This is a conditional claim, as I noted before. And that raises the interesting question: Is it? (If you came here looking for the original quote, you can find at the bottom of this post.)
I don't think so. Did Fitzgerald agree with me? Yes, I think he did. He wasn't much of a man but he could write almost as well as Edith Wharton, which is to say that conditional is no accident. Gatsby's life is tragedy but it isn't unmerited tragedy.
Betty Draper is very much like Gatsby in this sense. Her personality is just like his. Don Draper is quite the opposite; he is a sort of anti-Gatsby.
Acquiring virtue is not a matter of a unbroken series of successful gestures.
It makes me think of my neighbour Dermot. Back when he was five, Dermot never failed to be Dermot. His personality was a successful series of unbroken gestures and to have continued in this light would have been to grow up to be an adult very much like Betty Draper. Now that he is a full years older Dermot and those of us watching him have a far less clear notion of who he is. His progress is much more like that of someone trying to learn how to play a musical instrument. He makes mistakes and he has to stop and start over again and again. Now he sometimes fails to be Dermot because being Dermot is an end he is aiming for.
Virtue, unlike personality, is about trying over and over again. And that is the difference between Don and Betty Draper. His offences, his serial infidelities for example, are serious and (at this point anyway) more troubling that Betty's. But he is a man of virtue and she is a child.
And what many take to be his most serious offence—"living a lie"—is no offence at all.
If you are joining me here, this series starts here.
The next post in the series is here.
The quote is from The Great Gastby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and it is the narrator Nick talking about Jay Gatsby. Here is all of it:
I don't think so. Did Fitzgerald agree with me? Yes, I think he did. He wasn't much of a man but he could write almost as well as Edith Wharton, which is to say that conditional is no accident. Gatsby's life is tragedy but it isn't unmerited tragedy.
Betty Draper is very much like Gatsby in this sense. Her personality is just like his. Don Draper is quite the opposite; he is a sort of anti-Gatsby.
Acquiring virtue is not a matter of a unbroken series of successful gestures.
It makes me think of my neighbour Dermot. Back when he was five, Dermot never failed to be Dermot. His personality was a successful series of unbroken gestures and to have continued in this light would have been to grow up to be an adult very much like Betty Draper. Now that he is a full years older Dermot and those of us watching him have a far less clear notion of who he is. His progress is much more like that of someone trying to learn how to play a musical instrument. He makes mistakes and he has to stop and start over again and again. Now he sometimes fails to be Dermot because being Dermot is an end he is aiming for.
Virtue, unlike personality, is about trying over and over again. And that is the difference between Don and Betty Draper. His offences, his serial infidelities for example, are serious and (at this point anyway) more troubling that Betty's. But he is a man of virtue and she is a child.
And what many take to be his most serious offence—"living a lie"—is no offence at all.
If you are joining me here, this series starts here.
The next post in the series is here.
The quote is from The Great Gastby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and it is the narrator Nick talking about Jay Gatsby. Here is all of it:
If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promise of life, as if he related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the 'creative temperament'—it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again.
Virtue, unlike personality, is about trying over and over again. And that is the difference between Don and Betty Draper. His offences, his serial infidelities for example, are serious and (at this point anyway) more troubling that Betty's. But he is a man of virtue and she is a child.
ReplyDeleteThis is the most offensive thing I have ever read. Betty is a child, but Don isn't? Who are you kidding? Both have childish tendencies. In fact, most of the characters do. How is it that you cannot see this, and instead, allow your dislike of Betty to blind you?
The most offensive thing you've ever read? That seems a bit strong to me.
ReplyDeleteDon has failings as well but they are different failings from Betty's and they are not driven by a failure to grow up. I'd add that Matt Weiner himself described Betty as a childish character. Further in her confrontation with her father in the season three episode "The Arrangements", Betty very clearly reveals her willingness to remain a child and not to read about the funeral arrangements for her father.
Sir. Can you plz explain us in very simple worlds. The 1st paragraph
DeleteA conditional claim is when someone claims that something is true or something will happen if some condition is met. For example:
Delete"If that dam bursts hundreds of people will drown."
Compare that with an unconditional claim,
"Hundreds of people will drown."