Bookraft

Long Island, great riches, and a book that reads like a Greek tragedy - such is the Great Gatsby. And I would not have "read" it if for the opportune chance of getting a discarded audio copy. I was afraid that the audio tracks were scratched .. and thats why it was thrown away. Not so.


So maybe the theme of excesses of the roaring 20's and the Jazz age had something to do with the books demise. Or maybe Financiers and the designated Masters of the Universe was just too much to stomach in these times of withdrawal from Financial Failure. Who knows, Sport. But like the accidental, almost voyeuristic visitor that is Nick Carraway into the lives of Gatsby, Daisy, Tom and I found myself drawn into this tale of loves and idle richness obsessive.

And F. Scott Fitzgerald's uncanny throw away word pearls and phosphorescent phrases catches the mood of the gaudy era - but in a Greek tragic fashion. It is as if the descriptive leaps were like a chorus warning of deeper running emotive rivers than the code of rich casualness would allow to be put on display. Its a world periodically lost and refound among the People of Tyco, Goldman, Morgan, Madoff, Lehman and Bear Stearns. It is a Countrywide Obsession revisited once a generation or two .. or until the Bubble Bursts too Big and Gaudy for even us to endure the Great Moral Hazard.