A Gal in Gatsby

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Although I usually cite The Great Gatsby as my favorite novel, it's been several years since I've read it. I've been trying, in fits and starts, to catch up on the Fitzgerald books that I've missed so far, so Gatsby's had to sit in the corner and eat wet cigarette butts for the time being. Anyway what this means is that inside my besieged-by-TMI brain the finer specifics of the novel, things other than the basic plot and themes, have grown a little hazy. 

Except! Except one thing, which is an image seared into my brain for all my life. When I read the book for the first time back in 5th or 6th grade, somewhere around there, it was probably the most shocking violence my pretty well-shielded from such things self had gotten at that point. And that is, without being too spoilery - because heaven forbid I spoil an eighty-six year old novel! - the description of what happens to Myrtle Wilson. If you even say the name of the book, it doesn't take long for the visual, the exact way FSF describes it, to infiltrate my mind. It's etched in stone.
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So it's with interest that I take the news of this character's casting in Baz Luhrmann's film. News which has reached us today. It appears that Isla Fisher, aka Mrs. Sacha Baron Cohen, aka Not Amy Adams, has gotten the part. Ben Affleck is reportedly up for the part of Tom Buchanan, who has an affair with Myrtle in the book. I like Fisher well enough, and she seems to have vanished in the wake of Amy Adams ascendance, so I'm glad to see her find a juicy part like this. What I think of the whole 3D insanity of the project itself... well I'm withholding judgment.

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