THE GREAT GATSBY

The Great Gatsby is Scott Fitzgerald's most famous work. At 230 (rather small) pages, it's more of a novella than a novel. Having first read it at university, I picked up a copy at the airport when I was in the U.K. last week, and finished it in a couple of days.

My reason for doing so was to have read it before I saw the film. I vaguely remember the 1974 version, with Robert Redford as Gatsby and Mia Farrow as Daisy; the new one has Leonardo di Caprio and Carey Mulligan instead. I showed it this morning at the local cinema to the pensioners, of whom there weren't very many because of the nice weather. In fact it was so warm that the projector bulb (which is air cooled) overheated and the picture disappeared with half an hour to go. However, the audience were tolerant as I scrambled to sort out the technical problem by blowing hard on the equipment (just kidding).

You would think that it would be difficult to make a 2 hour 23 minute film out of such a short book, but it worked. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that this is one of the few occasions in which the film was better than the book. Worth a look, if the weather is poor.

Walter Blotscher