Adapting The Great Gatsby

The idea of Baz Luhrmann doing The Great Gastsby in 3D is pretty groan inducing, but Ta-Nehisi Coates is right that the adapting the story to film is inherently a bit of a mess:

As in so many of the books I love, I found the plot in Gatsby to almost be beside the point. Whenever I see it translated to cinema, the film-maker inevitably crafts a story of doomed romance between Daisy and Gatsby. It's obviously true that Gatsby holds some sort of flame for Daisy, but what makes the book run (for me) is the ambiguity of that flame. Does he really love her? Or is she just another possession signaling the climb up? I always felt that last point—the climb up—was much more important than the romance. What I remember about Gatsby is the unread books. His alleged love for Daisy barely registers for me.

I think it might be interesting to see a movie very loosely inspired by Gatsby, much like it's interesting to see poems inspired by paintings. But every poem shouldn't be made a painting. Art is not necessarily made better by literalization. I'm not convinced that The Great Gatsby works without those pockets of imagination which make the written word, still, a unique experience.

Indeed. So much of the joy exists in the layers of unreliable narration, and the details of the prose. You can put the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckelburg on the big screen, but you can't capture the detail of Nick invariably referring to him with is formal title. Or consider: "some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness or forgot them and moved away." How is it that Nick know for certain that Eckelburg isn't practicing in Queens any longer but is unsure as to whether he's moved or died?

Anyways, there's no point complaining about hypothetical adaptations, but my New Year's Resolution is to read more books so I've got the books I've loved on the mind and this is definitely on the list.