![]() Gone is the innocent, lyrical first-person narrator of Gatsby. The gaudy opulence of West Egg gives way to blood and mud and fire, and the stench of death hangs over Smith’s novel just as the green light does Fitzgerald’s. Smith’s story is told in the third person, in terse, strong prose reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Readers looking for a prequel written in the same vein as Fitzgerald’s classic will be disappointed, however. 1 of this year, The Great Gatsby entered the public domain, just in time for Michael Farris Smith’s new novel Nick, which attempts to tell the backstory of Gatsby’s narrator. His refusal to judge makes him “privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men” and leads him to love and admire Jay Gatsby for his “extraordinary gift of hope,” even though he also represents everything for which Nick has “unaffected scorn.” ![]() Nick Carraway, the narrator, embodies this double vision. Though Fitzgerald changed his mind, Gatsby remains rooted in a Catholic sensibility, largely evident in its straddling of spirit and flesh, redemption and sin. ![]()
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