Radio National: Lies, deceit and bad driving in 'The Great Gatsby'

MICHAEL CATHCART

Let's move on and look at some of the other characters. One of the most enigmatic characters in the book is Jordan Baker. So, Jordan Baker is a new kind of woman. She is a woman made possible, really, by the '20s, she's a golf champion, and she's also a liar and a cheat. Jane Gleeson-White, what do you make of Jordan?

JANE GLEESON-WHITE

Um, yes, I suppose she's a modern woman. I've never really warmed to Jordan, I probably should. She's a golfer, she is a liar, and that was really striking in my re-reading of it this time.

MICHAEL CATHCART

We don't actually see her lie, do we? We're only told that she lies by Nick.

JANE GLEESON-WHITE

Well, Nick remembers a front-page story about her cheating in a game of golf by moving the ball.

MICHAEL CATHCART

Yes, he says it was on the news, that's right.

JANE GLEESON-WHITE

Yeah. And then he sees her leave a car with its top down out in the rain and lies about that. So, that sort of… Because the story of Nick and Jordan, you know, their romance, is undercut or is the other love story, so-called, of the novel. Well, I suppose there are many actually if we include Myrtle and her husband. So, their relationship is very strange and very non-committal, and perhaps a sort of different note on Gatsby's complete obsession with Daisy. You know, they're indifferent to each other, they like each other, they sort of come together indifferently, they part indifferently. He might love her, he feels he could, you know.

JASON DI ROSO

I feel it's almost the most modern, or it's the relationship in the film that reads as the most contemporary, in a way. And I think Fitzgerald's given us a glimpse of our own time in Jordan Baker because she's a new kind of celebrity in a way. She is someone famous for sport, she's someone who kind of fudges her way through life, and that degree to which she's capable of lying without having any moral qualms about it is something that I think has become part of modern life, it's become part of what modern life is. With Wikipedia and the information technology age that we live in, we're all able to kind of fudge a bit and we're all able to, with the democratisation of luxury, we're all able to buy nice clothes, most of us, and sort of pretend perhaps we earn more money or live in a glamorous lifestyle that we actually don't live in. So, I think the degree to which she is a successful kind of chameleon or faker is something that I think is really a widespread sort of characteristic or element of modern life today.

KIRK CURNUTT

I think one of the neat things he does with her is, she introduces this whole metaphor in the novel about bad driving, which is relatively new metaphor in the '20s. Her name comes from two automobiles of the era and her self-justifying morality is, 'I don't need to be a good driver because it takes two to make an accident. And as long as I stick around careful people I don't have to be careful myself.'

SCOTT DONALDSON

And that theme of reckless driving, of course, goes all the way through the novel.

MICHAEL CATHCART

Yes, it is the punchline, if you'll excuse me. It's what brings it all unstuck.

KIRK CURNUTT

Right.

MICHAEL CATHCART

Scott, what do you make of her though, Jordan? She's such a cold fish.

SCOTT DONALDSON

Yes, she is. I just recently saw the movie too, and she's much the same way there that I pictured her, I suppose, except I think she's a more important character in the novel than she is in the film because she represents that world to which Gatsby cannot belong and which Nick barely can, and she's trying to draw Nick into that world. So, we see her at the end, she tries to invite him to follow her back in with Tom and Daisy after the terrible scene at the plaza where Gatsby has got his comeuppance, and Nick will not go with her. He goes back to St Paul and his respectable life, and gets away from those terrible, careless people.