103 ‘I looked once more at them and they looked back at me, remotely, possessed by intense life. Then I went out of the room and down the marble steps into the rain’ – Nick can see the illusory nature of the fulfilment of Gatsby’s dream – his false nostos , as it were – but he still envies those who live on such a plane: he has ‘no girl whose disembodied face’ floats ‘among the dark cornices’ (87) and he returns home alone ‘in the rain’.

CHAPTER SIX
104 ‘he fell just short of being news’ – The reader is coming close to the time of Gatsby’s death. In media terms, Fitzgerald’s central character is on the brink of something close to modern ‘celebrity status’. Such status is pursued for its own sake by some, but Gatsby’s ‘celebrity’ has been solely a means to an end. Now that he has found Daisy again, his parties soon evaporate.

104 ‘the “underground pipe-line to Canada”’ – Not a real pipeline carrying oil or gas as these were built much later than the 1920s. The rumour either concerns the smuggling of alcohol out of Canada (which was a major illegal business at the time and the source of much of Al Capone’s wealth), or, more likely, the ludicrous rumour of an actual pipeline through which alcohol could be pumped direct to the States.

104 ‘there was one persistent story that he didn’t live in a house at all, but in a boat that looked like a house and was moved secretly up and down the Long Island shore.’ – Bizarre certainly, but another example of Gatsby being associated with boats and the sea.

104 ‘Just why these