'... to read carefully, and not to be satisfied with a superficial understanding of a book.'

Welcome to Issue 9 of the 2PoundPaperback.

Reading

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Specifically, the nice glossy Cambridge Centennial Edition.

But the quote at the top of this page isn't from The Great Gatsby. It comes from Marcus Aurelius's Meditations. I've had my copy of Meditations for eight years but I don't know if I've ever read it cover to cover. I know it is eight years because it was a present and there is a date on the flyleaf.

Every year, at some point, I get on some self-improvement kick and decide that I'm going to read Meditations with my coffee in the mornings instead of scrolling. I started this process again on Thursday morning as I've been wondering whether stoicism presents a middle path between what we discussed last week – letting things being as they are and trying to improve them.

So, I did not go to Meditations for reading advice but that is what I got: '[R]ead carefully, and [don't] be satisfied with a superficial understanding of a book.'

This is a simple enough line (less simple to follow) but it's perhaps uniquely appropriately to The Great Gatsby. Gatsby is a novel that is especially difficult to approach with fresh eyes. Perhaps no other novel has been bundled up in as many cliches and trivialities as Gatsby has. Almost every idea there is, about flappers, about parties, and most of all, about America, has made its assault on the novel. One of the nastiest consequences of the recent centennial is the incessant attempt to read the orange man into it – though the critics disagree on whether it is Gatsby himself or Tom Buchanan that represents him. As Aurelius adds after the above quote:

'...nor hastily to give my assent to those who talk overmuch.'

But having seen a fair chunk of Fitzgerald scholarship, I have never read a better introduction to Gatsby than the one that Sarah Churchwell provides in the centennial edition. While it hasn't quite let me read the novel for the first time again, it's let me come as close as possible.

The introduction is phenomenal – and if you have even a passing interest in Fitzgerald, I recommend that you read it in full. (I tried to find a free pdf version of the introduction but didn't have much luck). There's one point I want to pick out from it because it has some fun examples.

One of the biggest things that Hollywood has ruined in Gatsby, is a sense of how peculiar the early 1920s are. Most of the popular ideas about the decade are to do with its later years, and in fact, have little bearing on 1922 and 1923 (in which most of the novel occurs).

I went to an 'Immersive Gatsby Experience' in London two years ago and my outstanding memory is of a sweaty actor slapping me on the shoulder and saying, 'I'll teach you how to Charleston, kid.'

This, the Charleston, is a dance that is most associated with Gatsby and that is performed every single time it is on a stage. Except, Nick Carraway's timetable, on which he records Gatsby's parties, clearly shows that they all occurred in the summer of 1922. The Charleston did not appear until after the novel's publication in 1925 – it was not seen until the summer of 1926.

So, when 'Gilda Grey's understudy' performs at one of Gatsby's parties – the point at which plays and musicals introduce the Charleston – she would, in fact, have been doing the Shimmy. That was the dance which made Gilda Grey famous.

In the same vein, we assume that, when there are taxis in the New York scenes of the novel, that these taxis are yellow. This is how Baz Luhrman depicts them in his film.

But, as Churchwell explains, in the early 1920s:

'There were yellow taxis, but also red taxis, blue taxis, brown taxis, black taxis, cream-coloured taxis, checkered taxis, and by the summer of 1923, there were lavender taxis, like the one that Myrtle Wilson selected after letting four others pass her by.'

Ultimately, the 1920s that we think of are a different era to the 1920s in Gatsby. In terms of dress, culture, norms – 1922 was much closer to 1919 than 1929:

'If a story set in 1962 featured the hair, music, and clothes of 1969, it would rightly be ridiculed, but that is effectively what most film adaptations of Gatsby do in their depictions of a generic "Roaring Twenties."'

Writing

I had an interesting conversation with my friend Farah last week (also, go buy her memoir). We spoke about how reading certain writers can affect your own writing voice more than others; that some of the writers whom we consider to have the richest voices, can only be visited late in a draft when major questions about style have already been determined. Then they can't disrupt anything.

This problem – the effect of reading on voice – is a common one in writing. But I don't think it's spoken about much outside of writing circles. I think this is because it makes writers feel bad. It's not a pleasant thought, that the whole subtle enterprise of style – a preference for certain words and kinds of words over others, for one ineffable sense of rhythm and not the next – can all fall apart as soon as we read something distinctive.

When I first started trying to write seriously – I was about eighteen – everything I wrote came out as a garbled imitation of the latest thing I'd read.

It took me about two years to even realise that this was a problem and even longer to have any control over the situation. One of my solutions is to avoid reading full novels, especially long novels, while I am mid-draft – and instead to jump between short story collections or drop novels 100 pages in. This stops any external voice getting its teeth into me.

This has led me to have some thoughts about this reading/voice problem.

First of all, I think that we should call it 'Voice Matching.' It is related to the linguistic phenomenon of Code Matching*, in which we unconsciously speak in a similar way to the person we are speaking to.

I've noticed that I am susceptible to this. It makes me feel mildly fraudulent. When I speak to British people my vowels get rounder and when I'm back in Cape Town my vowels get flatter. I think it happens to me more than average and I assume it's because my natural accent isn't very strong.

I suspect this is the same with Voice Matching. The more subtle the quirks of your writing voice are, the easier it is for you to get thrown by reading something. It also makes sense that Voice Matching is less avoidable as a beginner writer when your voice has not yet been 'found' (if, indeed, it is ever found, and the whole idea of voice is not just an elaborate fiction).

Perhaps the reason Voice Matching gets less extreme with experience, is that 'finding' your voice, is simply reaching a critical threshold of absorption. As in, you have read enough, and have enough different influences, that something unique is eventually pieced together from the borrowed parts.

*I know the broader term of 'Code Switching' is more technical than this, and more to do with languages than accents, and so what I am describing may more properly be called 'Dialect Matching.' But it's much easier to discuss this way.

Question

When I was in Bath a few weeks ago, I visited a beautiful store called Magalleria. I think their poster claimed they had the biggest magazine selection in Europe and that's probably true.

I came away with my first hard copy of the Paris Review, as well as Heavy Traffic, and two back issues of The Moth. There was something lovely and deeply nostalgic about the experience.

It made me wonder – what with all the Zine workshops popping up, and with increasingly distrust towards screens – are print magazines going to make a comeback?

I hope so, anyway.

Thanks for reading! I'm enjoying this new format a lot more and I hope you are too?

Also, I'm working on some plans to change how I deliver this newsletter, which I'll update you on during the week. It'll mean a gap until Issue 10, but a better 2PoundPaperback afterwards... (and don't worry, billing will be paused during missed weeks).

Much love,

Blake