![]() As a novelist, Smith appreciates the gaps he gets to fill: “You got the look of not telling everything,” a supply clerk on the front tells Nick. Well, there’s Nick, the sole character prominent enough, yet also enough of a blank, to make the effort seemingly worth the while. A novel about Daisy would only underscore her flightiness a novel about Tom would only underscore his selfish swagger. ![]() A novel about the inner Gatsby would only dispel the myth he created around himself, and the novel already does that. “Gatsby,” though, is more a universe unto itself, the product of the interlocking delusions and deceits of its characters. Jane Austen fans have endured all manner of reboots and reconsiderations, from zombies on down, because her themes are so big and flexible: courtship, friendship, the institutions that narrow women’s options and bloat men’s arrogance. When Gatsby’s glitzy facade, built to regain Daisy Buchanan’s affections, has begun to collapse, Nick pleads: “You can’t repeat the past.” Gatsby explodes: “Why of course you can!” Cue car accident, gunshots, pool, foreboding green light, foreboding billboard, boats against the current, etc. Nursing a broken heart, he spends the latter portions of the novel having the kind of experiences that might reasonably prepare him to process the tragedy on Long Island.įitzgerald made that point so plain that countless American high-schoolers learned about hubris through him. He’s a decorated purveyor of Southern gothic fiction with five novels behind him, and he sells the reader on Nick’s PTSD, as well as the idea that he might have taken a detour to New Orleans between France and West Egg. The problem isn’t that Smith is a poor writer. There’s a lot of that in “Nick,” an earnest but humid and ill-advised attempt to deepen a top-tier candidate for the Great American Novel by applying some backstory to its least interesting character. “Here’s how Nick became the perfect narrator for ‘Gatsby.’” You can practically feel the elbow jabbing your ribs. Despondent, he takes a dangerous post in the battleground tunnels, listening for Germans planting explosives. But tragedy, in both love and war, is abundant. In Paris during breaks from the horrors of trench warfare, he’s fallen hard for Ella, a bohemian picture framer who scrapes by in a theater attic. Scott Fitzgerald’s immortal “Gatsby” - is a soldier in France during World War I. Nick - that is, Nick Carraway, the narrator of F. We’re not far into “ Nick,” Michael Farris Smith’s new prequel to “ The Great Gatsby,” before its hero has experienced enough combat, free living and disillusionment to launch the Jazz Age all by his lonesome. If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from, whose fees support independent bookstores.
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