In his Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E.C.Brewer defines someone who takes 'the way to Faye' as 'a person who tries to do something indirectly...'. Gatsby's way to Daisy Fay is similarly circuitous and indirect . Here I will follow suit, hoping to come to a determination of Nick by way of a consideration of features of Nick's narrative style . I say 'Nick's narrative style', and of course The Great Gatsby [G.G.] is entirely Fitzgerald's creation, but the work is formally given as a retrospective collation of Nick's 'Eastern experience' . That experience was subjectively undergone, and is now objectively realised and ordered : the retrospective Nick is now in the position of omniscient and omnipotent author .
It will be shown that much of the language and imagery that accumulatively give G.G. its gorgeous, beyond-the-real quality has, intratextually, the local purpose of individuation . A character's behaviour and the events with which he is involved are directly related to--indeed spring from--the terminist logic of names : names pseudonymous, hypocoristic, occupational, descriptive, and local . Nick is a nomenclator extraordinaire, and to stress the point he inserts in the text a compressed flourish of names--the list of Gatsby's summer guests . It is an archive of terms left undeveloped--virtually, for Nick facetiously reveals his approach with Edgar Beaver, whose hair, they say, turned cotton-white one winter afternoon for no good reason at all (67), Nick's mind thinking 'beaver' through 'pelt' to 'hair',and then wrapping that up in party-one-liner 'wit' . The bulk of the names reads like a list of flora, fauna and marine life . It could equally well have an internal logic related to Wall Street stock-exchange slang--Nick is in bonds, and, for comparison, the London Stock Market has such slang terms as 'Bears, Bills, Cohens, Contangos [All hail the Dancies], Dogs,Kites, and Lame Ducks' (Cobham Brewer,op. cit., re Stock Exchange Slang) .
The list's primary function is to place these incongruously named people . Hawthorne discovers a time-capsule, and of it makes Hester histrion on an extended fictional stage, whereas Nick's list of names, Gatsby's guests, are made coeval with, as insubstantial and useless as, an old timetable . These are East and West Eggers and the Broadway fringe : the old and new rich . And elsewhere in G.G. when we find a name which is recognisably representative of American monied aristocracy--Rockefeller (33), Bird (134), Chase (140)--we find too that he or she is not a protagonist, but figures by dint of allusion, report, or reported speech . Possession of wealth is not Nick's criterion for inclusion in the main action . Possession of a name with a terminist logic of its own is . Such a name is for Nick a character in embryo, and there are many on the timetable list with this terminist potential . That they do not emerge into the main action is a flamboyant assertion of Nick's authorial omnipotence .Klipspringer is the sole exception . How is his participation--smallish, but still there--in the main action explicable in terms of his name ? At Gatsby's mansion he is 'the boarder' (68), unwilling and ineffectual pianist, and, more pertinently, athlete . He is also 'Klippe[German,'cliff']-springer'[German,'leaper'], and when Gatsby falls, we find that Cliff-leaper has duly leapt--to care of B.F. (176), and, alas, without his tennis shoes . He is permitted to leap out of the list and into the action because of the potential literary material there in his name--just as Beaver became hair--and because that material can be made integral to Nick's retrospective collation : the 'Eastern experience' .
Nick's use of the terminist appeal in names is ubiquitous in G.G., and translates into the incongruous, the idiosyncratic, radiating out the the relevant central name :
Katspaugh (75-6)
In its context, this is obviously a pseudonym for someone who is the veritable Cat's Paw--minion and tool of Wolfshiem . The name, too, is in apparent cognation with Gatsby, and at this stage in Nick's voyage of discovery, anything is possible : nepotism may be rife in The Swastika Holding Company .
Slagle (172-3)
In textual contiguity with Wolfshiem's letter to Nick, where Wolfshiem ends by saying he is completely knocked down and out, is Slagle's phone call about the arrest of Parke . Evidently, the Wolfshiem-Gatsby scheme for passing off fake bonds---which has been in transaction ['I said a small town' (101) ; 'you've got something on now that Walter's afraid to tell me about' (141)] at the same time as Gatsby's systematic approach to repossessing Daisy---is falling apart in the wake of Gatsby's death . It is to be inferred that the demise of the scheme ensues from Tom's threat--I've made a little investigation into your affairs-and I'll carry it further tomorrow (140)--and that Tom in effect promotes and ensures physical and financial death for Gatsby . Here, while writing his letter of condolence, Wolfshiem, the senior partner, has assuredly got Slagle's wire, there before him . And it is Slagle [German,'schlag', blow, punch] and his news of the scheme's demise that determine the content of the incongruous I...am completely knocked down and out (172) . As above it could be conceived that Katspaugh was first employed based on his having a cognative surname, so here Nick lets us into Wolfshiem's mind, where a link is conceived between the etymology of Slagle and the matter in which he is involved.
Dan Cody (104-7)
It is given here (106) that it is Gatsby's heeding the drums of his destiny that brings him to this encounter with Cody . It is of course authorially predestined and so ordered that only here and now we receive the fundamental 'facts'- -James Gatz of North Dakota--about Gatsby, about his grasping the opportunity that sets him on the path to 'greatness', and about his intuition of the significance of the change now in prospect by marking it with a change of name . Sprung thus from his Platonic conception of himself, identity hereafter has the subjectively- [Gatsby-] controlled value and potential of an identikit, to which others add guesswork and rumour, expanding the parameters of the identikit . James Gatz's home state, North Dakota, is in the Midwest--that same Midwest which the post-bellum Nick described, in metaphor of pre-Columbian import, as the ragged edge of the universe (9) . Here on the south shore of Lake Superior--the Midwest--is Cody's yacht the Tuolomee--a pseudo-Native-Americanised rendition of 'Ptolemy', and yet another pre-Columbian tag . Indeed the tag may not be mock Native American, for the Tuolomee is bought by a wealth consubstantial with the silver and copper ore from which came the wealth : there is an honest, natural correspondence about it, like the artifacts that the successful Native American buys with his pelts, to adorn his tepee, itself made of pelts . By contrast, Gatsby's prize possession is a neo-Gothic mansion redolent, both outside and in, not of American but of European culture--bought from the proceeds of a clandestine traffic in unbonded liquor and fake bonds, and where the identifiable correspondence consists in fakery, illegality and deceipt . Cody makes his wealth in Montana and Nevada--the Midwest . He is also from the Midwest, from James Gatz's state, North Dakota . At some point he too sprang from his Platonic conception of himself, and the new identity to usher in this new impulsion towards wealth was Dan Cody, a rough anagram of 'N.Dakota' . Cody and Gatsby have the same home : Cody identifies with it, Gatsby sloughs it off . Both are successful businessmen : Cody becomes pioneer debauchee, Gatsby becomes 'pioneer gentleman' . Cody's origins, Platonic self-renewal, life of work, then of dolce far niente, his demise in the East, the dangers of the East, the rapaciousness of Ella Kaye--all serve as pattern for Gatsby . As Tuolomee offers pre-Columbian 'Ptolemy' in pseudo-Native American, so with Cody and Gatsby we have likenesses, with the Old prefiguring the pseudo-New .
The Lutheran College of St.Olaf's (106)
This collage is supreme irony, and to a purpose . St Olaf is pictorially represented carrying a loaf of bread--as a rebus on his name . 'St Olaf' renders 'Holy Bread' . Yet in a Lutheran College the doctrine necessarily is that the sacramental bread is not 'Holy Bread', not the Body of Christ, but rather, purely a symbol of it . That sort of ideology is bound to jar with a mind on the brink of transforming James Gatz into being Jay Gatsby : not a Gatz who has chosen merely to style himself 'Jay Gatsby' . Moreover, Luther's destiny is inextricably linked with the door of Wittenberg Church on which he nailed his Ninety-Five Theses, while Gatz's destiny is here bound to the anonymity of janitor's [from Latin,'ianua', door] work . This cameo of St.Olaf's is located here as authorial corroboration of Gatz's intuition that an important door is about to open for him, and as premonition that the transformed Gatz will be Jay Gatsby . It is a considered ideological change, not a cosmetic one .
Doctor T.J.Eckleburg (29-320)
These dead eyes preside over and supervise life in the valley of ashes, but it is the name that determines Nick's--and so our-- vision of life there . The viewpoint is impressionistic : the topographic view has barely distinguishable men, homes, work, and purpose shading into an obscurity of ash . The close-up only foregrounds and gives greater delineation to those inhabitants--Wilson, Myrtle, Mavromichaelis--whose lives interlock with the dolce far niente lifestyle of G.G.'s main protagonists . Our viewer, Nick, is at pains to keep his distance, for the valley is an enclave of 'sweated labour' : barges, spades, Myrtle 'manning' the pump, Wilson with his sweat rag, Mavromichaelis actually having to snatch some sleep after working all night in his restaurant . The valley is the other extreme from the 'Franc Gontier' luxury and lassitude we have just seen chez Buchanan (14ff.) . These are the Jekyll and Hyde of life in the East . Dr. Jeckle, the oculist, has sunk into eternal blindness in the burg, the city . 'Mr Hyde' does not figure in the name of the oculist's gigantesque legacy, for he peoples the vision below . 'Sweated labour' is what underpins and services dolce far niente, but it is best kept at a distance and so viewed, shading into ash, mingling immediately with the cement colour of the walls (32)--in short, hidden : a demi-monde of Mr Hydes .
'Oh-you're Jordan Baker' (25)
'Baker' is a run-of the-mill surname showing a family provenance 'in trade', and it is simply as 'Baker' that she is introduced to Nick chez Buchanan . It is only at p.25 that she is identified as the golfer,Jordan Baker, with Nick italicising the feature that distinguishes her from all those....Bakers . 'Jordan' is Hebrew for 'the descender', yet when Nick first sees Daisy and her levitating in the breeze, then descending slowly to the floor (14), he has not yet been introduced to Jordan . This sequence--the two young women visibly descending, to Baker, to Miss Baker, to Jordan Baker--shows the retrospective author, Nick, schematically trying to point up the fact the Nick in situ does not create or contribute to the curious behaviour and ambience that fulfil, realise the terminist logic of a person's name, but rather, that the name-owner does . My view is that, as with Klipspringer, Nick redacts, includes, excludes, to serve his construction of events . Then with those people whom he includes in his narrative he brings the terminist template to bear to qualify them, if such a link happenchance presents itself . Jordan has a place, this floating vision in white who later is reported to descend to lying and subterfuge (64-5) : a woman fit for an affair but not to revere . It may be objected that Daisy 'floats and descends' too, and, for good measure, both ladies are united in repose at the beginning of the dog-day events (121) . The point is that of these two friends from white girlhood (126) in the same home town and state, Daisy, in her relations with Tom and Gatsby, is a pattern for Jordan : therefore with implications for Nick .
Daisy (14ff.)
Mad dogs and Englishmen may go out in it, but New Yorkers rich enough to avoid the ash-pits stay out of the midday sun--and thus Daisy, reclining in the cool of the crimson room until, with the approach of sunset, the foursome go out to dine on the porch, where the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her face...the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret (92) . Nick is enthralled by her, entranced by that melodic quality in her voice which he cannot quite pin down, but Gatsby in a phrase does . This enthralment runs over into the 'conceit' of the sun's affection for her, but this is Nick in the process of linking, for the 'conceit' expresses the terminist logic of her name :' Daisy', from Anglo-Saxon, 'day's eye', the flower that closes its petals during darkness . In the Jordan sequence just mentioned, Nick gives it that he intuits the name before he knows it, and Jordan behaves in accordance with the logic of her name . Here Nick knows Daisy's name in advance, ergo his sun and flower terminism, but here again the named person unilaterally behaves in such a way as to fulfil the adduced terminist logic : we find Daisy winking ferociously towards the fervent sun (19) and, incongruously, having a special interest in the longest day of the year (18).
Chester McKee (34ff.) and Ockham's Razor
Chester, like Dan Cody, has a name that identifies, and identifies with, his origins : Chester city, Chester county, McKean county, and towns called McKeesport and McKee's Rocks, all in the Keystone State, Pennsylvania--the state founded by a quaker for ''Quakers (that like lanterns, bear Their light within them)''[S.Butler,Hudibras,II,2] . Chester's 'light within', his aesthetic judgment, is articulated through a manipulation of 'light without'--electric, i.e. natural, instant light--in order to capture the moment, in a photograph that is, hopefully, an expression of the subject's 'light within' . At this early juncture of Nick's Eastern experience in situ, before Nick's searchingly allusive mind has occasion to grapple with the manifold ramifications of Gatsby, Chester is potentially the subject of a work by the retrospective Nick called The Great McKee . In significant respects Chester prefigures Gatsby : his surname to Nick intimates a Platonic self-renewal and name-identifying with his home state in the manner of Cody . Also, his viewpoint attempts to be aesthetic. And his 'light within' is adapted to the 'light without'--the contemporary, the moment, the instant . All of these are characteristics that promise depth and the possibility of being of exceptional interest, and Nick observes them while in Chester's company . But Nick intuits other aspects . Earlier (11) he ruminated on the gulls that fly overhead--birds, and people in those new-fangled flying machines-- and the wingless--hommes a deux pieds sans plumes, and birds like the razor-billed auk, with its rudimentary wings . The chronology of intuition goes from this to the double significance--suggesting artistic intent and depth-- of the old lady's photo (35), to McKee's white spot of lather (36), which the razor evidently missed, on to Two studies...'Montauk Point-The Gulls...Montauk Point-The Sea (38) . Nick's interest is in an aesthetic vision tempered by Ockham's Razor, the principle of economy, ''the principle that one should not postulate the existence of a greater number of entities or factors when fewer will suffice'' (F.C.Copplestone,Medieval Philosophy,p.121) . Ockham said that ''nothing can be known naturally in itself unless it is known intuitively'' (Copplestone,op.cit., p.124)--an apt definition of Nick's approach, which we have already seen at work concerning the 'floaters', Jordan and Daisy, and which we see now in the matter of the potentially Great McKee . But there is also the Razor, which is applied when Nick's hope of a convergence of aesthetic minds peters out in the face of the sentimentally-titled subjects of Chester's portfolio : the retrospective Nick excises McKee from the story, but only after Nick in situ is shown, first, to intuit the ensuing disappointment and the excision of Chester from his interests--by removing the worrisome lather (43)--and, second, to do so . Chester in many respects prefigures Gatsby, and Nick's encounter with Chester is a sort of trial run : microcosm to the macrocosmic encounter with Gatsby--a much more complex and much less clearly definable individual, in name, identikit-identity and behaviour .
The foregoing list will, I hope, have established the process---Nick's intuitive approach ; the terminist logic of names ; characters' unilateral fulfilment in behaviour of that logic---whereby the language and imagery of G.G have a gorgeous, beyond-the-real quality . Ockham's Razor is the guiding principle that produces this effect : the retrospective Nick redacting his experiences includes only what strikes the febrilely allusive mind of Nick in situ as a possible factor for revelation of whichever subject is under his gaze . The result is a stilted, unreal, yet--so far as they go--literal record of Nick's social encounters . Gatsby is part of this social scene, and, because his name--and, therefore, for Nick his identity--is the most elusive, Gatsby is, in scale, apportioned the greatest leeway from the Razor, the greatest number of factors that may pin him down, reveal his identity .
Before Nick reassumes with Gatsby his former confessorial role at college--and thereby has new material to work on--his intuition confronts a Gatsby in diaspora : Oggsford man, Orderi di Danilo, nephew of Hindenberg, Kaiser's cousin, stranger on the lawn gesturing towards a green light, someone from Daisy's past, German spy, American soldier, Wolfshiem's business associate, host of phantasmagoric parties next door . Unlike Chester McKee and Dan Cody, Gatsby's name does not intimate, even in anagram, his origins in a home state . But he inhabits New York State, the state flower of which is the Rose, and his name resembles 'Catesby', the name of the knight, confidant and loyal servant to Richard of York, Richard III, in Shakespeare's play and in fact . York and the Wars of the Roses are the backdrop for an intuitive collage that features Rosy Rosenthal (76), You remind me of a-of a rose, an absolute rose (21), the Buchanan half-acre of deep pungent roses (14), the rosy-coloured porch (18), the wine-coloured rug (14), the crimson room (24), the Buchanan red and white Georgian Colonial mansion (12), the white palaces of fashionable East Egg (11), Jordan's and Daisy's white dresses (18), the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling (14), the long white cake of apartment-houses (34), the Airedale[from Yorkshire]...though its feet were startlingly white (34), the Earl of Doncaster (73), in Yorkshire . Nick's intuition that 'Gatsby' signifies 'Catesby', that Old York is backdrop for Gatsby's identity with New York , is a 'red herring' . It is not significant for Gatsby, and this is confirmed later : after Daisy places Gatsby in pink clouds (101), Gatsby, who had earlier dressed to meet and impress Daisy in a white flannel suit (90), changes to a pink suit (128) . Pleasing Daisy, not symbolical import, is the criterion, and Nick's intuited identity of Gatsby is a false start .
The Nick whom Scott Fitzgerald created has often been characterised as Conradian . The Conradian approach forestalls the realistic approach to the art of the novel which says that character, in life, is revealed chaotically, and which therefore eschews an artificially ordered chronology of revelation . A Marlow or a Nick Carraway partake of both order and chaos : the retrospective narrator omnipotently orders chaos into coherence, whereas the internal narrator subjectively experiences that chaos under human limitation, and revelation often depends there on the extent to which he can elicit it from his subject .
In G.G. , the retrospective Nick foregrounds his authorial control--Reading over what I have written so far, I see that I have given the impression...(62)--and his purposive re-ordering--He told me all this very much later, but I've put it down here with the idea of...(108) . The function and effect of Nick as intratextual narrator in various instances have been described : in sum, he intuits aspects of identity in advance of revelation through the other's behaviour, that identity turning on terminist logic, and the effect is an Ockham's Razor sweep through general behaviour, leaving a collage of relevant particulars that read as incongruous, idiosyncratic, unreal . This collage is a re-creation of medieval romance, ''the world of knightly proving [which] is a world of adventure . It not only contains a practically uninterrupted series of adventures ; more specifically it contains nothing but the requisites of adventure . Nothing is found in it which is not either accessory or preparatory to an adventure . It is a world specifically created and designed to give the knight opportunity to prove himself'' (E.Auerbach,Mimesis,p.136) . Nick is a pioneer from the Midwest engaging with a frontier peopled by New Yorkers assumed or native, and his series of adventures so far has been the opportunity to prove his intuitive strength in the ascertainment of identity, in social encounters without social involvement . His family inveigle him into 'the Eastern experience' . He is an effete pioneer who immediately loses his dog, in utter contradistinction to the archetypal pioneer, Natty Bumppo, whose dog adheres even after death . Nick is constantly being steered about by Tom or Gatsby, both by hand and by car . His series of adventures is availed him only through contact with the Buchanans--past family and college acquaintances from the Midwest--and through his receipt of a formal invitation to Gatsby's party, to which all and other sundry just invite themselves . Nick wants to experience the East, but passively, and at a subjectively-defined distance . This is fine for an objective record of events in situ , but it is objectivity at a minimal level . His false start at intuiting 'Gatsby' is the sticking-point : the Conradian narrator in situ participates in the life of his subject, a participation that affords understanding and an empathetic retrospective account of the subject . Nick equally must participate in his subject's life, and he does so by acceding--typically, after a lengthy, circuitous wooing--to making his house the location for The Re-encounter .
The consequence of this voluntary act of self-involvement is that Nick moves out of distanced contacts and onto a more complex plane of human relationships where he experiences the sublimity, the 'heart of darkness' lurking beneath the hitherto-known identity of the main protagonists . Daisy, whose identity was earlier characterised by Nick as a sun-worshipped and sun-worshipping flower, is discovered to have and to have had a destiny involving a more complex relation with the sun : like Camus' Meursault in L'Etranger ,she has the ill-fortune that the climactic moments in her life are plagued by the sun's ferociously influential presence . Both on her wedding day (82-3), where Gatsby's letter vies with a string of pearls and a bridegroom downstairs, and on the day of the Logomachy (131ff.), wherein Daisy is the flower whose petals are alternately being plucked by Tom and Gatsby to the strains of 'She loves me . She loves me not', a willed decision of fundamental import is called for, but the sun's influence makes her confused, incoherent, irrational.
For his part, Tom is earlier characterised as archetype of the monied feckless and as muscular boor who treats both wife and mistress unfeelingly and as the occasion and their social status demand . The 'sleeping giant' emerges prior to [i.e. preparatory to] , in, and after the Logomachy : a giant capable both of ensuring the financial and physical death of Gatsby, and of tears for Myrtle, in public (148) and in private (186) . Gatsby has for the then uncommitted Nick an identity in diaspora --he is already sublime, incommensurable . Only after involving himself does Nick become Gatsby's confidant, and 'the facts' about Gatsby emerge more and more . However, what with the metaphorical import of these facts--e.g. St.Olaf's and Dan Cody--the new parameters of 'Gatsby' still shade into sublimity . In the cauldron of the Logomachy, under pressure from Tom's challenge and taunts, Gatsby reveals clarificatory facts about himself (135 ; 140-1) that confirm what was divined, rumoured or surmised : Gatsby is becoming commensurable--losing his Greatness . The Logomachy leaves 'Jay Gatsby'...broken up like glass against Tom's hard malice (154), and only then does Nick learn about the essential 'Gatsby' .
Nick only reaches these final truths by stepping onto that more complex plane of human relationships, and thereby is present as the protagonists interlock and as Gatsby's ideal of impressing and winning Daisy subsides and translates into revelation . The crux of these final truths is that Gatsby felt married to her, that was all (155) . The elusive 'Gatsby' is now apparent ; he is 'Gatte', German for 'husband,spouse' . Indeed he has been 'Gatte' since the Platonic moment of self-renewal, before he met Daisy : the ideal wife preceded the very material Daisy . Gatsby's problem is that the vaunted Platonic moment of self-renewal did not give purpose to his life : only entry into a wider range of experience, specifically of dolce far niente , with Dan Cody . Whereas on a Louisville street, specifically in the company of Daisy of the entrancing, melodic voice, Gatsby now has a vision allying his purposeful activity with his potential : he could climb to it, if he climbed alone, and once there he could suck on the pap of life (118) . Gatsby's transcendental vision of purposeful life is allied to, married to , the voice full of money and the material presence of Daisy .
Gatsby and Nick have an aesthetic affinity, and to stress this the retrospective Nick immediately juxtaposes a literary articulation of a potentially parallel personal vision evoked in the mind of Nick in situ by the detail of Gatsby's vision . Both visions share in the language--Gatsby's incomparable milk of wonder and Nick's fragment of lost words--and the experience of Coleridge's Kubla Khan . Because of Daisy's voice and presence, Gatsby's vision is detailed and complete . Nick, however, has no Daisy as springboard to the transcendent, no 'Abyssinian maid...Singing of Mount Abora', so his vision is not born into words : it is uncommunicable forever (180) . Daisy is not simply focus of a Gatsbian romantic dream : with that achieved and Gatsby now in her company, he finds himself enmeshed in the paradox of being 'Gatte', spouse to a Daisy who is material springboard to a transcendent vision of purposeful life , revealed as an ascending progression which he must make alone (118) .
One of the child James Gatz's General resolves is Save $5.00 [ crossed out] $3.00 per week (180) . He compromises with what is ideally possible . And we find that the post-vision Gatsby, in order to reach that secret place, the capitalist empyrean, compromises with the strictures of his vision, apprenticing himself to, and becoming business associate of, Meyer Wolfshiem (177-8) . Less alone, he must be further so in order to recreate the past, the scenario of his vision . From parties to Jordan to Nick to Daisy to Tom : he is already falling from that secret place before Tom wilfully precipitates him into oblivion . The retrospective Nick rescues him from oblivion because he proves to be the aesthete --in depth and sensibility--whom Nick is searching out , and does not find in Chester .
Nick's aesthetic viewpoint is Kantian, and specifically reflects Kant's views on aesthetics and teleology in the Critique of Judgement . In prime of place in G.G. ,on the first page, the topic is criticism of, and judgments made on, one's fellow men . Later on, when Nick tries to intuit the identity of Wolfshiem (75-9), he identifies him as a New York version of Conrad's Kurtz, from an amalgam of his tiny eyes in the half-darkness, of 'Wolf' from Wolfshiem, of began to eat with ferocious delicacy, of oddly familiar pieces of ivory, and 'Finest specimens of human molars' . But 'Meyer Wolfshiem' is an agglutination of the names of three of Kant's immediate philosopher-predecessors in Europe : Meier, Wolff and Hume . On the latter, ''Kant acknowledged his work, in a famous phrase, as having first woken him from his dogmatic slumbers'' (J.Kemp,The Philosophy of Kant,p.8), and here in the text we find Wolfshiem lapsing into somnambulatory abstraction (76) . Also, the point is emphasised here that they are lunching in the restaurant with the Presbyterian nymphs on the ceiling and not in the old Metropole . But Nick's mind is on Conrad's Kurtz and the Metropolitan Office there . This separate train of intuition runs momentarily in tandem with 'the potential Kurtz', but the pieces of ivory clinch the matter of identity in favour of the New York Kurtz, and later materiel--Stella, and the office of the Swastika Holding Company (176-9), evoking the metropolitan central office in The Heart of Darkness--tend to confirm Nick's selection . But this is confirmation by ambience, superficie and locale . The other train of intuition has its confirmation in Gatsby's essence : Wolfshiem, who belongs to another generation (79), arouses Gatsby from his post-bellum somnambulation, recognises a fine-appearing gentlemanly young man (178), trains him, and uses him good , but years later, here in the restaurant with Nick, with Gatsby out of hearing, Wolfshiem still believes Gatsby to be a fine fellow...a perfect gentleman (78) . This is Gatsby's essence : Wolfshiem recognises it prima facie ; Owl-Eyes, who in the car episode (60-2) is shown to be punctilious about truth, and who, one notes, has the honour of giving Gatsby's funeral oration, in acerbic, percipient aphorism--The poor son-of-a-bitch (182)--discerns the essential Gatsby from the realism and quality of Gatsby's library (51-2) . ''The judgement of taste, in Kant's view, hopes for, or expects (the verb is 'ansinnen'), even though it does not strictly and logically demand, universal assent ; if someone fails to find beautiful something that I do think is beautiful, then although I do not have to suppose that he has made an empirical or conceptual error, I nevertheless imply that he is failing to make a judgement which a person of proper sensitivity would make.''(Kemp,op.cit,p.106) . Nick here has no response to Owl-Eyes' But what do you want ? What do you expect ? (52) . He is just beginning to experience the surface Gatsby--'old sport', over-formal behaviour, the excessive flourish of possessions, a galaxy of fly-by-night guests, the God's truth (71) of family wealth and tradition culminating in the current outcrop of purposeless splendour (85) next door : the Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn (8) . Nick comes closer to Wolfshiem's and Owl-Eyes' perception of Gatsby as he progressively uncovers purpose in Gatsby's life, its parameters, and the real truth of the essential Gatsby . This purpose--to repeat the past, to recreate the scenario whence arose Gatsby's transcendent vision--is annulled with the loss of Daisy, the vital factor in that scenario . It is only then that Gatsby incarnates Kant's definition of beauty : ''purposiveness without purpose''. That purposiveness is ''the result of the activity of our own contemplating mind, and it is this activity which supplies the element of purposiveness'' (Kemp,op.cit.,p.104) . Gatsby bereft of Daisy is 'without purpose', but his subsequent disinterested activity--self-sacrifice in the assumption of guilt ; and maintaining the vigil--these are what the contemplating minds of Wolfshiem and Owl-Eyes recognised in Gatsby before this, and what Nick recognises now : 'You're worth the whole damn bunch put together (160) . The essential Gatsby is a thing of beauty, aesthetic and, at the crux, moral : a perfect gentleman .
Nick's presence in situ has afforded the reduction of the sublime, the great, the incommensurable Gatsby to the commensurable and the beautiful . But something else in situ, something beyond Nick's compass, is at work diminishing Gatsby's greatness, and we may come to it by way of Vladmir Tostoff (56), jazz composer. Tostoff, i.e. 'tossed off', connotes written speedily, in a short space of time, and with a certain defiant nonchalance . As for Tostoff's composition, a Jazz History of the World is a contradiction in terms . Jazz consists ''almost entirely of variations on a ground, it is music with no before and after . It is unconcerned with the process of Becoming and exists...in the immediate physical moment . In its more extravagant flights it tends to encourage a state of trance ; and in that sense may be said, like primitive orgiastic music, to carry one outside Time'' (A.Harman and W.Mellers,Man and his Music,p.1005). As for 'Vladmir', it is a syncopated version of the Russian forename 'Vladimir', and one notes that jazz is syncopated music .
An overview of Gatsby's parties shows girls constantly swooning [Latin,'syncopare', to swoon] . This one grabs an instrument and plays extempore. Another starts dancing on the whim of the moment . Nick's eye is restless, speeding ['jazz' is Creole for 'to speed up'] through a succession of present happenings . The atmosphere is one of instant, electric, yellow light imbuing all and sundry : yellow cocktail music (46), turkeys bewitched to a dark gold (45), girls in yellow (49) . By contrast with this noisy celebration of the frenetic instant is the Buchanan mansion, with its lawn like the tide in stasis (12-13), and its crimson room wherein Daisy and Jordan, like Aeolian harps, are wafted by the breeze but produce no sound--sound in stasis . The cultural lines so drawn are distinct and seem utterly exclusive one of the other . But Nick marks, in the lives of Midwesterners here in the East, an increasing incidence of the Eastern motif, syncopation , in terms of its Greek etymology ['syn',with ; 'koptein', to strike] : we've got to beat them [the African Americans, the originators of jazz] down (19) ; McKee with his fists clenched (43) ; Dan Cody beating his way along...Lake Superior (105) ; Slagle [ from German 'Schlag', blow/punch] ; the Punch Bowl (138) ; Tom striking Myrle with his fist ; and of course the climactic 'syncopation'--the car striking Myrtle down, and out .
Gatsby is part of this pattern of syncopation that transforms stable Midwesterners into unstable participants in the frenetic instant . His choice of identity, 'Jay Gatsby', eschews, unlike Dan Cody and Chester McKee, any identity with his home state, and obscures the family name, Gatz . In short, Gatsby elides, syncopates the Midwest by not following the example of Cody, but rather, by having a privately significant surname . The world he chooses to operate in is the East, the East is rife with syncopation, and Gatsby partakes, syncopating 'Gatte', 'husband, spouse' down to 'Gat..' and burying that within an Old England surname of repute . The pervasive influence of syncopation, jazz tempo and Eastern ambience is so complete that he makes the unconscionable request of Daisy that she syncopate, on the instant, her marriage and five years of married life . Tom's response to this threat is to syncopate Gatsby out of the Eastern Midwesterners' lives .
The entire 'Eastern experience' takes place within earshot of Long Island Sound, and the social distance that East Eggers would keep from West is as irrelevant as that between Swift's Big-Endians and Little-Endians : sound, tempo, ambience--these are immanent, and they dissolve social distinctions into a nightmarish night scene by El Greco (183) . Effective distance, and therefore safety, is only to be had somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night (188) . This is Nick thinking in situ, on West Egg beach, and the description lacks the sense of wonder that the Dutch sailors felt on first seeing the old island (187) . Their experience was of what Kant called '' the dynamically sublime, [which] as its name suggests, concerns the power of natural objects rather than size'' (Kemp,op.cit.,p.111). By contrast, Nick's ruminations on beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on...are what Kant would style the ''mathematically sublime'' : he is considering a commensurable and commensurated continent . It lacks power, because it is known : in effect, it lacks the power to surprise . The Midwest has, assuredly, a stability ensuing from social continuity : old dim Union Station...old acquaintances...a city where dwellings are still called through decades by a family's name (182-3) . But Nick's appreciation is of ambience there : fur coats...the chatter of frozen breath...the winter night and the real snow, our snow . It is the known become dynamic, not made dynamic, as were Gatsby's parties : natural as opposed to artificial sublimity . And Nick's Middle West consists in the homeward-bound, simultaneous experience of it all : the thrilling returning trains of my youth...the shadows of holly wreaths thrown by lighted windows on the snow (183) . That world has such place, it is such a seminal experience, for Nick that it equates to his 'Platonic moment of self-renewal' necessitating a renaming of himself from whatever he was before to how he perceives 'Nick Carraway' as capturing his essence now : Saint Nicholas in the railway car en route away from the East .
This identity is only made clear, only allowed, to us the readers here at the close of G.G. because only by now does he wish it imparted--if one reads the terminist signs--that he feels himself fitted now to judge knowledgeably on the East and West, and therefore to be like St Nicholas : a patron of travellers . Midwesterners travelling home west can simultaneously experience and anticipate the dynamical sublimity intrinsic to a known, communal life : it is a realisable abiding dream, an opportunity of becoming what you already are there ahead--intrinsic to community and ambience . Gatsby's dream is to become what he once was : a purposeless wanderer on the verge of experiencing a vision that unveils purpose in his life . However much he is 'Gatte', 'spouse' to Daisy of the melodic voice, his self-absorbed journey is solitary and, he thinks, self-determined . Alas, however much Gatsby thinks he controls the pace--from wealth to West Egg mansion to Jordan to Nick to Daisy--of his approach towards the dream, that pace takes on the dynamism of the Eastern, jazz tempo, and speeds Gatsby on to extinction . For the Midwesterner who journeys east with dreams for the future, this is his likely fate . If the Great Gatsby succumbs, then assuredly one fine morning-- (188) . St Nicholas knows best . And his best is threefold :
(1) a green light or the green breast of the new world only once is wondrous
and promissory of fulfilment of a dream : before the dream is actualised,
experienced, and known ;
(2) a green light beheld within the East--such as Daisy's--has, apart from the
promise of the known, the Eastern quality of the artificial instant : it can be
immediately switched off by others, as Daisy is by the Buchanan marital
secret conspiracy ;
(3) the known can still offer the sublime, but only where that sublimity proceeds
naturally from a known community affectionately envisioned, and that sublimity
is available for the price of a long green ticket (182) .
At the start, Nick's pioneering journey from Midwest into Eastern perils is made not by choice, but pushed by his parents . Once on it, this effete pioneer keeps distance from people, yet hopes to track and read their essences from a highly personal obsession with names and a conviction that those names partly mask but--for a self-paradedly sharp mind like his--will assuredly impart the owners' essences . That procedure tried and found wanting, he goes beyond and homes in on apparently complex persons, first Chester, then Gatsby, each a challenge to his tracker powers, as at a distance from the subject he tries to read the sum of what their complexity or diaspora is, as so much track, trace or spoor--all, as with a tracker, a challenge to his thought, his powers, his intuition . Throwing his level of caution to the winds and engaging close up with this specially tracked duo--Nick discovers--is the convincingly sure way to omniscience on them, to unveil Chester as aesthetically lightweight, and to find true in Gatsby what Wolfshiem and Owl-Eyes utterly believe to be true of him--that he is the perfect gentleman . The journey made, the tracking over, the tracked gone to banality or death, Nick the omniscient and now redactor of Eastern events into a narration presents those events after an Ockham's Razor sweep through them, leaving a palette of the gorgeous, the incongruous, the idiosyncratic which the now author paints on a canvas to glorify the Great Gatsby, when really it is an exercise in revealing his own hubris, effeteness and timidity, so much as to say : ''I do not have the stuff of greatness, of Gatsby's greatness, so let me just get my green ticket and go home in the cars to what I know. After all, I have come into my strength, and words obey my call .''
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