Party, party, party!
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is a masterpiece of literature, written from the point of view of Nick Carraway – a character who is on the periphery of the main events. When Nick moves in next door to Jay Gatsby he has a unique perspective of the preparation before and the devastation after Gatsby’s parties.
Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer in New York—every Monday these same oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves. There was a machine in the kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour if a little button was pressed two hundred times by a butler’s thumb.
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
This story is all about excess; Gatsby uses the excess of his parties as flypaper to attract his lost love – Daisy Buchanan – back to him. The description of the oranges being mechanically juiced also reminds us of the context of the 1920s – this was when Henry Ford invented the assembly line – and here it is being used in Gatsby’s kitchen.
At least once a fortnight a corps of caterers came down with several hundred feet of canvas and enough colored lights to make a Christmas tree of Gatsby’s enormous garden. On buffet tables, garnished with glistening hors d’œuvre, spiced baked hams crowded against salads of harlequin designs and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark gold. In the main hall a bar with a real brass rail was set up, and stocked with gins and liquors and with cordials so long forgotten that most of his female guests were too young to know one from another.
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
The 1920s ‘Jazz Age’ sense of excess – of plenty and profusion – is displayed in the way that Fitzgerald uses images of light and colour to celebrate Gatsby’s glorious garden parties. As well as the visual, Fitzgerald gives us taste, texture, scent and a hint of a medieval feast as the tables groan beneath savoury roast meats and jewel bright salads. The pasties are “bewitched to a dark gold” as if by magic; the “liquor” and “cordials” are “long forgotten” – arcane, mysterious and other worldly. This is potent imagery, especially in an American novel written at a time when resurgent Puritan codes of sobriety were the law during the era of prohibition.
The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun, and now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music, and the opera of voices pitches a key higher. Laughter is easier minute by minute, spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word. The groups change more swiftly, swell with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the same breath; already there are wanderers, confident girls who weave here and there among the stouter and more stable, become for a sharp, joyous moment the center of a group, and then, excited with triumph, glide on through the sea-change of faces and voices and color under the constantly changing light. Suddenly one of these gypsies, in trembling opal, seizes a cocktail out of the air, dumps it down for courage and, moving her hands like Frisco, dances out alone on the canvas platform. A momentary hush; the orchestra leader varies his rhythm obligingly for her, and there is a burst of chatter as the erroneous news goes around that she is Gilda Gray’s understudy from the Follies. The party has begun. I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby’s house I was one of the few guests who had actually been invited.
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Fitzgerald writes a brilliant description of a party. He uses long, loose sentences to build up the excitement; he uses images of movement “lurch”, “swell”, “weave”, “dissolve and form” and “glide on through the sea-change of faces” to bring the party to life. Sounds are evoked as well ; the “opera of voices” increases in volume as people have a few drinks, until the dramatic moment of “a momentary hush” to focus on one girl dancing. Fitzgerald creates a rhythm in the party, a sense of magic that strikes true as the reader is carried along with the ebb and flow of movement, colour and sound. Nick’s irony cuts through the glamour as he observes that “the erroneous news goes around that she is Gilda Gray’s understudy from the Follies” and he was “one of the few guests who had actually been invited.”
The Great Gatsby is a great book. Its characters and scenes are compelling and real, and its ideas are still relevant as we grapple with love, nostalgia and consumerism in this post-industrial 21st century.
Now we have heard how Mrs. Sedley had prepared a fine curry for her son, just as he liked it, and in the course of dinner a portion of this dish was offered to Rebecca. “What is it?” said she, turning an appealing look to Mr. Joseph. “Capital,” said he. His mouth was full of it: his face quite red with the delightful exercise of gobbling. “Mother, it’s as good as my own curries in India.” “Oh, I must try some, if it is an Indian dish,” said Miss Rebecca. “I am sure everything must be good that comes from there.” “Give Miss Sharp some curry, my dear,” said Mr. Sedley, laughing. Rebecca had never tasted the dish before. “Do you find it as good as everything else from India?” said Mr. Sedley. “Oh, excellent!” said Rebecca, who was suffering tortures with the cayenne pepper. “Try a chili with it, Miss Sharp,” said Joseph, really interested. “A chili,” said Rebecca, gasping. “Oh yes!” She thought a chili was something cool, as its name imported, and was served with some. “How fresh and green they look,” she said, and put one into her mouth. It was hotter than the curry; flesh and blood could bear it no longer. She laid down her fork. “Water, for Heaven’s sake, water!” she cried.
Ex Libris Gusto 