Read about another entry on the list.Jordan Baker
I completely understand how absurd a crush on The Great Gatsby’s Jordan Baker sounds, but crushes are rarely synonymous with rational thought. I’m certain JB, as I would lovingly refer to her until tersely reprimanded, is the type of person you’d initially find intriguing, then eventually grow to despise. Logically, I understand that we’d never succeed as a couple. One, she’s fictional. People with fictional girlfriends are doomed to spend their lives attending weddings alone. Two, she’s kind of awful. Awful in a charming, slightly enigmatic way, but awful nonetheless. I’m reminded of Nick Carraway’s words on ending it with Jordan Baker: “Angry, and half in love with her, and tremendously sorry, I turned away.” A relationship that can evoke that type of passion, even of the fleeting variety, is worth experiencing. Every well-lived life contains a few necessary sojourns of the Jordan Baker variety.
The Great Gatsby appears among Honeysuckle Weeks's six best books, Elizabeth Wilhide's nine illustrious houses in fiction, Suzette Field's top ten literary party hosts, Robert McCrums's ten best closing lines in literature, Molly Driscoll's ten best literary lessons about love, Jim Lehrer's six favorite 20th century novels, John Mullan's lists of ten of the best clocks in literature and ten of the best misdirected messages, Tad Friend's seven best novels about WASPs, Kate Atkinson's top ten novels, Garrett Peck's best books about Prohibition, Robert McCrum's top ten books for Obama officials, Jackie Collins' six best books, and John Krasinski's six best books, and is on the American Book Review's list of the 100 best last lines from novels.
--Marshal Zeringue
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