Tuesday
Now and then, I return to novels such as The Great Gatsby and try to figure out their wonder. It of course ruins it all, most times, the figuring it out, but now and then the process energizes me to use some of their brilliant strategies in my own work. In Gatsby, I love how Fitzgerald has created a Daisy—that symbol of the state of the world—and there's some lovely passages that get at the center of things.
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“Perhaps you know that lady.” Gatsby indicated a gorgeous, scarcely human orchid of a woman who sat in state under a white plum tree. Tom and Daisy stared, with that peculiarly unreal feeling that accompanies the recognition of a hitherto ghostly celebrity of the movies.
“She’s lovely,” said Daisy.
“The man bending over her is her director.”
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It was like that. Almost the last thing I remember was standing with Daisy and watching the moving-picture director and his Star. They were still under the white plum tree and their faces were touching except for a pale, thin ray of moonlight between. It occurred to me that he had been very slowly bending toward her all evening to attain this proximity, and even while I watched I saw him stoop one ultimate degree and kiss at her cheek.
“I like her,” said Daisy, “I think she’s lovely.”
But the rest offended her—and inarguably, because it wasn’t a gesture but an emotion. She was appalled by West Egg, this unprecedented “place.” that Broadway had begotten upon a Long Island fishing village—appalled by its raw vigor that chafed under the old euphemisms and by the too obtrusive fate that herded its inhabitants along a short-cut from nothing to nothing. She saw something awful in the very simplicity she failed to understand.
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I so love how Fitzgerald emphasizes her innocence through the portrayal of the movie star. The "human orchid of a woman"—another flower—Fitzgerald repeatedly associates with whiteness; she is a ghost, a star, attached to moonlight and the "white plum tree." This lady emerges as a figure of purity, something more idea than flesh, something innocent shining against the black backdrop. The orchid—rare, delicate, expensive—symbolizes sophistication and elegance, a precious fragility, something more spirit than material. More phantom than flesh, she is linked to "unreality," to the movies, to the world of dreams and illusions. Twice, Daisy characterizes her as "lovely," a sign that this "gesture" of love is what Daisy loves, what attracts her.
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But daisies aren't only white, they contain yellow, just as an egg does, the yellow the sign of corruption that prevents eggs and daisies from being entirely pure. Daisy loves gestures, euphemisms, unobtrusiveness—all things that cover what is real, that "raw" emotion, the idea made flesh. What a gesture does is express some underlying emotion, a cover for it, something that replaces the emotion itself. The preference for a gesture over an emotion, then, becomes a corruption, for the pure emotion is what is real; the gesture is a diminished form. If gestures of love, rather than the love itself is what Daisy wants, then she will be clearly attracted to Gatsby's unfathomable gesture of love, his becoming Gatsby for her—"bending toward her…to attain this proximity"—at the same time she will recoil when he desires this idea of love to be made real, be born into flesh.
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And therein lies the corruption not only in Daisy, but in the world itself. The stars that once shone in the heavens have now fallen to earth, illusory figures flickering across America, followed by hordes of fans. For Gatsby, Daisy is such a figure, an idea of heaven, of transcendence, of a purity unrecoverable in the world—and all would be fine as long as no moment arises when love needs to be made material, when the emotion behind all the gestures needs to be fully realized. Then, that which was once lovely transforms into "something awful," something appalling—and the world he has created in the West Egg will crack, an egg, looking remarkably, with its yellow center and white edges, like a Daisy.
