Gstaad
That’s all we needed in a great year: copyright has expired on The Great Gatsby. Some Fitzgerald wannabe has already cashed in with a prequel, and I’m certain the worst is yet to come. I suppose that the insatiable hunger for fame and celebrity to impress a shallow and scatterbrained blonde across the water made Gatsby a very tragic hero. But he was not as tragic as Hemingway’s Jake Barnes, who had his you-know-what blown off in the war and could only flirt with Lady Brett from afar. Or Scott Fitzgerald’s other tragic hero, Dick Diver, whose talent wasted away while he amused his rich wife’s friends.
At least the Gatsby prequel has, I am told, been written by a very good writer who can create atmosphere. But I hate to think what future copycats will come up with. Do not paraphrase the classics was the first thing I was told back in lower school, and Gatsby is as classic as they get. Can you imagine the horrors Hollywood will now be able to come up with? Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian lolling beside a giant piano-shaped swimming pool, while far out at sea, on his hideous mega-yacht, a lovelorn multibillionaire coke dealer pines away and indulges non-stop in his product, leading him to… no I won’t go on — it’s too horrible to contemplate.
As it happens, I recently met Anthony Horowitz, a man who writes Sherlock Holmes and James Bond novels, and he couldn’t have been nicer. Typically, I had no idea who he was as we lunched with Horowitz’s wife Jill Green and Barry and Lizzie Humphries chez Aliki Goulandris. It was an outdoor lunch in a great garden on a brilliant day and the only hint we got was from Barry, who mumbled something about Horowitz also doing some scribbling.
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