Gatsby had nothing on moral void of Trump’s U.S.

When U.S. President Donald Trump hosted a Great Gatsby-themed party at Mar-a-Lago on Halloween night, just as food aid to millions of Americans was being threatened by the government shutdown, pundits talked about the poor split-screen optics.

Sure, the feathers and furs, the beaded dresses and dinner jackets, the champagne and caviar, could be seen as tonally off in a time of trouble and uncertainty for so many.

But beyond that obvious and immediate discordance, has no one read the book?

A generic Roaring Twenties party can still deliver hot jazz, diamond tiaras and complicated cocktails, if that’s what you absolutely crave. When you bring F. Scott Fitzgerald and Jay Gatsby into it, you’re adding a whole lot of (possibly unintended) layers.

It’s true that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel is about, as one CNN commentator put it, “rich people partying.” The neglected followup to that observation is that the book uses the rich-people parties to express moral and spiritual bankruptcy.

In The Great Gatsby, all that 1920s razzmatazz is seen as a fragile cover for cynicism, callousness and carelessness, for manslaughter, murder and criminality. (Not to mention characters who talk up white supremacy and cheat at golf.)

And you don’t even need to read the slender 180-page book to find these things out.

Even if Trump advisers have been busy lately planning a gilded ballroom and marbleizing the Lincoln bathroom, they could have looked at the Spark Notes guide, which starts off by announcing that Fitzgerald’s book explores the “social decay hidden beneath the surface of the glittering Jazz Age.”

Heck, even a quick AI-generated summary will immediately inform you that “The Great Gatsby is a profound commentary on the illusion of the American Dream and the corrupting influence of wealth.”

Maybe the novel has always been misunderstood.

Just after its publication, Fitzgerald wrote to his friend, the critic Edmund Wilson, that “of all the reviews, even the most enthusiastic, not one had the slightest idea what the book was about.”

Subsequent film adaptations, where the seductive surfaces of the novel come to such insistent visual life, haven’t helped. The 1926 silent movie was called “a good, interesting, gripping cinema exposition of the type certain to be readily acclaimed by the average fan, with the usual Long Island parties and the rest of those high-hat trimmings thrown in to clinch the argument.”

The 1974 version, starring the very decorative Robert Redford and Mia Farrow, got everyone dressing in Ralph Lauren. The haute-prep designer handled the menswear for the movie, and those exquisite linen suits and striped silk ties gave a big boost to his first Polo line.

Baz Luhrmann’s loud and flashy 2013 adaptation was visually extravagant but thematically hollow. It also inspired partnerships with Tiffany & Co. and Brooks Brothers, once again ignoring the fact the characters wearing the companies’ sparkling jewels and Oxford shirts are all beautiful but damned.

But back to the novel.

The Great Gatsby turned 100 this year and has as much to say now as it did in 1925. In the introduction to the centennial edition, critic Sarah Churchwell writes of a culture that still confuses “material enterprise with moral achievement.” The book’s bitter ironies and melancholy emotional undertow continue to resonate. The contrast between opulent Long Island mansions and an industrial wasteland of ashes persists.

As New York Times critic A.O. Scott suggests — in an overview that looks at the novel’s 100-year lifespan, along with its many adaptations and iterations — how we imagine Gatsby “has a lot to do with how we see ourselves.” The Mar-a-Lago version seems to come down to a young woman in a gold bikini cavorting inside a giant martini glass.

Responding to images of the party like that, Kirk Curnutt, the executive director of the international F. Scott Fitzgerald Society, said in an interview with Democracy Now: “Well, I think it’s fair to say that those of us who have spent our career studying F. Scott Fitzgerald were horrified and sort of felt like, ‘Mr. President, you’ve ruined so much already. Why must you sully The Great Gatsby?’”

alison.gillmor@freepress.mb.ca