What Light Was

Mary writes her novel to her husband, Percy. Scott writes his novel to his wife, Zelda. Although all four spouses were once considered infidels in their own times, now both of their novels about their marriages are mandatory in public schools and have entered our mainstream, common American consciousness. 

If parties are the first thing you think of when The Great Gatsby is mentioned, or if the creation and murders of Victor’s monster are the first images you have in mind of Frankenstein, then you must have another go with these stories outside of a classroom. They really matter, and English suffers without them. They deliver what audiences want—guts. They are both tender, mythic love stories and testimonies to the horrors of Western social orders where dreams become gods and no one wins. As assured texts of essential tragedies, the recapitulated manias of these casts and their authors have been staged and filmed for the past eight decades. 

The Great Gatsby turns 100 this year, and we’ve got the right spellbook for the roaring centennial party of magical realism and mayhem. Suffering from the “must create” motto of the creative imperative, our lofty handsome treasure, What Light Was, is a wartime of bookish carnage like a monster grizzly that keeps charging after taking hurried bullets. You will be eaten alive.