One Hour Parking Show presents…

This time, with a cup of chai steaming lightly into the air, I rejoined our beloved Wilson on his mission to stave off death. With the beginning of a magnificient beard growing upon his chin, I have two pressing problems. How to keep a let’s read piece interesting and what Wilson’s full name is. The latter of the two is simple. He’s clearly Wilson W. Witherbottoms. As for the second, well, he’s standing next to a gnome. At the start of day six Wilson has two berry patches going, two farms, and a chest monster taking a nap among the bushes.

Day six, like those before it focuses on the fabulous collection of poop. There’s also a slight diversion to burn down the forest to collect the needed charcoal. After a brief stint building a new farm and harvesting crops, Wilson sets up yet another berry patch. Before nightfall, he fashions a crockpot and uses the extra wood to fashion a chest. Thus ends a boring day.

Day seven. Trees, they must be killed for their precious wood. Grass, harvested. Ring thing, found. Back at the base, the saplings are starting to sprout as Wilson expands his grass collection. In the farms there are some pumpkins. However, earlier in the day, Wilson had a slight run in with some particularly vicious frogs that took not kindly to his beard. The melee ended with Wilson suffering some not insubstantial wounds, but their legs made a tasty frog sandwich.

Day eight. Poop. Wilson takes a journey to the super herd, spending the entire day collecting poop. He also found another touchstone. After another campout in the wilderness, more poop collecting.

Day nine. Poop.

Day ten. Wilson builds a farm and the berries are in bloom. Our intrepid hero is doing well and sets out to collect, more poop.  Then tragedy strikes. While the ponds seemed like a nice scenic view, the frogs could not handle Wilson’s sex appeal. While he fought valiantly, he was stuck among the berry bushes and overwhelmed.

Wilson awakes, around him the shattered remnants of a touchstone. Slightly crazed, Wilson hears something in the distance. Soon, dogs are nipping at his heels, but something in his imagination distracts them. He, lacking his beard, makes it back to the base and recovers his collection. Soon, after eating the corpses of his slain enemies he will have his vengeance.

Alexander Lewis had just fifty minutes to prove a man’s innocence, or, more accurately, he had to cast reasonable doubt on his guilt. Any longer than that and the call wouldn’t make it through in time. He fished through his jacket pocket for a handkerchief to cover his mouth. Not a normal accessory for him, but after the first few times entering the apartment, he never forgot to grab one. With the case going through appeal after appeal, the police had yet to release the apartment to the landlord for cleaning and the stench of the girl’s rotting corpse pervaded its every inch. That it hadn’t annoyed the neighbors was a testament that Mrs. Landers at near ninety couldn’t smell, see, or hear for much of anything.

He made his way over to the window, stepping carefully over the outline of where the body had been. In just under fifty minutes any disturbance to the scene wouldn’t make much difference. Holding his breath, he wrapped his fingers under the rusting edge. He didn’t consider his body to be aging considerably much for his age, but even a firm jolt failed to open the window. Rubbing his shoulder, he checked the window lock. Open, so the problem was him. Then, his lack of breathing took hold and he gulped a giant breath of putrid miasma. In a coughing fit, he shoved his body up against the window and though a normal window would have slammed open, he managed a large enough crack to fit his head out into what passed for fresh air in Neo York.

Despite Alexander’s apathy for the accused, the law firm, and the whole investigative process, he stayed on the case for two reasons. He was contractually obligated and he didn’t want any lawyers claiming he hadn’t fulfilled his end and the landlord was a fine bloke, good for a coffee and watching the match. He’d gone to uni and imagined a better future than he’d had, took to drink, and wound up a recovering alcoholic.

Like most aspiring writers I have that idea for a novel floating around in the back of my mind. Likely it will never see fruition, much less publication. I’ve passed the stage of sobering assessment of my abilities. If I ever write it, I will have wrote it because I wanted to tell the story, not because I seek fame or fortune. That, I think, is more likely to succeed, in terms of both finishing and producing a work of art. Yet still, in the art world, they talk about books in terms of their potential to be the next “Great American Novel,” dedicating endless inches to debating whether or not women are even capable of writing one and hardly discussing why The Great Gatsby earned the distinction in the first place.

Unlike the recent movie’s depiction of, well, shitty movie making, The Great Gatsby is essentially about the American dream. The problem of analysis lies in two places. One, as a culture we’ve adopted an unhealthy attachment to a success narrative that never sees fruition. Neither Gatsby nor Tom achieved the American dream. Tom is old money and Gatsby is a crook. Neither worked hard, played by the rules, and saw their work ethic rewarded with riches. Further, Gatsby didn’t seek riches for the sake of success. He sought them as a means of winning the love of Daisy. Following that, Gatsby’s tragedy isn’t the representation of the American dream, but rather Nick, in his quest for riches on the coast is the true seeker of the American dream. He, more than any other character in the novel, embodies the dream seeker narrative. While many see Gatsby’s death as the tragic ending to the novel, it is Nick’s disillusionment with the dream that truly finalizes in his last words to the reader, “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” We seek a fictionalized American past that never truly existed. We make a fetish of nostalgia.

The “Great” American novel relies on a misnomer and while I am partially guilty of reading the word great in a different context, the misreading contextualizes why few works live up to the title. The Great Gatsby isn’t about the superficiality of the rich. The novel is closer in theme to the Occupy protestors. The problem with the “Great” American is the assumption that there is a great America to be found. Tragically, there are still many who cling to the idea that America is number one among all nations. By what metric they measure this I know not. The Great Gatsby is the Great American Novel because Nick realizes the futility in his search for the city on the hill. Neither East nor West Egg will hatch.

Now, when I first envisioned my novel’s thematic story, I saw it as a response to The Great Gatsby. Among the flaws I credited to Fitzgerald was the focus on the lives of the rich; though, while I have recanted myself to a degree, the focus still seems problematic. Subtracting those who read the novel as a propaganda piece for capitalism, the focus still allows the distraction of the reader by the novel as a denouncement of irresponsible wealth, of shallowness, and of superficiality. Not to give Sarah Palin and her Tea Party compatriots undue mention, but Gatsby puts the “Great” America under the magnifying glass by transposing Nick from Real America.

I don’t want to write The Great American Novel, but rather The Real American Novel. The tragedy comes not from the love story, but rather the desires of the dreamer. Countless works have played upon dreams from which there is no awakening, but few connect this to the hegemony of the American Dream, who so often fail to recognize the nightmare they are trapped within.