The Stylistic and Thematic Similarities of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Jay McInerney

During the 1920s he had it all: F. Scott Fitzgerald was fabulously wealthy and tremendously famous, he was married to the most beautiful woman in town, and author of the novel that seemed to both define and embody the extravagance, decadence, and evolving values of the Jazz Age. He reached near-superstardom and he did this all before 30 years of age. Amidst this whirlwind of social chance and dizzying prosperity, Fitzgerald began to work on his greatest literary masterpiece yet, a book that would solidify his place among the greatest authors of the 20^th century and go on to define American literature.

In the summer of 1924, when Fitzgerald was only 28 years old, he wrote to his editor Maxwell Perkins of his novel The Great Gatsby, “I think my novel is about the best American novel ever written.” Fitzgerald goes on to say that, “This book will be a consciously artistic achievement and must depend on that as the first books did not.” Fitzgerald seemed to have understood that his novel would reach artistic significance that would pervade well beyond the commercial success of his other two books. Indeed, one of the most profound legacies Fitzgerald’s novel left on America’s literary landscape was its tremendous precision of language, its depth of imagery, and its capacity to evoke emotional response not just through content, but through poetic sound and rhythm. Embedded within his style, Fitzgerald's vivid pictures paint the 1920s as an era of decadence, corruption, and moral decline only combated by hope for a better future. Jay McInerney in his book excerpt It’s Six A.M. Do You Know Where You Are? emulates Fitzgerald’s style, likewise commenting on the vacuous existence of society’s upper echelon, and the importance of hope in a time of such vivid social adulteration. Jay McInerney stylistically parallels F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby in order to evoke similar mental and emotional images about the debased morality of society’s wealthiest class during the roaring 1980s.

Part of what makes Fitzgerald writing so fluid and poetic is his remarkable economy of expression and clarity of design: rather than using explicit statements and superfluous details, Fitzgerald develops themes through parallel plot occurrences and incremental repetition of ideas—through methods of implication. For example, in Gatsby car accidents are paralleled to show a disturbing disregard for other people’s wellbeing by the wealthy class. Owl Eyes, one of Gatsby’s drunken guests gets into a terrible car accident in the middle of chapter three; Jordan Baker, a spoiled and cynical suburbanite, comes so close to hitting a man with her car at the end of chapter three that the fender flicks his coat button, nearly killing him; Daisy, also a wealthy, powerful, and beautiful socialite, in the moral low point of the novel during chapter seven, runs over and kills Myrtle with Gatsby’s car and speeds away without so much as stopping to help. These parallel events of carelessness and striking disregard for Other humanity imply to the reader the decayed sensitivities of the upper-class during the 1920s. In fact, when Nick, the novel’s neutral center, comments on Jordan’s carelessness, she responds, “‘They’ll keep out of my way…It takes two to make an accident’” (63). Jordan’s carelessness is given significance by the fact that this mentality is imbued within many of the wealthy elite within Gatsby. Fitzgerald uses parallel events and implication to embed theme within style.

McInerney, whose literary role model, in fact, is Fitzgerald, uses similar parallel plot occurrences to imply themes within his literature. Many times throughout It’s Six A.M. the narrator uses drugs to boost waning moral, “You remember the Bolivian Marching Powder and realize you’re not down yet” (137). This events when viewed singularly does not seem morally significant beyond the surface danger of drug use; however, the subtle parallel between a “creeping sense of morality” and the desire to do drugs connotes to the reader that, just as Fitzgerald parallels reckless driving with reckless values, the characters of McInerney’s book are using drugs to suppress lingering senses of sin and immorality. “…Sunday morning, and as long as you have any brain cells left there will always be this resonant patriarchal basso echoing down the marble vaults of your churchgoing childhood to remind you that this is the Lord’s day. What you need is another overpriced drink to drown it out” (139). Here, like many times throughout the excerpt, moral values are being suppressed through mind altering drugs. Drugs, within the mores of 1980s social culture, were not means of bringing about happiness, but a means to escape unhappiness; however, rather than explicitly stating this outright, McInerney, like Fitzgerald, uses incremental development of ideas to imply this fundamental thematic concept within his book.

Furthermore, both Fitzgerald and McInerney use sensual imagery which, like the poor driving and drug intake, gains symbolic importance only through repetition. Fitzgerald threads specific colors throughout the novel. For example, he uses the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock to represents one man’s idealistic hope for a more perfect future. Gatsby’s infatuation with the green light establishes the color’s thematic significance in the beginning of the book, “[Gatsby] stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock” (26). Likewise, green light is paralleled at the very end of the book to solidify its importance, with New York called “a fresh, green breast of the new world” and the claim that “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us” (189). Green in The Great Gatsby represents hope for the future and an important divergence from the corrupted principles of the 1920s—it embodies the noble values of the true American dream.

McInerney, rather than threading a visual cue throughout his book, weaves an emblematic aroma within his story to conger up emotional and mental imagery. Once again, like in Gatsby, this imagery only gains thematic significance through repetition. For the unnamed narrator within It’s Six A.M., the buttery croissant—the perfect complement to a Sunday morning newspaper—idealizes an existence of substance and moral certitude, an escape from the nihilistic corruption of the power hungry 1980s. “You see yourself as the kind of guy who wakes early on Sunday morning and steps out to pick up The Times and croissants” (137). Bread, most specifically the smell of bread, represents to the narrator in It’s Six A.M. what, in some ways, the ray of green light represents to Gatsby: a shimmer of hope within a world of dizzying superficiality. “As you turn away, what is left of your olfactory equipment sends a message to you brain. The smell of fresh bread. Somewhere they are baking bread.” The narrator’s smell of the bread, weakened by the damaging effects of cocaine, is a striking analogy to a diminished hope of survival paralleling the continued rise of irresponsible living. At last, however, the narrator finds redemption from within the bag of bread, “You tear the bag open and the smell of warm dough rushed over you” (142). It is at this moment that the narrator realizes the necessity of escape. McInerney’s scent thread throughout his story, as a vehicle of hope for the character, makes a strong connection to Fitzgerald’s use of the color green with Gatsby.

Another developed stylistic parallel between McInerney’s and Fitzgerald’s writing is the use of a narrator who not only reports the occurrences of the story, but plays a pivotal part role in the progression of the book. Part of Fitzgerald’s literary genius was choosing to narrate the book through the honest and morally upright eyes of an narrator named Nick Carraway. “Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues,” Carraway says, “and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known” (64). Fitzgerald mimicks a person’s social interactive real-life social interactions by developing characters through gradual addition of facts, not omniscient floods of information. Rather than forcing the reader precariously between the event and the narrator, Fitzgerald unabashfully allies the reader with the narrator -- his hopes and dreams only humanizing the tale. The reader is able to sympathize with Gatsby’s tragic pursuit of dream only because Gatsby is judged though the realism of human understanding; he is able to feel the emotional depth of the plot only because it is portrayed through the heart of Nick, whose character is rooted in honesty and purity.

Likewise, Jay McInerney’s book gains great realism and thematic substance through his ingenious use of narrative point of view. McInerney rejects Fitzgerald’s use of first person point of view; indeed, he writes one of the only novels ever entirely in second person point of view. The excerpt begins that, “You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning” (135). Just like Fitzgerald, McInerney instantly thrusts the reader into the physical and emotional backdrop of the story, creating an intensely personal literary experience. However, more so than Fitzgerald, McInerney uses the unique point of view to underscore his thematic concerns. The protagonist of the story is an unnamed, emotionally unstable adult who is lost in the clamoring hedonism of the glitzy and decadent club scene of the 1980s. The use of “you” not only creates a sense of involvement, but more specifically a sense of entrapment within the occurrences of the novel; the reader's existence as the narrator is dictated by outside forces, not free will. This point of view therefore engenders an emotional response that’s appropriate to a critique of the consumerist values of the 1980s, values which McInerney believes to be prescribed by expectations and mass-conceptions. In a sense, by using second person point of view, McInerney develops the theme that in the 1980s freedom of choice was merely illusionary, that people were enslaved by their appetites for pleasure and their preoccupation with image. It was not until the very end of the story that the narrator began to understand this and reader was broken free from their dictated entanglement within the story, “The first bite [of bread] sticks in your throat and you almost gag. You will have to go slowly. You will have to learn everything all over again” (142). The narrator learns that morality and mental salvation can only come about by breaking free from the procrustean chains of the 1980s cultural values. McInerney, like Fitzgerald, uses point of view to create an intimate relationship between the reader and the plot, and to accentuate key thematic concerns within the novel.

Beyond concept repetition and unique point of view, McInerney’s It’s Six A.M. and Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, both tend to emphasis a class of similarly descriptive phrases and thematically important diction. Firstly, both Fitzgerald and McInerney used oxymoronic characterizations to emphasize the narrators’ ambivalent attitude towards the wealthy leisure class of the time. Nick classifies the characters of the book using contradictory phraseology such as Jordan Baker’s “charming, discontented face” (15), Daisy’s “absurd, charming little laugh” (13), and Tom’s “magnanimous scorn” (142). Likewise, McInerney’s protagonist comments that Tad Allagash, the embodiment of the morally vacant pleasure-seekers of the time, “is either your best self or your worse self, you’re not sure which” (136). These apparent contradictions only reinforce the uncertainty and indecisive moral landscape of the time.

Additionally, vocabulary of impermanence is used throughout both texts to reinforce themes of lonely nihilism and moral subjectivity. In Gatsby, the term “drift” is used twelve times and the term “restless” eight, “I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking, a little wistfully, for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game” (10). This drifting mentality is reflective of the purposeless pursuit of pleasure during the 1920s. Similarly, McInerney embeds the concept of continual movement right within his text, “You started on the Upper East Side with champagne and unlimited prospects, strictly observing the Allagash rule of perpetual motion: one drink per stop. Tad’s mission in life is to have more fun than anyone else in New York City, and this involves a lot moving around, since there is always the likelihood that you are missing something” (136). This continual motion too suggests lack of security and purpose during a time of lavish and excessive wealth.

Finally, there are striking religious overtones propagated by specific word repetition within both Fitzgerald’s and McInerney’s work, suggestive of an omnipotent force observing the moral decay of the times. George Wilson, when discussing the death of his wife: “I said ‘God knows what you’ve been doing, everything you’ve been doing. You may fool me, but you can’t fool God!’ Standing behind him, Michaelis saw with a shock that he was looking at the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg, which had just emerged, pale and enormous, from the dissolving night. ‘God sees everything,’ repeated Wilson” (167). The presence of this force is an important moral absolute in an era characterized by changing values and evolving standards. Likewise, McInerney’s text uses words such as “righteous,” “salvation” and “mortality” to emphasize a similar all-knowing force of judgment, “There is a bum sleeping on the sidewalk, swathed in garbage bags. He lifts his head as you pass. “God bless you and forgive you sins,” he says. You wait for the cadge but that’s all he says. You wish he hadn’t said it” (141). The bum, mercifully devoid of extravagance and consumerism, illuminates the importance of an objective set of values in a culture based only on pleasure. These religious overtones, created through linguistic repetition, imply the watchful presence of a godlike figure that forces people to account for their actions of immortality and impurity—to repent for their sins. Though never explicitly illuminated, its parallels in style which develop thematic similarities in Fitzgerald’s Gatsby and McInerney’s It’s Six A.M.

F. Scott Fitzgerald is universally acclaimed as the voice of his generation; likewise, Jay McInerney, although no doubt less well-known, too has captured, in some senses, the voice of his 1980s generation. Paralleled in style—rhythmic, imagistic, and poetic—both writers encapsulated two periods of time, though more than half a century apart, not so different from each other. Both novels masterfully embody the social ills of their generations: they capture the youthful restlessness, the prodigal lifestyle of the wealthy class, and the vacant sense of morality shared by so many who have been corrupted by extravagant wealth and prosperity. In the end, the American dream, a concept at the heart of Fitzgerald’s and McInerney’s novel, was never just about wealth and prosperity—just look at the soulless products of excessive materialism and consumerism within their books to see that—it’s been about living a better and brighter future, about being content and happy. Indeed, money’s a vehicle of idealism, not the goal itself—that, in it’s barest element, is what Fitzgerald and McInerney are trying to tell us. The American dream, inflated by myths and misconceptions, represents not an attainable goal that we can hope to achieve, but hope itself. Without this hope, Fitzgerald and McInerney seem to ask, how can we survive?