When the most prominent love stories of our times also serve as cautionary tales about wealth and ego-driven restlessness, you have to wonder if there’s not some essential sickness encoded in our cultural DNA. As your stature grows to that of an oligarch or a demigod, you require bigger prizes and distractions. This is why Gatsby sets his sights on Daisy Buchanan: a goal worthwhile precisely for its impossibility. Eventually, though, Gatsby is subsumed by his own talent for self-invention. Like Draper, he becomes a cipher, a shadow of someone else’s idea of happiness.
