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I'm so glad that you requested Gatsby. Gatsby is actually one of my all-time

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favorite books. It's counted honestly among my greatest influences. It's one

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of the books that made me want to write, so masturbating to it shouldn't be a

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challenge at all, yeah? I guess let me get started.

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Chapter one. In my younger and more vulnerable years, my father gave me some

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advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. Whenever you feel like

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criticizing anyone, he told me, just remember all the people in this world

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haven't had the advantages you've had. He didn't say any more, but we've always

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been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he

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meant a great deal more than that. In consequence, I'm inclined to reserve all

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judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made

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me the victim of not a few veteran boars. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and

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attach itself to this quality when it appears a normal person, and so it came

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about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician because I

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was privy to the secret griefs of wild unknown men. Most of the confidences

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were unsought. Frequently, I feigned sleep, preoccupation, or hostile levity when I

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was realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was

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quivering on the horizon. For the intimate revelations of young men, or at

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least the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and mowed

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by obvious oppressions. Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope,

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and I'm still afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father

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snobbishly suggested. And I snobbishly repeat, a sense of fundamental

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decencies is parceled out unequally at birth, and after boasting this way of my

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tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on

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the hard rock or the wet marshes, but after a certain point, I don't care what

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it's founded on. When I came back from the East, the last

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autumn, I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and had a sort of moral

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attention forever. I wanted more riotous extinctions with privileged glimpses into

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the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt

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from my reaction. Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an

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unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of heightened

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sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those

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intricate machines that register earthquakes 10,000 miles away, this

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responsiveness has nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is

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dignified under the name of creative temperament. It was an extraordinary gift

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for hope, a romantic readiness such that I've never found in any other person, and

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which is not likely I shall ever find again. No, Gatsby turned out all right at

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the end. It was what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his

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dreams, that temporarily closed out my interest in the abhorrent sorrows and

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short-winded elations of men. My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in

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this Middle Western city for three generations. The Caraways are somewhat of

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a clan, we have a tradition and we're descended from the Dukes of Bocla, but

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the actual founder of my line is my grandfather's brother who came here in

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51 sent a substitute to the Civil War and started a wholesale hardware business

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that is my fate to carries on to this, my father carries on to this day. I never

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saw this great uncle, but I'm supposed to look like him, which special reference

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to the rather hard-boiled painting that hangs in father's office. I graduated

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from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of a century after my father, and a little

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later I participated in that delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great

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War. I enjoyed the counter-raid so thoroughly that I came back bristless

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instead of being the warm center of the world, the Middle West now seems like the

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ragged edge of the universe, so I decided to go east and learn the bond business.

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Everything I knew was in the bond business, or everyone I knew was in the

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bond business, and so I supposed it could support one move. Oh god, sorry. I

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supposed that it could support support one more single man. All my aunts and

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uncles talked over it as though they were choosing a prep school for me, and

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finally said why, yes. With a very gray, hesitant faces, father agreed to finance

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me for a year, and after various delays I came east permanently, though in the

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spring of, I thought, in the spring of 22. The practical thing was to find rooms in

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the city, but it was a warm season and I had just left a country of wide lawns and

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friendly trees, so when a young man at the office suggested that we take a

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house together in a commuting town, it sounded like a great idea. He found the

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house a minute from the firm, ordered him, the minute the firm ordered him to

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Washington, and I went to the country alone. I had a dog, at least I had him for a few days

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until he ran away, and old Dodge and a Finnish woman who made my bed and cooked

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breakfast and mudded and finished wisdom to herself over the electric stove. He

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was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man more recently arrived

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than I, stopped me on the road. How do you get to West Egg Village? he asked

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helplessly. I told him, and as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide,

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a pathfinder, an original settler. He had casually conferred on me the freedom of the

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neighborhood. And so, with the sunshine...

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I got my way through it anyway. I hope you enjoyed it.