The Great Gatsby

The orgiastic past

gatsby  

The Great Gatsby plays in the Moonstruck Theater Company, in Marlboro, Mass., through Nov. 2.

One of the most evocative passages in Fitzgerald's 180-page prose poem is his description of returning home from school by train to Minnesota for Christmas. I took similar train trips "home'' myself  -- albeit going east -- for years each December. And I  can imagine the long trip, "over the dark fields of the Republic,'' to St. Paul, where some of my family lived in Fitzgerald's neighborhood on Summit Avenue.

--Robert Whitcomb