So tell me, old sport, have we heard from Daisy Buchanan? Do we know what happened to her? Does anyone?
The answer, of course, is “no.”
Daisy is one of the most mysterious characters in all of literature, almost completely unknown despite her pivotal role in “The Great Gatsby” – the most talked-about, argued-about, book-clubbed-about book of our generation.
She is the love of Gatsby’s life. The story revolves around her, but author F. Scott Fitzgerald seldom lets her speak. Even the descriptions of her are vague. Who was she, and what became of her after Gatsby’s body was found on the bottom of his pool?
We are about to find out, because Tucson author Jillian Cantor will re-introduce us in “Beautiful Little Fools,” scheduled for release by HarperCollins on Jan. 4.
Cantor may be Tucson’s favorite author — her books and her appearances sell out quickly here — and her many readers may have a hard time waiting ‘til January.
In “Beautiful Little Fools,” Cantor invites Daisy, Jordan Baker and Myrtle Wilson to tell the Gatsby story from the women’s point of view.
Cantor is known for her historical novels featuring 20th-Century women, but this one comes with a twist. Instead of featuring real people, it introduces us to women who lived only on the pages of a book.
That said, the project evolved the same way Cantor’s others did.
“I will be reading or watching television and just bump into people who sound interesting,” she said. “If I’m still thinking about them a week or two later, I’ll begin to wonder if there’s a book there. It’s not something I jump into. This is someone I’m going two spend two years of my life with. It’s important I like them.”
In this case, she was intrigued by complexities of being a strong, intelligent woman in an era dominated by misogynistic men. To learn more about Daisy, Cantor carefully mined Fitzgerald’s novel twice. She read dozens of reviews and lectures. She also bought lots of popcorn. Gatsby has inspired six full-length movies, most memorably the blockbusters starring Robert Redford and Leonardo DiCaprio, and Cantor watched them all.
“Honestly, I thought the best was the 2000 version that was made for TV,” she said. “Paul Rudd played Nick Carraway. That was my favorite, but all of the Gatsby films brought different perspectives to the story.”
By the end of 2019, Cantor had written 50 pages and her agent was talking to publishers.
“HarperCollins agreed to buy the book right before the lockdown,” Cantor recalled. “With everything else going on last spring, I suddenly had a deadline. I had three months to finish the book. It was pretty hectic there for a while.”
“Beautiful Little Fools” is Cantor’s 11th novel, all written since moving to Tucson as a graduate student in 2000. For a time, she tried to write while teaching — she was an adjunct professor of English at Pima Community College and the UA — but in 2011 she quit her day jobs to focus on her career as an author.
Cantor is drawn to ordinary women who do extraordinary things, especially if those things slipped beneath the radar of history.
Her next novel, “The Hours Count,” focused on Ethel Rosenberg. In “Half Life,” we met Marie Currie.
Her personal bestseller, “The Lost Letter,” used fictional characters to portray real people. The story was inspired by Nazi resistance fighter Sophie Scholl and a Polish engraver who helped her during World War II.
Daisy Buchanan’s challenges were far different than Scholl’s, but it would be a mistake to underestimate her.
This is evidenced by the title of Cantor’s book. “Beautiful little fools,” is actually a line from Daisy in the novel, reflecting her view that men of her era did not value intelligent women … instead preferring “beautiful little fools.”
It will be interesting to see how Cantor turns that phrase in her novel, and she isn’t about the spoil the surprise.
“Let’s just say Daisy has a lot more going on than Nick Carraway ever imagined,” Cantor suggested. “Her view of the events in West Egg that summer is a lot different than the perspective Nick gave us in the book.”
FOOTNOTES
The Tucson Festival of Books will present author Tom Vitale as part of its Authors in Conversation series on Wednesday, Oct. 3. Vitale was Anthony Bourdain’s director and producer. His book is entitled “In the Weeds: Around the World and Behind the Scenes with Anthony Bourdain.” It will be a virtual session accessible on the festival’s website: tucsonfestivalofbooks.org
Author Luis Alberto Urrea will be back in town to take part in the Tucson Humanities Festival October 14. His reading is scheduled for 7 p.m. in UA’s Health Sciences Innovation Building at 1670 E. Drachman St. The program will be streamed lived on the Poetry Center’s website: poetry.arizona.edu
“The Great Gatsby” has become an American classic, but it was a bust when published in 1925. Fewer than 20,000 copies were sold. Fitzgerald considered himself a failure when he died in 1940.
