Gatsby Remains Great, says Levin - No, not that Levin

A short time ago the Globe and Mail's new Books Editor, Jared Bland, took a roundhouse swing at The Great Gatsby, the novel not the new movie from Baz Luhrmann - which may turn out to be the Australian director's Heaven's Gate judging from the reviews I've seen. Anyhow, back to Bland. Among other matters, he deplored Gatsby's flabby phrasing and nebulous imagery, and cited several instances where F. Scott Fitzgerald's prose was fat and fatuous. This, I suppose, he considers insight. Has Bland read anything else Fitzgerald wrote? Tender is the Night? A Diamond as Big as the Ritz? Babylon Revisited? Absolution? In everything he ever put on paper - including his letters to Zelda, his first love Ginevra King, his daughter Scottie, as well as editors and creditors - there is flabby and nebulous phrase-making, but in most cases, certainly in his fiction, it is counterbalanced by some of the most exquisite and compactly written sentences I have ever read or expect to read. Reason enough, then, to read Gatsby and the rest.

That's a point Bob Levin, a Globe editor, makes in his May 10 rebuttal of Bland's assertions.  Good for him. And the fact that his name is Levin adds just so much welcome vinegar to the exchange. We all know, of course, that the Globe dumped long time Books Editor Martin Levin a month or so ago, and sought someone with a "robust constitution" and talents rather like those ad agencies hire. Where this little episode of literary contention may lead is anyone's guess. But it augurs well for the Books Section; one may say - and forgive me because I did resist the urge to crack wise until the last sentence - its future won't be bland.