Created, realized, and inevitably disappointing



I'm reading The Great Gatsby right now, which I haven't touched since I was 17. It's one of the books I read in my American literature class the very first semester of my very first attempt at college (which was a lot longer ago than I like to remember sometimes). I liked it at the time, mostly for the beautiful way Fitzgerald put together every word in every sentence in every paragraph. Reading it was like reading a really long, slightly melancholy poem. (At the time, I was very drawn to the slightly melancholy, as I was feeling more than a little melancholy myself.)



But now...now I get it on a whole other level. The American Dream: created, realized, and inevitably disappointing. American destiny as a self-made non-destiny, a grabbing of the bull by the proverbial horns. As to the overall mood of the novel, rather than slight melancholy, I now sense instead Nick Carraway's head-shaking cynical detachment as he recalls the summer he knew Gatsby. Amazing.



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On a completely unrelated note, we drove through SNOW Friday night on the way to my grandparents' house. Needless to say, Georgia broke all kinds of low temperature records the past few days. Brrr.

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