Maureen Dowd On F. Scott Fitzgerald

Writing in today's New York Times, Maureen Dowd provides some actual insight into all the hoopla surrounding the latest iteration of the movie version of The Great Gatsby.

The Phantom has to acknowledge, by way of full disclosure:  1. He has never developed an affinity for F. Scott or  his magnus opus. The Phantom's impression of F. Scott has been from various biographies and from Hemingway's descriptions of the foppish F. Scott on a motorcar tour of France. F. Scott simply struck the Phantom of a pretty silly man, sentimental and embraced more for his fair haired boy qualities than for any real literary talent.    2.  The Phantom has never been much of a fan of Ms. Dowd.

Having said all this, it must be admitted, The Great Gatsby has meant something to a lot of different people over the years. There was that wonderful scene in The Wire where DeAngelo, in prison, explains the meaning of Gatsby as a man who could not escape his past, which, of course, has resonance for all those in jail who are there because of past acts.  And there is that famous scene with the shirts, which is likely Fitzgerald's  apogee as a writer, throwing those shirts around at Daisy, a scene filled with pathos and restraint, and it must be agreed that even a silly man can render art, occasionally.

What the Phantom liked about Dowd's piece today was her description of Fitzgerald's grave site, in Rockville, Maryland.  The Phantom has visited this grave--he grew up not far from it. But the thing about this grave is it is in a vest pocket cemetery, just outside a tiny church, on an eyesore of a road, Rockville Pike, near a noisy, busy, bleak intersection, with the noise of automobiles, trucks and the suburban blight all around it. You have to pick your way across unfriendly roads just to get there, and then you see the graves--Zelda, Scott and their daughter. 

But what Dowd told us today is this was not Fitzgerald's first grave site--the Catholic Church did not allow him to be buried in a Catholic graveyard because F. Scott did not meet the high standards for a Catholic to be buried in a Catholic churchyardm whatever those may be. Ultimately, the powers that were forgave him enough to allow him to be buried in this Godforsaken graveyard. Well, maybe not Godforsaken, but forsaken, nevertheless.

And Dowd tells us one more thing, about herself. She had grown up in Washington, and was covering the "cossetted" beat of Montgomery County, an affluent, striving, place of staggering inauthenticity and ordinariness, not unlike similar suburbs outside other competitive American cities--Gross Point, Shaker Heights, Great Neck, Scarsdale, Winnetka, the Main Line, Brookline--you name it. The places the gifted and talented children of the winners settle down to reap the glittering prizes which are more glitter than prize.

In telling us about herself and her connection by gravestone of F. Scott Key Fitzgerald, Dowd gives us something so lacking in the great state of  suburbia--a sense of longing, a sense of reality amid the great imaginings of the striving classes.