Much more potent than when I'd read it a near decade ago, primarily because I am now a person returned from the East to the 'MiddleWest'. Nick doesn't show any remarkably redeeming qualities, but he doesn't need to, really. He makes a really fascinating widow of Gatsby, something "gorgeous" and fantastical and hopeful. Ultimately a very sick (read: diseased, dying) fantasy and one easily annulled by careless-yet-turbulent people who don't grasp what it means to be so emotional and attracted to the whole world. I'm not doing James Gatz apologia here - "I disapproved of him from beginning to end" as Nick admits - but I'd show up to his funeral, if knowing what Nick does.

A lack of concision might be a major turn-off for some. Though, I find that Fitzgerald's flowery language tends to be more atmospheric than heavy-handed and overly descriptive of the literal. Except for when describing Wolfsheim, one of the few characters on which you can feel the author bluntly project his beliefs (antisemitism). There're also those very ostensible allusions to sight, like the owl-eyed man who returns for the funeral, which make one go "oh yes, the symbolism." I know the very last 3 sentences of the book might appear ornate and clichéd too, but I really like them. Great use of an em dash and ellipses to evoke eventual, yet always sudden, ends. A greatly-written death scene preceding it, too.

The final chapter is my favorite, actually. I love the prep-school train that goes back out west, with students who are temporary foreigners before they coalesce with the old country. (I'm not sure the Midwest has the same kind of distance it did from the East back then. I no longer have the feeling of disappearing into some pastoral, quiet scene, but I'll attest to the ongoing culture shock. I'm not someone who has a great sense of home, anyway.) Nick grieving by himself and calling random people who never cared is also quite the sight. "Gatsby and me against them all."