Every summer I read The Great Gatsby. I was first forced to read it my sophomore year in high school. My mother was dying, my family was falling apart and I had become very withdrawn. My usually terrifying English teacher assigned me and no one else the task of reading The Great Gatsby. She knew that I drew and painted. She told me to do a series of illustrations from the book. She was ancient, strict, demanding, seemingly cruel, always caustic and had the demeanor of an dowager empress. I was confused by her sudden, specific attention. I suspected I was being set up for some sort of humiliation. But I was wrong. There was great intuition and kindness in her act. I melted into Fitzgerald’s extraordinary prose by the second page. Gatsby is a tragic book. Among the saddest ever written. But it has a strange, elusive power. “There was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life...it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness which I have never found in any other person and which is not likely I shall ever find again.” I was a ratty looking hopeless hippie kid. Practically feral. Yet somehow Gatsby’s glamour and his unshakable hope and belief in a single perfect dream cut through to my bedrock. I did my illustrations. The first mature works of my life. All my books are about dreamers or are hopeful dreams of the possibilities of joy and life. I owe it in great part to Gatsby and to my peculiar and wise English teacher. And this matters to me during this summer of Covid. Illustrations by JC Leyendecker. Francis Cugat. Tom Purvis . . #greatteachers #thegreatgatsby #thepowerofdreams #thepowerofstory #storytelling #hope #jcleyendecker https://www.instagram.com/p/CCi4UmTlMgm/?igshid=1atk5qww0o1uo
