It’s even better than I thought. It’s The Great Gatsby.
Only on the final page did this reader recognize the true source of Netherland.
“A world was lighting up before us, its uprights putting me in mind, now that I’m adrift, of new pencils standing at attention in a Caran d’Ache box belonging in the deep of my childhood, in particular the purplish platoon of sticks that emerged by degrees from the reds and, turning bluer and bluer and bluer, faded out; a world concentrated most glamourously of all, it goes almost without saying, in the lilac acres of two amazingly high towers going up above all others, on which, as the boat drew us nearer, the sun began to make a brilliant yellow mess.â€
More than 80 years ago, the final page of a great American novel contained these lines:
“And as I sat there, brooding on the old unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.â€
Joseph O’Neill has reimagined The Great Gatsby for the 21st century.
“All this garbage of light”, a review of Netherland, in Emotional Weather Report, today in the Star.
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December 19th, 2008 at 16:53
What the Booker judges have forgotten is that it takes a major award to have a great book immediately recognized by the greater public. Critics in all their repetitiveness cannot compensate to the major error of omission they have committed. What use is an award if it’s only meant to represent the point of view of the judges. The judges are the literary congressmen of the people. They should remind themselves this.