F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby and vivid chronicler of the Jazz Age, is buried in lil unassuming Rockville, a little down the road from where I live. Not too long ago, friends told me that the novelist who portrayed America's shining possibilities (and also the darker reverse side of the American Dream) had links to historic Rockville.
The optimist in me loves the line about Gatsby having "some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life."
I guess I'm talking about Gatsby now because I'm hurriedly blogging the many byways of my personal journey in America as my departure looms.
Also, I'm now reading the memoir "Reading Lolita in Tehran" which has startling passages about the time when author and professor Azar Nafisi ingeniously put The Great Gatsby and his dream on trial in her University of Tehran class. It forced her students to take sides, in the days when Ayatollah Khomeini's revolution began closing down the country.
2 comments:
I must have driven past that cemetery a thousand times during my time in Maryland, but only stopped once to pay tribute to Fitzgerald. Even then, I didn't get a photo. :-(
Yes I did the same thing! Still driving past the site all the time and not taking any pix. I did visit it with Gaby one bright and windy day in fall. I read Gatsby at 17, barely thought about it in the intervening years, and now it's a bit of an odd rediscovery to "encounter" Gatsby in this drive-by style! When I do think about it. : ) There's a new condo near it named the Fitz in honor of. Oh guess what, there's a very new Rockville Town Center right on 355 in front of the Regal movie theater. Haven't been there yet but it has a Spanish tapas restaurant, a place where you dip your own donuts, the 10,000 Villages store which sells crafts from small rural communities in Africa, Asia and all.
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