Column Book—Tails
Nick
By Michael Farris Smith
n
“If there is one thing the lost are able to recognize it is the others who are just as wounded and wandering.” —Micheal Farris Smith, Nick
30 • Benicia Magazine
Book and Cocktail Club
Cooper Mickelson
If you are a fan of The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, I highly recommend picking up its unconventional prequel. In this dark and compelling novel, we are invited to imagine the narrator of The Great Gatsby in the years leading up to his move to Long Island. Nick opens in France during World War I. Nick Carraway has enlisted in the army to get away from the dull, monotonous life of the Midwest. As a result, Nick is now thrust into the horrors of trench warfare. Michael Farris Smith describes these terrifying experiences in a uniquely rhythmic way, writing, “The rifles fired and once they were emptied
the bayonets and once they were broken off in the rib cages out came the knives and the hands and knees and fists and whatever else could be used to kill.” Smith’s words quickly drew me into Nick’s world of chaos and melancholy. The story continues with Nick spending his leave in Paris. There, he meets a “blunt and beautiful” woman, falls in love, and quickly allows himself to dream of their happy future together. Suddenly, this dream is irreparably shattered, and we discover what inspired Gatsby’s Nick to believe, “You can’t repeat the past.” Nick endures the trenches, terrible forests, horrifying tunnels, is left for
