This after all was not merely a defense of Gatsby but of a whole way of looking at and appraising literature—and reality, for that matter. Bijan, who seemed quite amused by all of this, told me one day that I was studying Gatsby with the same intensity as a lawyer scrutinizing a textbook on law. I turned to him and said, You don’t take this seriously, do you? He said, Of course I take it seriously. You have put yourself in a vulnerable position in relation to your students.
