I have been slowly and fitfully working my way through the classic novels I last read in high school and college, in order to enjoy them without a term paper or final exam hanging over my head. In rereading The Great Gatsby, I was less concerned with the symbolic meaning of the gigantic eyes of T. J. Ecklesburg and more struck by the alien landscape of the ash field those eyes looked down upon. I was less worried about what the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock meant exactly and just knocked down by the image of romantic futility painted by Gatsby waving his arms at that dock. In other words, I was more open to the experience of the novel as a great story, rather than great literature. I feel like Daisy and Tom, with their vapid shallowness and complete lack of compassion for other people, are as relevant representations of our culture today as they were of Fitzgerald’s then. The American dream is still a powerful and myth that has not yet been debunked, and Gatsby could have been as easily victimized by it in the early 21st century as he was in the premiere age of the nouveau riche. The mark of a true classic is not that it is still being taught in college classrooms, but that it is still a recognizable and moving story decades after it was written.