Something in us of Jay Gatsby, by Jakuta Alikavazovic – Liberation

You and I may have a common ancestor. A grandfather, let’s say. Or a great-grandfather. A great-grandmother? What does it matter. He has just celebrated his 100th anniversary. However, from this ancestor, no trace in our genetic heritage. It is true that these are only responsible for a close portion of our identities. Which owes DNA at least as much to other figures, other influences. From him, what could we have received in sharing? Which a certain ideal. Which its faculty of wonder. Physical resemblance, however, cannot be a question between us. We don’t have his eyes. But we may have his gaze, which is lost at certain times, at the end of the day, on the horizon, in search of a real or imaginary glow.

He has just celebrated his 100th anniversary, therefore. « James Gatz », on his birth certificate; But we rather know him under the name of « Gatsby ». And it is beautiful. At the start, however, nothing seemed to be there. When he published, in 1925, the work of F. Scott Fitzgerald experienced a positive, but temperate welcome. However, over the years, decades, its reputation (that is to say its charge, that is to say its force of attraction) has only growed. We thought we had to read a charming and superficial little novel; Light and fresh like a cut flower, and called to know the same fate. He turned out to have buried the vast majority of his contemporaries.

Succinctly, this is the story of a guy who falls in love outside his social class and