Gatsby was a self-made boy, in so many ways. He had sandpapered down his accent and taught himself to say sofa instead of couch, to toast good health instead of cheers. But Gatsby’s life, the dazzling parties and pressed shirts, were as much a reaction against what he’d lived as it was a display for Daisy or anyone else. He was now a version of himself so utterly incompatible with North Dakota dust and blood-tainted mud that he might think of these things as belonging to someone else. He had carried the shame of it and then beat it back into the past with the light of a hundred chandeliers.
