The Eyes of Doctor Fitzgerald

Of all the final clubs at Harvard, it is the Fly’s grounds that most remind me of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby.” They are considerably smaller than Gatsby’s 40 acres to be sure, but there’s that blue garden out the back, fenced (white) below a pink tree. Come springtime, awnings are raised, and the men and girls come and go like moths among—as Fitzgerald put it—the champagne and the stars.

The members of the Fly must agree with me; this weekend, they threw their annual Gatsby party.

To celebrate a tragedy is an odd thing; it seems difficult to know whether to mourn an age or to applaud its death. The former is nostalgic, the latter ironic. Though to presume either is perhaps to overestimate the good gentlemen of the Fly, who did not think so deeply.

They are not like, say, Harvard’s conservatives, those demure Mansfieldians who aspire to a pre-1960’s gentlemanly code of conduct. Nor do they resemble Harvard’s liberals, who would attend a Gatsby party ironically, with sheepish restraint, lightheaded from all the seersucker.

No, the gentlemen are somewhere in between, somewhere beyond politics, and necessarily, informed debate. For them, throwing Gatsby parties is simply what socialites do, just a bit of fun. There is no significance beyond this, no ironic wink, no nostalgic paean. The party must not be interrupted by the inconvenience of thought. To ask of ideas is thus to presume reflection where none existed. (A Fly Club member declined to comment, citing club policy not to talk to the press).

This, of course, has led to a tragic misreading of the novel.

For above all things, the story of Jay Gatsby is a tragedy. And to celebrate it is to perhaps only have read the novel halfway through. Gatsby, after all, is murdered at the end, his dreams intact. His life is neither viable nor enviable, Fitzgerald seems to be telling us.

The postwar America that Fitzgerald was writing of is in many ways similar to the 1990s, that barnyard decade between the Cold War and the new, and as yet unnamed, era that our new historians will judge as an interlude of easy fortunes, rampant optimism, and unbridled greed. It was one big party.

This led, predictably, to a kind of spiritual emptiness: restless, confused beings who sought crude material fulfillment. For Fitzgerald, the nouveau riche were vulgar and ostentatious, and the old aristocracy not much better. Though graceful, he found the latter bored (Jordan), shallow (Jordan, Daisy), or thick (Tom). All were confused; all were unhappy. The title then, is ironic, and the “great” refers less to reality than to Gatsby’s misguided ambitions, most of them unfulfilled.

Fitzgerald was on to something.

We as Harvard students are the winners of the 90s. Perched atop the American meritocracy, we are supported by good families, decent educations, and above all, futures. Yet I sense a kind of spiritual aching for something more, some transcendence that people currently attempt to stuff with work, achievement, or wealth. Fitzgerald knew of these pangs firsthand. To the end of his days he flirted searchingly with his Catholic faith and clung to a cloying obsession with the way others perceived him.

Though a good number of their membership does list “Gatsby” as a favorite tome on the facebook.com, this is not just about the Fly. It is also about the many Harvard (and Princeton, and Yale) students who, according to that same site, consider “The Great Gatsby” only second to the Harry Potter books, yet do not seem understand the book’s main idea. And to a lesser extent, it is about the United States, which buys some 300,000 copies of “Gatsby” each year and has filmed it three times, all while still idealizing Gatsby’s lifestyle.

Fitzgerald was lamenting an age that we today, to a large degree, still aspire to. Fitzgerald himself wasn’t entirely innocent; he was still sometimes fascinated by the decade that he chronicled. But there was also an unmistakable aversion, a palpable yearning for transcendence in his writings which said: there’s more to life than this. At Harvard, we are, I suspect, less perceptive creatures. Around me I see all the attraction and little of the repulsion.

Sahil K. Mahtani ’08, a Crimson associate editorial chair, is a history concentrator in Winthrop House.