The Great Gatsby

The late Alexander Scourby’s voice is so resonant with images of the past that now when we hear his artful interpretations (at least, we older folks), we feel we are traveling familiar roads. After all, he helped define the audiobook age. As with all great narrators, Scourby has an actor’s sensibilities. His rendition of Fitzgerald’s most popular novel, recorded many years back, thus has been lauded, and rightly so. Scourby understands Nick Carraway’s sympathetic telling of the inescapability of the past and the improbability of finding love and honor, even for the privileged classes, a truth that has assured Americans for decades that the wealthy suffer, too. Still, a latent sadness pervades this narration: Somehow Scourby makes us feel that we all have lost Daisy, and that Gatsby deserved better.