Re: The Perfect Jay
Tim O'Connor (tim@roughdraft.org)
Wed, 01 Apr 1998 01:04:07 -0500
> Come to think of it, Woody Allen would have been good for the big pair
> of eyes with the glasses...
I think everyone wants to be T.J. Eckleburg!
Last summer I had the misfortune to more than occasionally take the train
along the Gatsby trail (the ash heaps are no more, but the Eggs are still
there), and it was brilliant and eerie to see how much of it still can be
imagined.
Then a friend sent me a recording of the book, read by Alexander Scoursby,
and I used to walk to work listening to it in headphones. Again, some
parts of the city haven't changed much since the book was written, and when
in those parts and listening to the narrative, it made me shiver.
Has anyone read the new editions of Fitzgerald? The Cambridge Edition is a
wonderful, wonderful new edition, which footnotes out-of-reach cultural
references and clarifies some of the illogical parts of the book. That and
the new version of The Last Tycoon. Take 'em on a long train ride (though
not to the eastern part of Long Island, among the crowds!), and you may
fall in love again with Fitzgerald.
But I don't think Woody Allen does billboards. 8-(
--tim eckleburg ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H o'connor