![]() The Levy adaptation of the novel focuses on the time of the jazz age, but Fitzgerald also had in mind a larger pessimistic sense of history. Eliot's poem "The Waste Land" was published. It is also no accident that three years earlier than the novel, T.S. In the novel, for example, Nick at the end places the events in an interpretation of history as a declension from the time when the continent was first glimpsed by Dutch sailors' eyes in New York, a moment when it was commensurate "for the last time in history" to man's "capacity for wonder." What dominates the present in Nick's mind, however, is a sense of what Oswald Spengler called "The Decline of the West," which Fitzgerald had read. They tend therefore to be sacrificed to what can be visually presented. They can only be spoken directly to the audience. But much of the meaning of the novel depends upon Nick Carraway's interpretation of the story as it proceeds, and those passages can't be visually dramatized. The Guthrie has all the bells and whistles you can imagine for the staging of the play. It will be soon followed by a staged reading of the novel (six hours and a half!) at the Walker Art Museum in Minneapolis. Paul, so it is appropriate for the anniversary of his birth to present a new version in Minneapolis. My wife and I recently saw in Minneapolis at the new Guthrie Theater the world premiere of "The Great Gatsby," adapted by Simon Levy, and the first authorized stage version of the novel since 1926. ![]()
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