The “frosted wedding cake of the ceiling.” Rather than simply repeat himself he crafted an elegantly metrical acknowledgment of her inspiration that has since become a poignant proclamation of how all roads in life led back to her: “Once Again to Zelda.” Gertrude Stein famously complimented the melody of the phrase, telling Fitzgerald, “t shows that you have a background of beauty and tenderness and that is a comfort.” It’s since become one of the most quoted dedications in literature, providing Marlene Wagman-Geller a wonderful title for her 2008 study of “The Stories Behind Literature’s Most Intriguing Dedications.” I even borrowed the line for a recent reminiscence in The Southern Review on reading Nancy Milford’s biography Zelda in college.ĩ. 1921’, Photograph appearing in ‘The World’s Work’ (June, 1921) Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons.īy 1925, Fitzgerald had already dedicated his first short-story collection, Flappers and Philosophers (1920), to his wife/muse, Zelda Sayre. If nothing else, the resulting list shows how inexhaustibly intricate The Great Gatsby is. After returning from a late-night sneak preview, I sat out by my pool (which, unlike Gatsby’s, has no monogram at the bottom) and reread the book for the zillionth time. That said, I was struck that, for all the familiar lines and symbols incorporated into Luhrmann and Craig Pearce’s screenplay, how many of my personal moments didn’t end up on the screen. After all, I’ve been “ fanboying” since long before I ever presumed to understand the novel. And while I appreciate the objections of The New Yorker and Salon, I honestly think a razzle-dazzle, Adderall-induced Gatsby is what we need at this moment in time-or maybe what I need after so many years now of struggling to persuade students and other resisting readers that Fitzgerald’s lapidary prose isn’t “boring.” For whatever credibility it might cost me, I’m genuinely less interested in what David Denby or Peter Travers think than in watching general audiences dress up as flappers, slip on 3D glasses, and “fangirl” on Tumblr and Facebook. Frankly, any flick that can make Rex Reed’s pacemaker misfire is aces by me. West III, and Anne Margaret Daniel, as well as my writer pal Therese Anne Fowler, author of the current bestseller Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald.
#10 symbols in the great gatsby movie
I’ll say unabashedly that the movie delighted me, as it did many scholars I admire, including such leading Fitzgerald folks as Jackson R.
Mishearing will confuse even the best of reporters. I’ve learned, for example, never to declare, “I’m a homer!” when asked my feelings about Fitzgerald over a static-crackling phone line. The experience has been a whirlwind introduction to media relations. One minute you’re grading end-of-the semester papers, fighting the losing battle against the extinction of the apostrophe, the next you’re fielding phone calls from NPR or the Associated Press.
The build-up to the release of Baz Luhrmann’s frenetic, chromatic interpretation of The Great Gatsby was a wild ride for several of us who live and breathe F.
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