That Gatsby December Memory

Notes on the season

Thinking back to when I truly felt as if I was the only one who knew about something or appreciated something feels so quaint now. I obviously didn’t think I was the only person who liked The Great Gatsby when I was a teen. I knew back then it was one of the Great American Novels, the type that English teachers all over the country made students read. But there was something about a specific passage in the book that I felt as if I was the only one who truly got it since, back then, I didn’t have other people to really talk to about books, and also didn’t really have much understanding of literature besides what I’d been assigned and certain authors or titles I considered “cool.” I was into dark and moody, the sort of stuff a teen living in the middle of the country might gravitate towards. Less Than Zero was a big one. I tried to pretend like I “got” William Burroughs, but I was more interested in his connection so subcultures. I got into Kafka pretty young. There was something that worked for me that I couldn’t quite understand but totally see now. I was a J.D. Salinger fanatic and there’s probably zero shock there. But Gatsby just felt like something else entirely. It was the first book I remember being made to read that I loved, and I remember getting to this one part towards the end and specifically can recall the feeling of it being the first time a passage in a novel really kicked the wind out of me.

I didn’t know it then, but a lot of people felt that way about this particular section. You probably know the one I’m talking about. It’s the part that’s inching toward the end. Nick Carraway talks about traveling back west around the holidays, being in a train as little Wisconsin towns rolled by, old school friends gathering in “the old dim Union Station” to catch up before saying goodbye. It all leads up to the bit about “the prairies or the lost Swede towns, but the thrilling returning trains of my youth, and the street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark and the shadows of holly wreaths thrown by lighted windows on the snow. I am part of that, a little solemn with the feel of those long winters, a little complacent from growing up in the Carraway house in a city where dwellings are still called through decades by a family’s name.”

Eventually, I’d find out others felt a similar rush from reading that part. I don’t know why I was surprised. Probably because it felt like my own little discovery when I was a teenager and I didn’t know anything about the world. And, I suppose, it was. I was in my own little universe. We all sort of are at that point in our lives. Nobody had to tell me to like that specific part. I was just drawn to it the way others were. Susan Choi is a fan of the part. She broke down the part for The Atlantic a few years ago. The difference between her and me is Choi can’t remember when she first read the book or of having much of an initial reaction to it and I can. I sort of love that, knowing we all take different roads to get to the same place. But Choi, who is also from the Midwest like Nick and me, nails exactly what it is I feel about the passage no matter when or how either of us fell for it: “On a language level, I have a purely visceral reaction [to] this passage. I feel this rush of emotion that I can't really explain but it's tied to homecoming, and travel.”

The homecoming part is really interesting to me. Especially because I think about the passage from Gatsby more than usual around this season. It flashes in my head with every interaction I have with friends, the ceremonial last hangs of the calendar year. I despise New Year’s as a holiday and really hate the whole idea of having to stay up late to just count down the seconds until the calendar changes over. It’s not the ideal setup for an anxious person, but I do love the days and weeks before it, the way people are so happy to see each other “One last time” before those of us who keep physical calendars have to put up new ones. There’s this mood that I love. Even when I worked in restaurants or bars during the holiday season and got to see everybody else enjoying their time off, I could still feed off the good feelings. I was busy, but the pace was different. That, and the look of the world when there’s a little joy to be had in the coziness of the season. It isn’t the dead of winter yet. It’s dark, sometimes grey, and you definitely need to wear a coat, but it isn’t absolute misery, at least not the sort of misery you’re feeling by the start of February when there’s nothing to look forward to but a thaw that’s a long time away.

When I was about 18 or 19 and living in Chicago, there used to be this diner called Clarke's in Wrigleyville. There’s still—thankfully—a Clarke’s in Evanston, but the other outpost that was right near the Biograph Theater where John Dillinger was killed, shut down a few years back. It was a December night and a group of friends—some DePaul students, others Northwestern or the University of Chicago, a few weren’t in college at all—just happened to all end up at that Clarke’s on what was the last night of school for a few of us. I don’t recall how we all wound up there. This would have been 1999 or so and it’s wild to think about how things just happened to fall into place before we had cell phones. I also can’t be sure of the exact time of year. I think it was December. I don’t see why it wasn’t. I remember it being late-November or early-December weather and in Chicago, that means it’s barely tolerable but not as bad as it’s going to get. It was still charming. The snow started falling as we all hung out in that diner. The point is, it felt like that moment of reflection for Nick. We were all in this place and some of us were going home for the holidays. I wasn’t. I had nowhere to go. I was fine with that. But most of my friends were off to other places to see their families. They were going north, south, east, and west. To the suburbs, to other states, or to other countries. We were all gathered there to say goodbye, I can’t wait to see you in a few weeks, and it felt nice. We laughed and talked for a few hours, then all my friends left and I stuck around. I remember ordering a bowl of tomato soup and eating it quietly. They had great tomato soup. I was alone and I would be for at least a week or so, but I was fine with that. I spent the time just walking around a lot and reading. I also treated myself to a lot of various Entenmann's baked goods. It felt like an actual break, the first I had in the early days of what was considered my adulthood.

I mention the night at Clarke’s because it was when I finally started to understand that part of Gatsby I’d been so in love with. It was the first time I’d ever sat on something I’d read for what was then about three or four years, and finally, it showed itself to me, the reason I loved that one part of this classic book. A big part of it is nostalgia, but it’s deeper than just longing for a simpler time. There’s something so innocent about it, especially set against the cynicism and sadness the section is sandwiched between, and we read Nick realizing that. He is realizing he got away from who he really was. That the real him was the young man walking with his friends, breathing in the cold air, “unutterably aware of our identity with this country for one strange hour, before we melted indistinguishably into it again.” The older version, the one that went out east in hopes of hitting paydirt, tried to leave that person behind, and look what happened.

I attached my own meaning to that part from Gatsby and now every year around this time I think about it, except now I’m the one going out of town. It’s our annual vacation. I had always thought I’d just be a city-dweller during the holidays, but my wife likes warm weather too much for that and I can’t really blame her. So around this time in December, every interaction has an extra-special feel. Some of my friends are going, others are staying. Either way, I won't see them until it’s the new year. I normally wouldn’t put much stock in that because time is a flat circle and all that jazz, but I like that I have this little period to take stock of things. I love that seeing people actually feels a little more special than normal and not just because there are holidays that anchor the weeks, but because I had this little piece of literature that put it all into a different context for me.