Inspiring Older Readers
Careless People: murder, mayhem and the invention of The Great Gatsby by Sarah Churchwell
By the time I'd finished reading this book I really couldn't answer a fundamental question - just what is this story all about? Yes, it certainly is about how Scott Fitzgerald put together one of the 20th century's most iconic novels but it's also about his marriage to Zelda; a contemporary murder story; the Roaring Twenties; the state of literature on the precipice of Modernism and a few other bits and bobs thrown in for good measure.
Not that this extraordinary kaleidoscope is an unpleasant read but it does feel like one of those overblown feasts - everything looks great when you start eating but you end up wondering why you just didn't stop before you burst. Churchwell has enough material here for three or four books rather than just the one and as a consequence its great rollocking fun but the stories you want her to spend time on are whipped past your eyes at breakneck speed.
What makes Churchwell's study academically interesting is her attempt to 'proove' that Fitzgerald's Gatsby was influenced by a real life crime of passion known at the time as the Hall-Mills case. In fact this innovation becomes, for me at least, the weakest part of the book. She chops up the Hall-Mills narrative and inter-leaves it with the wider literary and social history as well as the trajectory of Fitzgeralds career and marriage. But this has the effect of dislocating both strands of the story and, frankly, I didn't really care whether Fitzgerald had been influenced by a minor cause celebre or not. This is especially true because the Hall-Mills case wasn't really terribly interesting in its own right and its not something that merits such time and effort.
Having banged on about the book's short-comings I'm conscious that I'm sounding as if I really didn't enjoy it - but that's not true. There's still plenty in this cacophany to enjoy and Churchwell writes with a genuine verve which can't fail to pull you along in it's wake. The Fitzgerald story is fascinating and the rise and rise of the Gatsby legend is irresistible and if you find yourself drawn to discovering more you could do a lot worse than getting yourself a copy of Careless People.
Terry Potter
October 2015