What if Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby was a true story?

When you read Chris Bohjalian's The Double Bind, you have to go on the assumption that events from F. Scott Fitzgerald's famous novel The Great Gatsby really happened. The story opens with college student Laurel Estabrook biking through the woods and she is brutally attacked. The details are fuzzy and revealed from her perspective, but she is adamant that she was not raped. The psychological impact of this attack is well-known to Laurel's friends and associates.

In the present, Laurel is a social worker. She learns that one of her clients, a homeless man named Bobby Crocker has died and she goes to collect his meager belongings from the place where he had been staying. She finds this box that he always carried around. Inside are hundreds of photographs from the 1960's and early 1970's which makes her wonder about Bobby's life before everything went downhill. He was obviously a talented photographer and some of his photos were of very famous people. One photograph in particular catches Laurel's eye. It is of herself on a bicycle seemingly just before her attack. She discovers other photos of places from her childhood home in West Egg. Pictures of the Gatsby and Buchannan estates. Some pictures are of Daisy Buchannan, her daughter Pamela and a young boy. Laurel is convinced that Bobby Crocker is that young boy. The child born after Gatsby was murdered and Tom and Daisy reconciled. She even speculates that he might have been the result of Daisy's affair with Gatsby.

Laurel becomes obsessed with learning Bobby's story to the dismay of everyone around her. She returns to West Egg and talks to people who might have remembered the Buchannan's youngest child, but few have any details to offer. She even interviews Pamela, now an elderly woman who sadly recounts her brother's problems, but assures Laurel that this Bobby Crocker was not her brother and she doesn't know why he had those photographs of her family. As Laurel's search for the truth becomes self-destructive, we realize that she is not so much searching for Bobby Crocker's truth, but rather her own.

I saw this book reviewed in print and saw an interview with Chris Bohjalian on The Today Show. Something about it piqued my interest. It isn't often that you come across a book that you just have to have right now. I couldn't wait for a reserve at the library so I bought it. The Great Gatsby is one of my favorite books and hearing the author talk about the true-life inspiration for this book made it even more compelling. There was a homeless man who died leaving a box of amazing photographs hinting at a richer life than his end would make one believe. It ties into what Nick Carraway, the narrator of The Great Gatsby says. "Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had." The amazing black and white photography of Bob "Soupy" Campbell is featured throughout the book.

My Summer Ambition: Read a Classic

Each summer I try to read a classic novel. Of course, opinions vary on what constitutes a classic novel. You can go online and find list after list, but I go by the criterion of whether or not this is something I should have read in high school or college. You know what I mean...those books that are assigned year after year that you were either lucky enough not to be assigned or you just read something else. I also like to reread books that I read when I was much younger. Maybe it is just the fact that I have more life experience and perspective now than I did as a teenager, but they read like a brand new story.

When I was fourteen, I read Steinbeck's East of Eden. It is a kind of retelling of the Cain and Abel story from the Bible. Adam Trask favors one of his sons over the other with unfortunate results. The story is set in California's Salinas Valley around the turn of the last century. I read it again a few years ago when Oprah chose it to be the first book in her new book club featuring classics. Whatever happened to that, by the way? It seemed that the characters I liked when I was younger didn't stand out as much to me while others came to the forefront. The story had so many more layers and richness than I realized all those years ago. I had a similar experience with F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby which was a book report assignment in high school that I grudgingly read and didn't really like. I picked it up again years later determined to find out why people still recommend it. It is now one of my favorite books. If you have also read and liked it, I would highly recommend Chris Bohjalian's The Double Bind.

Another favorite of mine is D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover. I think a lot of people know about this because it was banned for many years for being sexually explicit. While there are some sex scenes in the book, it is almost tame when compared to some contemporary writing. While it was published in 1928, it reads like something written more recently. It is a powerful story about the breakdown of the class system in England after World War I and how people had to find new ways to live in a world turned upside down with a little hanky panky thrown in for good measure. I find myself drawn to books about that time period. W. Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge is the story of an American who served in the Great War and it changed the trajectory of his life. He was no longer able to go back to Chicago and pick up where he left off. He couldn't marry his sweetheart and live the life he had planned prior to the war. Instead he travels the world and lives in the moment and studies Eastern philosophy trying to find some meaning in the fact that he lived when so many others did not.

Of course, there have been some books I have attempted and just could not get through. I've tried The Brothers Karamazov, An American Tragedy, Anna Karenina and The Sun Also Rises, but they didn't do anything for me. I don't let it discourage me from trying these kinds of books. Life is too short to force yourself to read something you don't like. There is always another good book waiting. This summer I am thinking of trying either The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and maybe Slaughterhouse Five by Vonnegut.