Los Angeles Times Critic's Notebook: 'Gatsby,' 'Gatz' and the fallacy of adaptation

December 9, 2012
LA Times

Critic's Notebook: 'Gatsby,' 'Gatz' and the fallacy of adaptation

'The Great Gatsby' is a great American novel, and what makes it great defies adaptation, though Elevator Repair Service's 'Gatz' tries.

We live in a culture of excess. From supersized fast food to billion-dollar presidential campaigns, bigger is always better.

This is hardly a new observation; it's been part of us all along. In his 1960 satire "The Magic Christian," Terry Southern imagines "a gigantic convertible … scaled in the proportions of an ordinary automobile but … tremendous in size — … longer and wider than the largest Greyhound bus." Read Story