mathias wellner

It’s his voice. He reads the book (The Great Gatsby, writ­ten by F. Scott Fitz­ge­rald), gets absor­bed in it. This Ame­ri­can voice, I somehow can still hear it. He car­ries the play, which lasts alto­ge­ther over 6 hours. I just saw the first half of it. He reads it all, every sin­gle word in it.

I know the book. I read it ear­lier this year and enjoyed the style. That is pro­bably the main rea­son why I chose to give this quite long play a chance. I could not moti­vate any­body to come with me, it seems a little bit too special.

This com­bi­na­tion of rea­ding and play is abso­lu­tely uni­que. I could not ima­gine a bet­ter way to do it. It never got boring, people ente­red the stage and went off, music play­ing, a wild party illus­tra­ted vividly and the cha­rac­ters just fit­ted. The group Ele­va­tor Repair Ser­vice is from New York and is one of the num­be­rous attrac­tions of the Thea­ter­spek­ta­kel in Zurich. Odd to men­tion, they were not allo­wed to play in New York, because ano­ther adapta­tion (2.5h, more like a musi­cal) got the exclu­sive licence.

After my first, more disap­poin­ting visit of a modern theatre piece at the Thea­ter­spek­ta­kel this one really was just great. I am loo­king for­ward to part two which will fol­low tomor­row afternoon.

Ver­netzte intel­lek­tu­elle Welt, Zufälle trei­ben uns zu Inseln, wel­che unser Gedächt­nis nicht los­lässt, da es sich an die­sen Inseln ori­en­tie­ren kann und jubi­liert, wenn neue Zufälle einen ver­trau­ten Insel­um­riss her­vor­zau­bern. Wir waren schon ein­mal auf die­ser Insel, sind schon ein­mal auf die­sen höchs­ten Berg geklet­tert, von dem aus man die ande­ren Berge und viel­leicht sogar die ande­ren Inseln erah­nen kann.

Vor eini­ger Zeit im Lite­ra­turzir­kel bespra­chen wir F. Scott Fitz­ge­rald: The Great Gatsby, wobei ich eigent­lich gar nicht dabei war. Aber den­noch hatte ich das Buch gele­sen, war ein­ge­drun­gen in die­sen ein­ma­li­gen Stil Fitz­ge­ralds und hatte mich von ihm ver­zau­bern lassen.

Diese bekannte Insel sah ich nun Gestalt anneh­men in die­sem ZEIT-​​Artikel wird der Schrift­stel­ler in den Mit­tel­punkt gerückt. Und auch wenn ich die ande­ren Romane nie gele­sen habe, gibt es doch einige Zitate aus dem gro­ßen Gatsby, erklä­rende Zusam­men­hänge, Geschich­ten, Hin­ter­gründe, wun­der­bar ver­wo­ben in die­sem schö­nen Essay. Schon der Beginn ist ein Genuss:

Die­ser Mann hat die Göt­ter her­aus­ge­for­dert. Er hat mit ihnen gerun­gen, er hat mit ihnen getrun­ken, er hat sich vor ihnen in den Staub gewor­fen und vor ihnen aus­ge­spuckt. Er war kein muti­ger Mann, er war ver­lo­ren und ver­zwei­felt. Eine Weile gefiel das den Göt­tern, sie schau­ten ihm zu und waren mal amü­siert und mal ver­är­gert. Dann war­fen sie ihn fort, und er starb, jäm­mer­lich und allein, wie sein gro­ßer Held, jener Gatsby, der nachts immer über die Bucht starrte zu einem grü­nen Licht, das er nur sehn­suchts­voll aus der Ferne betrach­ten konnte, und als er sich ihm näherte, da zer­brach alles, nicht nur das Licht, son­dern auch das Leben.

The next book we are going to dis­cuss in the Lite­ra­turzir­kel der ETH Zürich is „The Great Gatsby”, one of the grea­test Ame­ri­can novels (see Wiki­pe­dias Modern Library 100 Best Novels).

I enjoyed very much rea­ding it, the novel is well-​​written and has a nice melan­cho­lic under­tone. The „roaring 20s” come to live, with sple­ndid par­ties, Jazz music, spon­tanuous trips and ephe­me­ra­lity. But under­ly­ing all that is a cri­ti­que of the Ame­ri­can dream, sym­bo­li­zed by Jay Gatsby and also Tom Buch­anan. Gatsby has a shadowy past, people tell all sorts of sto­ries about him. From a sim­ple back­ground he made his way to become a well-​​known and respec­ted man. While it is not known how exactly he made his way, he seems to be invol­ved in alco­hol smugg­ling (boot­leg­ging) and dis­tri­bu­tion. The other cha­rac­ter, Tom Buch­anan, is shown as a man who legally got his wealth but is having an affair with ano­ther woman. So, most of the well-​​off people are said to be care­less what shows the nega­tive side of the Ame­ri­can dream.

But all those sym­bo­lic asso­cia­ti­ons will be dis­cus­sed in the next mee­ting. For me the very style alone is some­thing that makes the book worth rea­ding it. A few quo­ta­ti­ons to give you an idea:

I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby’s house I was one of the few guests who had actually been invi­ted. People were not invi­ted — they went there. They got into auto­mo­bi­les which bore them out to Long Island, and somehow they ended up at Gatsby’s door. Once they were intro­du­ced by some­body who knew Gatsby, and after that they con­duc­ted them­sel­ves accor­ding to the rules of beha­viour asso­cia­ted with an amu­se­ment park. Some­ti­mes they came and went wit­hout having met Gatsby at all, came to the party with a sim­p­li­city of heart that was its own ticket of admission.

So we beat on, boats against the cur­rent, borne back cea­se­l­essly into the past.