'The Great Gatsby' at 100

Summary

Podcast Summary: "The Great Gatsby at 100"

Podcast Information:

• Title: The Book Review
• Host/Author: Gilbert Cruz, Editor of The New York Times Book Review
• Episode Title: The Great Gatsby at 100
• Release Date: April 11, 2025
• Guests: A.O. Scott (referred to as Tony Scott), Critic at Large, The New York Times Book Review

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Introduction

In the centennial episode of The Book Review, host Gilbert Cruz celebrates the 100th anniversary of F. Scott Fitzgerald's iconic novel, The Great Gatsby. Joining him is A.O. Scott, affectionately called Tony within the New York Times Book Review team, who delves into the novel's enduring legacy, its thematic depth, and its various cultural adaptations over the past century.

Plot Overview

Gilbert Cruz begins the discussion by providing a succinct plot summary of The Great Gatsby, drawing from Paul Sagal's 2020 piece:

"Nick Carraway, our narrator, moves next door to the mysteriously wealthy Jay Gatsby on Long Island. Gatsby is pining for Nick's cousin Daisy. His glittering life is a lure to impress her and win her back. Daisy is married to the brutish Tom Buchanan, who is having an affair with Myrtle. The tale culminates in Myrtle's tragic death and Gatsby's subsequent murder, leaving the Buchanans to retreat into their wealth, leaving Nick to reflect in disgust." (01:17)

Tony Scott adds depth to this summary by highlighting Nick Carraway's role as more than just a passive narrator:

"There is that kind of extra layer of his perspective, and he often disappears. The vivid characters—Daisy, Gatsby, and Tom—are seen through Nick's viewpoint, which colors and influences everything we perceive about them." (02:32)

Themes and Analysis

When asked about the essence of The Great Gatsby, Tony Scott emphasizes the novel's multifaceted exploration of American society:

"It's about the United States in the 1920s—prosperity, the aftermath of war and pandemic, the erosion of traditional constraints, new money, and shifting morals. It's a critical and satirical view of America then, but also delves into broader questions of identity, class, and what it means to belong or be an outsider in American life." (03:03)

He further explores Jay Gatsby's enigmatic nature, discussing his true identity as James Gatz and his mysterious accumulation of wealth, questioning:

"What makes someone belong in American society? How do class, race, and ethnicity define who is considered 'American'?" (04:00)

Reception History

Tony Scott traces the novel's journey from its lukewarm initial reception to its status as an American literary staple:

"When The Great Gatsby was first published, it wasn't well-received. Critics saw it as a misfire, something too tied to its time without lasting appeal. Reviews ranged from dismissive to outright negative, signaling the beginning of Fitzgerald's decline as a novelist." (09:10)

However, the novel experienced a resurgence during and after World War II. It was widely distributed among American soldiers through the US Armed Forces paperback edition, embedding itself in the consciousness of both veterans and future literary critics like Lionel Trilling, who elevated its status within academic circles.

"By the post-war era, Gatsby transformed from a period satire to a universal study of modern man's predicament, paralleling characters like Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye." (13:04)

This revival mirrored that of other classics like Herman Melville's Moby Dick, illustrating how initial obscurity can give way to canonical reverence over time.

Adaptations

The conversation turns to the various film adaptations of The Great Gatsby, highlighting differences in interpretation and reception:

1. 1926 Silent Film: Now lost to time, it remains a historical footnote.

2. 1949 Version: Starring Alan Ladd as Gatsby and Shelley Winters as Myrtle, this adaptation faced criticism for altering key narrative elements due to the production code, resulting in a less faithful retelling.

3. 1974 Adaptation: Featuring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow, this version is noted for its reverent and somewhat ethereal portrayal, capturing the novel's melancholic undertones.

4. 2013 Version: Directed by Baz Luhrmann and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, this adaptation injects modern sensibilities with a vibrant soundtrack featuring Jay-Z. Tony Scott praises it for bridging the Jazz Age with contemporary culture:

   "Luhrmann's Gatsby connects the story to modern popular culture, making it both credible and exciting for today's audience." (23:17)

Tony contrasts the performances of Redford and DiCaprio, noting how each actor embodies different facets of Gatsby's complex character—Redford with a subdued melancholy and DiCaprio with a blend of ambition and naive innocence.

Notable Quotes and Their Significance

The episode highlights several memorable quotes from the novel that encapsulate its themes:

• Tom Buchanan's Bigotry:

  "Mr. Nobody from Nowhere." (26:20)

  This epithet reflects Tom's contemptuous view of Gatsby, underscoring themes of classism and prejudice.

• Carelessness of the Wealthy:

  "They were careless people, Tom and Daisy. They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money." (28:46)

  This passage critiques the moral recklessness of the affluent, a central theme in the novel.

Tony Scott also references the novel's lyrical passages, such as Gatsby's nostalgic ambition:

"Gatsby saw the blocks of the sidewalk really formed a ladder... he could suck on the pap of life, gulp down the incomparable milk of wonder." (20:17)

He contrasts this with Nick's more grounded perspective, highlighting the delicate balance between idealism and realism in the narrative.

Cultural Reinterpretations

The podcast touches on unique adaptations like the theatrical production "Gatz" by Elevator Repair Service, where actors perform a seven-hour staged reading of the entire novel. This innovative approach transforms the text into a dynamic theatrical experience, breathing new life into Fitzgerald's prose.

Additionally, Tony Scott mentions pop culture references, such as Andy Kaufman's comedic renditions of Gatsby's reading, which paradoxically led to the creation of engaging theater experiences, demonstrating the novel's versatility across mediums.

Recommendations for Readers

Addressing the challenge of approaching a century-old classic, Tony Scott advises potential readers to dive in without apprehension:

"Start reading it, and within five or six pages, you will be hooked. It has wild parties, heroes, villains, tragedy, comedy, satire, and crime—all elements of a compelling read packed into about 150 pages." (31:00)

He emphasizes that The Great Gatsby offers something for everyone, blending entertainment with profound thematic depth, making it accessible and enriching for modern readers.

Conclusion

As The Great Gatsby celebrates its 100th anniversary, this episode of The Book Review underscores its enduring significance in American literature. Through Tony Scott's insightful analysis, listeners gain a deeper appreciation for its complex characters, timeless themes, and cultural adaptations that continue to keep Fitzgerald's masterpiece relevant today.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

1. Tony Scott on Nick's Perspective:

   "There is that kind of extra layer of his perspective, and he often disappears. The vivid characters... are seen through Nick's viewpoint, which colors and influences everything we perceive about them." (02:32)

2. Tom Buchanan's Contempt:

   "Mr. Nobody from Nowhere." (26:20)

3. Carelessness of the Wealthy:

   "They were careless people, Tom and Daisy. They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money." (28:46)

4. Tony Scott's Recommendation:

   "Start reading it, and within five or six pages, you will be hooked. It has wild parties, heroes, villains, tragedy, comedy, satire, and crime—all elements of a compelling read packed into about 150 pages." (31:00)

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Final Remarks: Tony Scott's reflections provide a nuanced understanding of The Great Gatsby, encouraging both seasoned readers and newcomers to explore its rich narrative and enduring relevance. As the literary world marks a century since its publication, The Great Gatsby continues to illuminate the complexities of the American Dream and the human condition.

Transcript

[Tony Scott]

This podcast is supported by FX's Dying.

[Michelle Williams]

For Sex, starring Michelle Williams and Jenny Slate. The series follows Molly, who, after receiving a terminal cancer diagnosis, decides to leave her husband to explore the full breadth of her sexual desires. She gets the courage and support to go on this adventure from her best friend, Nikki, who stays by her side through it all. FX is Dying for Sex. All episodes now streaming on Hulu.

[Gilbert Cruz]

I'm Gilbert Cruz, editor of the New York Times Book Review, and this is the Book Review podcast. It's April, and this month marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of the Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel about America. The Roaring Twenties, New York City, wealth, class, love, tragedy, and one very powerful green light. Joining me this week is A.O. scott, a critic at large here at the Book Review. Tony, as we call him in house, recently wrote a piece looking at the evolution of Gatsby over those 100 years, as well as its many incarnations in culture, both high and low. Tony, welcome back.

[Tony Scott]

Great to be here, Gilbert.

[Gilbert Cruz]

For those of you who don't remember everything that happens in the Great Gatsby, because it's been a while since you've read it, I'm going to start, Tony, if that's okay, by quoting a piece that is not written by you, one that is written by your colleague, our colleague Paul Sagal, who wrote about the Great Gatsby in 2020, right when the book's copyright was about to expire. So this is how she describes the plot. You recall Nick Carraway, our narrator, who moves next door to the mysteriously wealthy Jay Gatsby on Long Island. Gatsby, it turns out, is pining for Nick's cousin Daisy. His glittering life is a lure to impress her, to win her back. Daisy is inconveniently married to the brutish Tom Buchanan, who in turn is carrying on with a married woman, the doomed Myrtle. Cue the parties, the affairs, Nick getting very queasy about it all. In a lurid climax, Myrtle is run over by a car driven by Daisy. Gatsby's blamed. Myrtle's husband shoots him dead in his pool and kills himself. And then the Buchanans discreetly leave town, their hands clean. Nick is writing this book, we understand, years later, in a frenzy of disgust. I always forget that last part, Tony. That he's writing a book. That he's writing a book about this all.

[Tony Scott]

Yes, that it is. There is that kind of extra layer of his perspective, and he often disappears. It's interesting, we think a lot. The vivid characters that we think about in this book are Daisy and Gatsby and Tom. And Nick is this sort of wallflower. And yet it is his perspective, it's his point of view that colors and influences everything that we see about the others.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Now, Tony, I just talked about the plot of the book. That's what happens. What would you say it's about?

[Tony Scott]

This is a really interesting question because I think one of the reasons that it's lasted as long as it has and has in so many different eras meant so many different things and so different readers, is that even though it's a quite short book, it seems to be about a lot of different things. It's about the United states in the 1920s, an era of great prosperity, an era that came after a devastating war and a devastating pandemic in which a lot of it felt that a lot of the traditional constraints and traditions were falling by the wayside and there was new money and new morals and anything went. It's partly about that. It's partly a kind of critical and satirical view of America in the 20s, but it's also about American life more generally and about in particular, I think, what it means to be on the inside or the outside of American life. So the thing about Jay Gatsby is he's, as we know, or spoiler alert, or whatever. He's not actually Jay Gatsby is not his name. His name is James Gatz and he's a very mysterious figure. His. The source of his money and the facts about his previous life and his background are somewhat mysterious. And it's revealed that he has connections to bootlegging and to gangsters and is in this old moneyed enclave of Long island amid a version of New York high society. And the question is, who is he? Where does he belong and therefore who belongs? What. What makes. What does it mean to be an outsider or to belong in American society? And what are the values or the kind of the anchoring facts of identity in this country? And I think it's the most intriguing and subtle and somewhat enigmatic aspect of the novel is that is what Fitzgerald thinks about that, about class, about identity, also about race and ethnicity and how they factor into the question of who's American.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Tony, I've read the Great Gatsby genuinely 15, 20 times. It helps that it's fairly short and beautifully written. I'm curious when you first recall reading Fitzgerald's book.

[Tony Scott]

I read it for the first time in a high school English class, which I think is true of a lot of people. I don't know if you did.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Certainly did. Certainly did, yeah.

[Tony Scott]

And because it's a very teachable book, there's themes in it. You can write about the symbolism of the green light at the end of the doc. You can write about the last sentence. So we beat on, boats against the current, drawn ceaselessly back into the past. What does that mean? There's a lot that's accessible for students and for student term papers. And as you say, it's a short book and not a very difficult book, although in its way, a very complex book. So I read it then and liked it anyway, even though I had read it in school, which is not always a guarantee of responding to or liking a book. I was quite taken with it and read a lot more Fitzgerald. And then I've read it again periodically. I certainly read it when I was in graduate school studying American literature. It was an important thing to study in the development of the modern American novel and literature of the 1920s. And then, yeah, I've kept coming back to it. And it is a very accessible, very readable, very entertaining book. But it's also one of those books. There's always something new in it. There's always a new angle that you discover. There's a new place where your attention lands. A different character, a different scene, a different theme. You notice things about the language. It's this very kind of lyrical, but also very sharp and satirical style that he writes in. So there's always something there to come.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Back to now without just reciting your entire piece, which is a wonderful read and it's wonderful to look at. For any listeners who haven't had a moment to check it out, look for A.O. scott's piece on Gatsby at 100. I'm curious how you approached telling the history and the modern resonances of a book that's very well known.

[Tony Scott]

That was one of the things that I was thinking about was how to approach it, because I thought it'd be interesting to do something at the centennial. It's a hundred years, and here's this book that still has a claim on our attention, that's still fresh in a way. But I wasn't at first sure what to do because there have been a lot of essays. Every few years, someone writes an essay. Either the Great Gatsby is overrated or the Great Gatsby is misunderstood. That sort of taking. Trying to fix on what is the essence of the book? What's the real truth of the Great Gatsby? What's the right way to read it? And I found I Was more interested in the history of how people had read it and just thinking about the different film adaptations that had been made. Thinking about the Robert Redford version and then the Leo DiCaprio, Buzz Luhrmann version, and then all kinds of curious facts about the book. It was not a well reviewed or a particularly commercially successful book when it started, and then it had a comeback. And as I went through looking for its different manifestations in popular culture, I found some really interesting things that I didn't know were there. That. That Charles Schulz of Peanuts had done some strips that were sort of about Gatsby, where he had Snoopy as Gatsby, which I thought was really charming and strange. And there's a Simpsons episode from a few years back called the Great Fatsby with a ph, which is this kind of a hip hop retelling of Gatsby. So I was looking around, not necessarily at the book itself, but at its. Its history, its reception, its reputation. It's the way it had been adapted into popular culture. There was, of course, Gatz, the staged reading of the whole play, which is an AM theater experience and a kind of improbable one. Like you could read. You could have some people just on a stage reading a book for seven hours and it would be the most electrifying thing that you'd ever seen in the theater. So I just thought, how could you tell this story without writing a whole book? Another one about the Great Gatsby in a way that you could just get some of the flavor of what this has been, of the different things that this book and this character have been.

[Gilbert Cruz]

I'd love for you to talk about how the book was, as you say, received initially and then how it came to sort of be absorbed into the bloodstream of American literary culture. Fitzgerald was a well known author, as you write. When he published the Great Gatsby, he had a couple hit books under his belt. And this one did not do as well.

[Tony Scott]

No, this one did not do as well. And the reviews were lukewarm. And he was, yes, he was a best selling author. He was already anointed as the voice of his generation. He was quite young, he was still in his 20s. And this was his third novel. And it was seen as a misfire and also as something that. This is one of the great ironies that would date that was too much about what was happening right then and didn't really have any kind of staying power. So one of the reviewers said, it's really. It's. I think in the new York Herald maybe said, this is a book for this season only. And that was one of the kind of reviews. Some of them just thought it was a dud, it was boring, it didn't know what it was about. And it was immediately adapted into a. Into a film which is now launched. But it didn't really sell very well. And it was maybe the beginning of Fitzgerald's decline. And he'd been a very fashionable novelist of the twenties. And by the 1930s he had gone out to Hollywood. His career as a novelist stumbled, even though he wrote after Gatsby. I think what is actually his masterpiece, Tender Is the Night.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Whoa, whoa.

[Tony Scott]

But I think so. That's the one I really love.

[Gilbert Cruz]

We'll do a bonus pod where we talk about Tender is the Night.

[Tony Scott]

But anyway, he was. By the time he died prematurely and tragically, he was more or less forgotten. He was. Has been. And the book was forgotten too, in.

[Gilbert Cruz]

The 90s, Moby Dick almost.

[Tony Scott]

It's like that. I mean, Moby Dick had a longer obscurity. But that was true too, that Melville was the bestselling author before Moby Dick. And then Moby Dick was published to just really hostile reviews. One of them was headlined Herman Melville Crazy. And that was the end of it. And he ended up. He lived a much longer time after that and ended up working in a customs house in New York. But we'll do another podcast about Moby Dick.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Right? But that was another book that was not appreciated in his time. And then a very long time later, it's considered to be one of the greats and revived.

[Tony Scott]

And it's always fascinating how those revivals happen, how a book goes from obscurity to just a sort of canonical status. And the thing that happened with Gatsby was World War II, for some reason, it was one of the books that was published by us in a US Armed Forces paperback edition that was given to American soldiers as they went off into combat. They would get a pack of Camels and some condoms and a copy of the Great Gatsby. And a lot of them read it. Then like 150,000 of those were printed. And by the end of the war it had started to come back. And there were also a number of critics who wrote, including Lionel Trilling, who was on his way to becoming maybe the academic critic certainly of the modern novel in the post war era. And he wrote an essay about Gatsby that was the introduction to a reissue. So it started humming into the academy and also started to get the attention of general readers. One of the people who may have read it in an Armed Forces edition was J.D. salinger, who served with the U.S. army during World War II, and who puts it in a few of his books. It's the book that Holden Caulfield talks about. So maybe the only book that Holden Caulfield and Catcher in the Rye kind of talks about with reverence is a book that the older brother that he worshiped got him to read. So in the book there's a parallel.

[Gilbert Cruz]

It feels like, between the narrators of those two books.

[Tony Scott]

Absolutely, absolutely. And I think what happened was, which is what is fascinating, I mean, you were talking about how the book changes is that in the 40s and 50s, it was not a satire of America in the 1920s, but became a much more general study of what they like to call in that era, in that post war era, the predicament of modern man. So Gatsby became a kind of an alienated, a tragic figure, not as the victim of a cruel class society, which may be how he might have looked in the 20s or how he might look now, but more as a sort of the malaise of modern life as a figure like Holden Caulfield or like Meursault in Camus the Stranger, or like the characters in the early Saul Bellow novel, someone who is fundamentally alienated, at odds with modern life, and becomes an archetype of a certain kind of modern personality. So that in my piece, I call that existence. And that is what brings really the novel to the center of attention in the 40s and 50s, what kind of injects it into college and then high school curricula that gets prominent critics writing about it and elevating Fitzgerald, as Trilling did up to a level with Dostoevsky or with Kafka.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Now you make a brief point in your piece that sometimes when a book achieves that level and it's just taught over and over again in school, it can take on the reputation of this is a classic and you must read it, therefore maybe it is boring and you never want to read it again. I've never found that, however, with this book.

[Tony Scott]

No, it's really. It's not true with this book. Sometimes, weirdly, the book is caricatured that way. There's this famous Andy Kaufman routine that he used to do. He did it on Saturday Night Live and he did it in some of his shows in the 70s and 80s. The great kind of alienating, provocative comedian. And the whole thing about his jokes is that you never knew whether they were jokes or not. He had a Whole thing where he would get up in front of the audience and say, okay, I'm gonna read you a book. And he would start reading. He would come out, like, in a bow tie and tails, doing a funny highbrow voice and start to read the Great Gatsby and continue to read it. And the idea was like, this is the most unentertaining thing you could imagine. And of course. And that was actually. That performance was the genesis of Gatz and Gatz, the stage show is exactly that and turns out to be. In a exciting, thrilling and inventive work of theater. So Gatsby is high, low, and in between, it's never boring, but also it becomes, especially in the 80s and 90s and now whatever you want it to be. If you want to talk about people, talk about the parties. There's a recent Saturday Night Live sketch where it's, oh, we're going to have a Gatsby party and a wild party. People wearing newsboy caps or cloche hats or flapper dresses. So it's just this kind of signifier for excess and decadence and wild parties, but also tragedy and alienation. And there's the love story in the middle of it. There's a kind of a romantic element. It's just. It's everything to everybody. It's a kind of a Rorschach book.

[Gilbert Cruz]

I do think you're right that it is. Part of the reason that it's taught in high school is because you can teach history through it sometimes, or you can talk about themes. You can talk about symbolism. As you say, here is the green light. Here are the eyes of Dr. T.J. eckleburg. What does this mean? Are these the eyes of God? It also has a way, I feel like, in which it has, through its films, primarily become misinterpreted as a love story where the romance really does take one of the central roles. Where, whether it comes through in the movies, it definitely comes through in the book, which is like, these people are so dumb. Dumbs. And this love that they think that they have is based on nothing. Gossamer thin nostalgia of a wonderful week that they had together in Louisville.

[Tony Scott]

Yeah, exactly. And you sort of wondered, what exactly is Gatsby's plan? Yeah, what is his plan? Okay, there was this girl. And then you went away to war, and then you decided what, that you would make all this money in the underworld as the bootlegger and then move across the.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Basically across the street and then coincidentally wait for her cousin to move in next door? The greatest coincidence in American literature.

[Tony Scott]

That would be your entree. And this is one of the things that I kind of love about the novel, and that's what's fascinating about Fitzgerald, is he has, he's on the one hand, a. A very astute social observer. Just the way that he writes about Tom and Daisy Buchanan is so dead on and so just revealing of class and racial prejudice, of this kind of carelessness and destructiveness of the rich. And yet at the same time, there is this fairy tale, swoony, lyrical corniness in it, too. And that mixture, I think, is one of the things that makes it so intriguing, because if you're an adolescent, you can read it for all of that kind of pop swooniness. On the other hand, if you're a high school English teacher, you can read it with, okay, kids, we're going to learn about metaphor and symbolism and the mythology of the American dream. So you can have it all.

[Gilbert Cruz]

We'll be right back.

[Tony Scott]

This podcast is supported by FX's Dying for Sex.

[Michelle Williams]

Starring Michelle Williams and Jenny Slate. The series follows Molly, who, after receiving a terminal cancer diagnosis, decides to leave her husband to explore the full breadth of her sexual desires. She gets the courage and support to go on this adventure from her best friend Nikki, who stays by her side through it all. FX is Dying for Sex. All episodes now streaming on Hulu.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Have you ever been so sick that even the thought of standing up to go to the doctor made you even more sick? Amazon One Medical has 247 virtual care, so you can get help while horizontal. And with Amazon Pharmacy, you can get medicine delivered fast right to your door. You just have to make it to your door. Thanks to Amazon, Healthcare just got less painful. Welcome back. This is the Book Review Podcast and I'm Gilbert Cruz. I'm joined by A.O. scott, Tony Scott, who's here to talk about the Great Gatsby on its 100th anniversary. The language in some of the sections of the book is beautiful and lyrical. And then there's sections of the book where it is incredibly overheated, but also beautiful and lyrical in its own way. There's this one part where Gatsby is remembering five years prior, where he and Daisy are walking down the street and he says, out of the corner of his eye, Gatsby saw that the blocks of the sidewalk really formed a ladder and mounted to a secret place above the trees. He could climb to it if he climbed alone. And once there, he could suck on the pap of life, gulp down the incomparable milk of wonder, which is beautiful, but Also ridiculous. The funny thing is, on the next page, Nick says through all he said, even through his appalling sentimentality. And so there's also a sense, whether it's Fitzgerald or the narrator, all these things that Gatsby is saying and his incredible capacity for hope is also ridiculous.

[Tony Scott]

And that's one of the touching things about the character because at the end, there's the really kind of heartrending encounter with his father. Absolutely. Who shows that, like, as a young boy, he wrote down goals. And in this very sort of Horatio Alger, Ben Franklin way program of self improvement.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Wake up early practice elocution. Yes, save $5. Crossed out, save $3.

[Tony Scott]

But part of the pathos of that is that is a kid in humble circumstances imagining how it is that you. That you climb. And one of the things that happens to him is that. That he discovers that when you do climb, the people who you meet up there will look at you sometimes with fascination, but also with contempt, and will think you are sentimental. You're. What is what. Because part of the way that Tom and Daisy and also Nick are is that this world just. They're entitled to it. It belongs to them, and they belong in it. And the kind of language that you point out there is evidence of how Gatsby still doesn't fit. How he's still always gonna be on the wrong foot, is always gonna be judged as an outsider. Even if these people will come to his house and drink his champagne and associate with him.

[Gilbert Cruz]

I would love to talk about, since I have an erstwhile film critic here, some of the adaptations, as you say, There have been four feature films. There was a silent version that was released in 1926, I believe that's been lost to time. There was a 1949 version starring Alan Ladd as Gatsby, with Shelley Winters as Myrtle. I just. I watched the trailer a few minutes.

[Tony Scott]

Before this and a completely rewritten story because the production code. It's just preposterous. I won't get into just how it entirely changes everything that happens.

[Gilbert Cruz]

I'm very curious now. I've never seen it.

[Tony Scott]

It's not a good movie.

[Gilbert Cruz]

There was a 1974 version starring Robert Redford, screenplay by Francis Ford Coppola. Mia Farrow as Daisy that I saw for some reason, so many times as a teenager. And then a 2013 version starring Leo DiCaprio, directed by Baz Luhrmann in the maximalist Baz Luhrmann style.

[Tony Scott]

I really like that one. The 1974 version feels very remote and becalmed and just almost. You're watching it through a haze. And there's, I think, a kind of reverence for the literary source that can sometimes be trouble. Whereas Baz Luhrmann is very interested in the story as a story about materialism, about glamour, about romance and passion. As he often does when he takes these older stories, he thinks about what connects this to the popular culture of right now. And I think having Jay Z as executive producer for the soundtrack and having the soundtrack that layers in all kinds of hip hop and pop on top of the sort of the jazz age. Jazz was a very shrewd insight and brought the story into the 21st century in a way that I found very exciting and very credible. It's not exactly what Fitzgerald would have done, but it seemed to me a kind of a serious and pretty inspired reading of the book.

[Gilbert Cruz]

I am curious how you think focus on Robert Redford and Leonardo DiCaprio, like how they play Gatsby, and more germane to the book itself. What it says about this character that is an enigma in some ways, to everyone around him.

[Tony Scott]

It is really fascinating to compare them because they're the two big movie stars of their moment, in a way. There's no one bigger than either one of them at that moment. And they're also very different kinds of actors. Redford is so recessive, so quiet, Protestant in a way. And there's this sort of. Just this kind of melancholy that suffuses the character. And some of the melancholy is there with DiCaprio's performance. But what DiCaprio and I wrote something about this at the time. DiCaprio at that moment in, like, 2013, around then, he'd been in Wolf of Wall street and he was in Gatsby. And between those two roles, it's like he was the embodiment of a certain idea of capitalism and of the energy and the excess and the ambition and the destructiveness of a certain kind of drive to make money. And. And I think he's also. The thing about DiCaprioso is that however old he gets, there's still something boyish about him. He's still like a kid.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Right.

[Tony Scott]

So there was that kind of tenderness at the same time, that sort of almost naive innocence. So that. Yeah. That you could imagine him as maybe you couldn't imagine Redford as exactly that young Gatsby thinking that the sidewalk was the ladder to the tree where you could suck the pap of life.

[Gilbert Cruz]

That famous line. We all remember.

[Tony Scott]

Yes, we all remember. But you could also believe him as the guy who has 500 handmade, exquisite, beautiful shirts. And that's like the most, that's the most sensuous scene in the whole movie is when DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan are in that room full of his shirts.

[Gilbert Cruz]

I'm curious. To me they're. And again, I've read this book so many times. There are so many memorable scenes, there's so many memorable side characters almost. And there's so many memorable quotes. And I'm wondering in any of those categories if you might, if anything comes to mind as something that always sticks out to you.

[Tony Scott]

There's the whole. The scene, the party in Manhattan, which is where Tom Buchanan really reveals himself. He's such an interesting and revealing villain in a way. And he's obsessed with the sort of racial pseudoscience of the time and talking about a book, book by someone who he identifies as Stoddard. But it's really a book by Madison Grant called I think the Decline of a Great Race, which is about how the white European world is being overrun by all of these other races. Implying that Gatsby is of some questionable ethnic background and has no pedigree is Mr. Nobody from Nowhere. And that's one of the quotes that I think sticks in my mind about the book is Mr. Nobody from Nowhere, which is just the epitome of Tom Buchanan's kind of cruelty and bigotry and is just such a breathtakingly contemptuous thing to say about a person. The other, the famous line that sort of has come back into circulation recently because it's the title of this book about Facebook, is the Careless People as a way of describing the destructiveness of wealth, that it's not only, let's say, viciousness or malignancy or greed or contempt for other people, it's just carelessness. It's just not this sort of reckless sense of entitlement that just be you're oblivious to the damage that it does around you. And that too is just because I think you think a lot about Fitzgerald and the particular kind of intelligence that he had. He was not a political activist or political writer. He was very kind of self deprecating about his own intellectual powers. He would say that thinking for him was like a bunch of trunks moving around in the attic. And yet he was able to just get right at the very core of human behavior and of American life. And I don't think many other writers who have tried a lot harder, let's say, haven't managed to do it quite as sharply or succinctly I would like.

[Gilbert Cruz]

To read that quote. And again, as you mentioned, a recent memoir by a former Facebook executive that is now a bestseller, the details of which are greatly contested by Facebook, now called Meta, takes its title from this book. It is called Careless People, and it takes this title from this quote. And the quote, the whole quote goes, it was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy. They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together and let other people clean up the mess that they had made.

[Tony Scott]

The word careless three times in there just. And meaning slightly differently inflected each time. And. Yeah. And other people clean up the mess.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Part of the reason I've read a couple of quotes from the book is because I recently had an experience that reminded me how beautiful the language is and how wonderful it is to hear it spoken out loud. You've referred to it a couple of times. There's a theatrical production called Gats. It was put on by a company called Elevator Repair Service. It recently came through New York for what they say was the last time. And it basically is one person on stage surrounded by some other actors who participate, reading the entirety of the Great Gatsby over seven, eight hours. There were several intermissions. And hearing it that way, seeing it that way, having to focus on every sentence and every word in a way that I never have before because I was watching someone read it was incredible.

[Tony Scott]

It is great to see that the sort of the Andy Kaufman joke, that what could be more boring than somebody reading the Great Gatsby to you in its entirety turns out to be like the great theatrical coup of the 21st century.

[Gilbert Cruz]

I would love if you could try at least to think of what you would tell people who maybe haven't read this book since high school, or maybe they were assigned into high school, never read it, and we're trying to convince them to revisit it or read it for the first time. And it has this grand reputation around it. It's 100 years old now.

[Tony Scott]

Yeah.

[Gilbert Cruz]

What do you tell them?

[Tony Scott]

In some ways, we were talking about this a little before. Sometimes the reputation can be a burden. And a surefire way to turn someone off to a great book is to say, this is a great book. This is the greatest American novel. This is. Because then it. Then you just. It becomes a kind of a burden. But I think it. It's just. I think it's one of those books that, like, just start reading it and at a certain. Within five or six pages, you will be hooked. You know, you can read it it in a day and it has everything. It does have wild parties and it does have heroes and villains and it does have tragedy and comedy and satire and crime. And it's packed with just about every element of a good read that you could want. There's something for everyone in it. But also there is it's a very moving book and it's hard to say exactly in a way that that is both hard on the sleeve and a little bit sentimental, but also more complex and haunting. And somehow it has all of those things in what, like 150 pages.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Tony Scott, A.O. scott, author of the Book Review's recent piece looking at the Great Gatsby on its 100th anniversary. Please check it out if you haven't yet. Tony, thank you so much for joining the Book Review. It's always a delight to have you on.

[Tony Scott]

It is my pleasure. It's great talking with you, Gilbert.

[Gilbert Cruz]

That was my conversation with A.O. scott about the Great Gatsby, which is celebrating the hundredth anniversary of its publication this month. I'm Gilbert Cruz, editor of the New York Times Book Review. Thank you for listening.

[Tony Scott]

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