of the forms of books, plays, and films – each medium has sought to tell the story of The Great Gatsby.  Language can do something that films can’t, allowing the reader to be both there and not there, using the imaginative faculty.

Another question raised (which I remember being asked in a university interview myself many moons ago) is: what is it that puts the “great” in Gatsby?  It is, of course, his “capacity for hope”; as Sarah Churchwell succinctly pointed out; whereas Gatsby has capacity, the characters around him are “incapacious”.

As I watch the water lap on the River Thames, I’m reminded of one of my favourite lines from The Great Gatsby:

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past”.  

All in all, this discussion about the theme of failure managed to be highly successful.

Filed under: London Literature Festival 2012, Misc Tagged: | Anita Sethi, Gatz, Geoff Dyer, Kathleen Tessaro, Sarah Churchwell, The Great Gatsby