Peter Galen Massey

Julie Bosman published an interesting article on the front page of the The New York Times yesterday about competing cover designs for two paperback editions of The Great Gatsby. (The article is here.)  The first is a re-issue of the classic Gatsby cover familiar to readers old enough to have read Fitzgerald’s masterpiece in high school or college. The second is the tie-in edition for the movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio and directed by that genius of brilliant excess — or hawker of wretched excess, take your pick — Baz Luhrmann.

Much of the article describes the different markets at which the two cover designs are targeted, and different sales strategies behind each. Readers already familiar with the novel are likely to choose the classic design, while readers just discovering the book are more likely to be attracted by the movie version.

Behind one of these strategies, however, are certain attitudes toward literature which I find — well, let me be gentle in my expressions here — contemptible. Allow me to explain:

How does the cover design of The Great Gatsby change the novel? (Hint: It doesn’t.)

Assuming that texts in today’s competing versions of The Great Gatsby are identical, how do the differing cover designs affect the experience of reading the novel?

The answer is they don’t. Just like reading Gatsby on a tablet rather than on paper doesn’t change the experience, as long as you think what is essential about a novel is reading the text. Is engaging the words on the page. Is entering into a conversation with the author as you read the book.

Now, the cover design can influence your expectations of a novel you haven’t read. And if those expectations are different than your reading experience, you may come to a different conclusion about the book than you might have otherwise. But all sorts of things influence our expectations of a book. Its status in the canon. The opinions of reviewers and friends. Advertising. Our mood and experiences. Our age.

But once you’ve read a book, how does anything other than having read it affect your expectations on re-reading it? Especially a novel like The Great Gatsby, which a lot of people have read. Or put another way…

If the cover design of The Great Gatsby doesn’t matter, why does anyone care?

Because people do care. Or at least we know for certain that one SoHo bookseller quoted in the article cares, because he says so. “It’s just God-awful,” he says, referring to the movie tie-in version. (I agree, by the way. It is pretty bad.)

But it doesn’t sound like this bookseller objects to the fact the cover design is ugly. Allow me to quote the article.

As to whether the new, DiCaprio-ed edition of “Gatsby” would be socially acceptable to carry around in public, [I’ve withheld  the name, you can find it in the article] offered a firm no. “I think it would bring shame,” he said, “to anyone trying to read that book on the subway.”

Shame. Really. Why?  Is it because the important thing about The Great Gatsby is not reading The Great Gatsby but being seen reading The Great Gatsby — especially being seen reading an edition of The Great Gatsby which signifies that you aren’t some hick coming late to the art party?

I realize I’m speculating aggressively here, with a certain amount of snark, but it’s hard to think what else our bookseller friend might have meant.

Also, while I’m at it, why the hell would you care what strangers in a city of 8.3 million people think of you? Are you likely to ever see them again? What’s the point of trying to impress people you don’t know?

Also, while I’m at it, shouldn’t we be happy if a person decides to read The Great Gatsby because the movie-cover persuaded him to pick it up? Shouldn’t we hope more people will read the books we like? I would think the answer to these questions is “yes”.

Unless of course the point of great novels is not to read them or share them, but to use these books to create an exclusive club that allows us to feel special and look down on everyone else.

Allow me to be blunt. If I haven’t been already. People who use art to bolster their social status or personal vanity are philistines. They don’t care about art. For them, it’s just another accessory to flash, like a fancy watch or a cocktail  made with a certain brand of liquor.

And people who use art to exclude or denigrate others are the mortal enemies of art; enemies because the purpose of art is to connect and communicate, to inspire and delight, to comfort and challenge, to upset and exhaust, but always to leave us with a deeper experience of the life and consciousness and creation we share.

There is no connecting in an exclusive club, just arrogance and self-congratulation and rigid insularity and pettiness. These are pretty contemptible qualities.

I think I’ll pass on the opportunity to join and go get the new ugly Gatsby instead. I hear it’s available at Walmart.

Somewhat Related Content

Here’s a post on the aura of art that got started by a discussion in the comment section below.

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Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange succeeds purely on the strength of its narrator’s voice – but what a voice!

The novel’s story is told by 15-year-old Alex who lives in a vaguely dystopian, vaguely futuristic country that seems to be Britain.  Alex can check off every item under the DSM definition of sociopath. He bullies his parents and friends. He brutally assaults people at random. He gang-rapes a woman, rapes two young girls, and kills an old woman while trying to burglar her house. Alex regards this as all good youthful fun. When confronted by authorities, he knows how to pantomime innocence or remorse. When punished, he laments that no one cares or feels sorry for poor Alex.

All this promises to make Alex pretty ugly company, but sociopaths are often noted for their charm and wit, and Alex  has these in aplenty – not to mention exuberance, intelligence, formidable powers of observation, and a passionate love of classic music.

He also has the advantage of “nadsat,” the famous Russian-influence English slang Burgess invented for Alex, which puts the violence Alex commits at a remove from the reader and lends it a fantastical, almost fairy-tale quality.

Burgess described A Clockwork Orange as a “jeu d’esprit” that he wrote in three weeks, and it certainly feels like a book created in a burst of white-hot inspiration and imagination.

And it is a good thing, too. Because the “philosophical” parts of the novel, for which A Clockwork Orange is often complimented, strike me as (at best) heavy-handed and (at worst) laughably obvious.

So the philosophical meditation part of A Clockwork Orange goes like this.

First, Alex runs around assaulting, raping, and murdering. Then he is sent to prison where he is subjected to  behavior modification that physically incapacitates him any time he thinks about committing violence.  Then he un-behavior modifies himself by jumping out a window. Then he decides it’s time to grow up,  find a nice wife, and have a cute baby.

Get it?

In case you don’t,  Burgess sprinkles handy hints throughout the novel. So there is a book within a book, also titled “A Clockwork Orange,” from which Alex helpfully reads a summary passage on how you shouldn’t turn men into mindless machines. There is also the prison chaplain, just before Alex goes for his behavior modification therapy,  worrying out loud to the young man:

Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?

Burgess leaves us in no doubt of the answer to this question, and since he has created the world in which the question is asked, he gets to arrange his “facts” and “reality” to support his talking points. (Ayn Rand was a great one for doing that too.)

A Clockwork Orange is also noted for its satirical elements, and these were better than the philosophy, but not exactly revelatory. The police, politicians, Christianity, and what look like Communist intellectuals all get a good bracing spank and that was fine.

For me, one of the interesting things about reading A Clockwork Orange was how it compared and contrasted to Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock.

Greene’s novel features Pinkie, another murderous teenage British sociopath at the center of another “novel as meditation” – this time on the nature of sin and morality. Greene’s novel doesn’t deliver the same jolt of pure linguistic bliss as A Clockwork Orange, but it doesn’t bludgeon you with its themes either. It’s a close call, but I like Greene’s book a little better. I would fully recommend reading both, however.

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