September 27, 2010 Issue

There are no rules in critical writing, but a useful guideline is the one articulated by Edmund Wilson many years ago: a critic must first describe what he or she is going to criticize. Rebecca Mead, in her interesting piece “Adaptation,” in this week’s issue, does an excellent job describing “Gatz,” a translation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” to the stage by the experimental theatre company Elevator Repair Service. Mead describes “Gatz" 's “dilapidated office” setting. And she describes what happens in that setting: “the text of ‘The Great Gatsby’ is spoken aloud, all forty-nine thousand words of it, and the action unfolds solely within the shabby office space.” She says, “The show lasts for a Wagnerian eight hours, including two short intermissions and a dinner break.” Mead ably fulfills the first part of the Wilsonian precept: she describes “Gatz.” But when it comes time to do the actual critical work, she chickens out. It seems to me anyone reasonably familiar with “The Great Gatsby,” who reads her description of “Gatz” – eight hours in a theatre looking at the same shabby office set, listening to actors (some of them impersonating more than one character) read all fort-nine thousand words of the novel, including, as Mead points out, “every ‘he said’ and ‘she said’” – would have no problem concluding that the production is from beginning to end a wrong-headed, ill-conceived, totally cock-eyed folly. Mead appears to suspend judgment. She says, “What could have been a tiresome gimmick achieves, in the course of the show, a kind of sublimity.” What kind of sublimity might that be? Somnolence? She also says, “Gatz immerses the audience in the beauty of Fitzgerald’s incantatory prose.” “Incantatory” is an odd choice of word to describe Fitzgerald’s writing in “The Great Gatsby.” It seems to suggest that it is the type of writing that is best appreciated when heard read aloud. On the contrary, Fitzgerald’s exquisitely textured writing – in “The Great Gatsby,” at least – is, in my opinion, best appreciated when read on the page. For example, consider this line about Daisy: “A damp streak of hair lay like a dash of blue paint across her cheek.” “Damp,” “streak,” “hair,” “dash,” “blue,” “paint,” “cheek” – these vivid, monosyllabic, consonantal words are themselves like dabs of paint that create an almost cubist picture of Daisy’s face. It’s an astonishing sentence – one among many in Fitzgerald’s great work – and I think the astonishment would be greatly diminished if, instead of reading Fitzgerald’s words, you had them read to you. I think if you simply listen to the words, you lose touch with the writing act, with the writer’s art. And this is one reason why I think Elevator Repair Service’s production of “Gatz,” as described by Rebecca Mead, is so ludicrous – that and the “Wagnerian” eight-hour endurance test. Implicit in the aforementioned quotations from Mead’s piece is that she liked “Gatz.” But she also says, “Everybody in the room, audience and cast alike, experiences ‘Gatz’ as an event – one that is, by turns, thrilling, amusing, and enervating.” Note that last word; she doesn’t say “energizing,” she says “enervating,” as in “causing one to feel drained of energy or vitality.” I think Mead is less enthused about her “Gatz” experience than she lets on. Any “adaptation” of “The Great Gatsby” that leaves you enervated is a dud and should be judged, if the critic is truly exercising her critical powers, as such.

Second Thoughts: On further reflection, I think I may have been too harsh. Mead’s article is more an arts report than it is a review or a critical piece. She is bringing us news of an honorable yet foolhardy theatrical experiment. Wright Morris, in his book “About Fiction” (1975), said that “Few books come into this world with the perfection of a bird’s egg, and this [“The Great Gatsby”] is one of them.” Elevator Repair Service has scooped up this perfect egg and used it to cook what appears to be a rather unpalatable dish.