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 BIOLOGIC
REGULATION
OF PHYSICAL
ACTIVITY
Thomas W. Rowland, MD
Baystate Medical Center
Springfield, Massachusetts

HUMAN
KINETICS
 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Rowland, Thomas W., author.
Title: Biologic regulation of physical activity / Thomas W. Rowland.
Description: Champaign, IL : Human Kinetics, [2017] | Includes
bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015050904 | ISBN 9781492526513 (print)
Subjects: | MESH: Motor Activity--physiology | Brain--physiology | Energy
Metabolism--physiology
Classification: LCC QP176 | NLM WE 103 | DDC 612.3/9--dc23 LC record available at
http://lccn.loc.gov/2015050904
ISBN: 978-1-4925-2651-3 (print)
Copyright © 2017 by Thomas W. Rowland
All rights reserved. Except for use in a review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in
any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including xerography, photocopying, and recording, and in any information storage and
retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.
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E6757
Contents
Preface  v
Acknowledgments  xi
Introduction  1

Part I Surveying the Evidence . . . . . . . . . 19

Chapter 1 Nature of Physical Activity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Measuring Physical Activity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Categorizing Physical Activity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Chapter 2 Physical Activity Through the Life Span . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Human Beings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Physical Activity of Animals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Chapter 3 Effects of Sex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Sexual Maturation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Sex Differences in Infancy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

Chapter 4 Neurochemical Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

Dopamine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Other Neurochemical Mediators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

Chapter 5 Perturbations of Brain Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

Lesions in Animal Brains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Craniopharyngioma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Anorexia Nervosa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Restless Legs Syndrome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder . . . . . . . . . . . 55

Chapter 6 Organized Variability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

Animal Circadian Rhythms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Human Circadian Rhythms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Other Variability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

Chapter 7 Genetic Influences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

Familial and Twin Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Animal Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Genetic Markers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Epigenetic Influences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

iii
iv Contents

Chapter 8 Physical Activity Play . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

Function of Physical Play . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Neurological Basis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

Part II Rationale and Mechanisms . . . . . . . . 75

Chapter 9 Activity Regulation and the Need for Energy Balance . . . . 77
Energy Balance as a Biological Need . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Role of Physical Activity in Energy Balance . . . . . . . . . 80
Biologic Origin of Other Contributors to Energy Balance . . . . 83
Parallel Decline With Aging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Compensatory Responses in Energy Balance . . . . . . . . . 96

Chapter 10 Mechanisms for Biologic Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

Feedback Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
Proposed Biologic Control System for Habitual Physical Activity . 119
Activity-Stat Versus Energy-Stat . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124

Part III Implications of Biologic Regulation

of Activity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Chapter 11 Responses to Activity Interventions . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Compensatory Changes in Physical Activity . . . . . . . . . 130
Compensatory Changes in Caloric Intake . . . . . . . . . . 137
Long-Term Changes in Physical Activity Habits . . . . . . . 141
Implications for Health Promotion . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

Chapter 12 Understanding Obesity: The Biologic Perspective . . . . . 147

First Law of Thermodynamics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Obesity as an Error in Energy Balance . . . . . . . . . . . 148
Behavioral Explanations for Energy Imbalance . . . . . . . . 149
Genetic Explanations for Energy Imbalance . . . . . . . . . 150
Implications for Treatment and Prevention . . . . . . . . . 154

Chapter 13 Altering the Biologic Control of Activity . . . . . . . . . . 157

Plasticity of Biologic Set Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
Can Cognitive Will Override Biologic Control? . . . . . . . . 159
Can Hedonistic Behavior Override Biologic Control? . . . . . . 160
Role of Spontaneous Physical Activity and NEAT . . . . . . . 162
Pharmacological Manipulation of Physical Activity Regulators . . 163
Epilogue  167
References  171
Index  199
About the Author   211
Preface
In the fall of 1999, Professor Robert Malina assigned each student in his
kinesiology graduate seminar at Michigan State University the task of writing
a critique of an article I had recently published titled “The Biological Basis
of Physical Activity” (5). This article addressed the rather provocative but
equally intriguing premise that there exists an intrinsic, involuntary gover-
nor in the brain that regulates energy expenditure by physical activity in the
name of maintenance of energy balance. Presented were lines of evidence
derived from numerous genetic and neurophysiologic perspectives as well
as a contemplation of the malleability of such a central control and how it
might relate to recognized extrinsic, environmental determinants of activity.
So here was, for most of the students, a new and almost counterintuitive
concept. The amount that one engages in physical activity is a complex,
multifactorial phenomenon, traditionally considered to be established by a
mélange of social, cultural, psychological, and environmental influences.
Preventive health strategies aimed at improving activity habits have been
based on the assumption that such physical activity can be modified by alter-
ing these extrinsic sociocultural influences. And, important to this concept,
the decision to be physically active or not has traditionally been considered
to be just that—an individual’s cognitive decision.
This article argued for an additional perspective. It provided evidence
that a biologic controller, one outside conscious control, should be added to
the list of these determinant factors and that this controller has the potential
to significantly influence physical activity habits that can favorably affect
one’s health.
Overall, the comments of the students, kindly provided to me by Profes-
sor Malina, could best be described as cautiously skeptical. Here are some
samples:
•• “If a central nervous system activity center does exist, it is easily over-
ridden.”
•• “The probability that the human brain controls an individual’s levels of
physical activity is the latest hypothesis of the human vanity.”
•• “Wanting to find this biological control and finding it are two funda-
mentally different enterprises, an observation [the author] has apparently
not grasped.”
•• “The present paper is a good example of a rather new theory that needs
to be repeatedly questioned and examined.”

v
vi Preface

•• “[The author] severely underestimates the influences society has over

both conscious and unconscious cognitions, desires, and motives.”
These students found the concept “reasonable,” “intriguing,” “not surprising,”
“confusing,” “inherently limited,” “inconsistent,” “unstable,” “incoherent,”
“certainly makes sense,” “nothing earth-shattering,” “too extreme,” and
“a little outrageous,” one for which “the jury is still out.” It would not be
unreasonable to expect that such a mixture of reactions might have reflected
those of the scientific community at large. After all, wasn’t this idea of a
brain governor working beneath the level of consciousness to regulate activ-
ity, in reality, contrary to common experience? It was difficult to refute the
obvious: Doesn’t one decide to exercise or not, based on cognitive decision
making? Whether one takes a walk or sits in front of the television clearly
would seem to be up to the individual.
Now, more than 15 years later, the jury is, in fact, still out. And one student
who complained that the 1998 article “raised more questions than it provided
answers” will probably not be fully assuaged by what he or she reads in
the pages that follow here. Still, this time period has witnessed significant
developments and lines of thinking that bear importance on this question
of involuntary control of one’s habits of physical activity.
There is that expectation, based on common sense and each of our own
obvious experiences, that participation in regular physical activity reflects a
person’s willful, cognitive decision making. Well, maybe. But is it possible
here that our thinking brains could be deceived on the matter? Some, includ-
ing neurologist Robert Burton, think so. Writing in A Skeptic’s Guide to the
Mind, Dr. Burton contended that “common sense is merely the strong sense of
what is familiar and right, not a truth or guarantee of fact. . . . Feelings about our
involuntarily generated subconscious thoughts often feel like deliberate actions
of the conscious mind” (1, p. 10). This can happen, since Burton noted that “our
brains possess involuntary mechanisms that make unbiased thought impos-
sible yet create the illusion that we are rational creatures capable of fully
understanding the mind created by the same mechanisms” (p. 6). That is,
we are asking the same conscious mental process to judge whether the mind
is being duped or not, as Burton wrote: “Hiring the mind as a consultant
for understanding the mind feels like the metaphoric equivalent of asking a
known con man for his self-appraisal and letter of reference” (p. 51).
Consistent with this argument, growing evidence suggests that the belief
that the conscious mind is firmly in control of human actions and behaviors
may be largely a matter of human conceit. Instead it has become increas-
ingly apparent that influences that lie beneath the level of consciousness
dictate a great deal of how we conduct our lives. Such an idea, of course, is
 Preface vii

not new. Arthur Schopenhauer and other philosophers proposed the power
of the subconscious more than 200 years ago, Sigmund Freud popularized
the concept, and marketing firms now rely on it.
Over the past several decades, particularly with the use of neuroimag-
ing studies, has come increasing evidence that what we once thought was
ours to reason and contemplate is, in fact, often strongly influenced by the
subconscious mind. How we make decisions (whom to marry, what make
of car to buy) appears to be largely dictated by subconscious forces (3). And
so it is, as well, with many of the mistakes we make in life (2). The limits of
athletic performance, like a marathon race, may be controlled by a subcon-
scious governor in the brain acting to prevent catastrophic injury (without
which, it has been argued, one might suffer myocardial damage, coronary
insufficiency, muscular tetany, and heatstroke) (7). Electroencephalographic
evidence has suggested that the brain can make supposedly cognitive deci-
sions before they enter consciousness (4).
Some of these subconscious controllers of behavior have no doubt been
installed by sociocultural influences imparted early on in our lives by
parents, peers, and teachers. But others are clearly biologic, a product
of one’s genetic heritage molded by millions of years of Darwinian evo-
lutionary influence. The idea that an involuntary biologic controller of
physical activity should exist, then, has gained conceptual credibility, having
shifted from being deemed bizarre to being integrated into the current of
mainstream thinking.
What has not changed is the recognition of the importance of the issue—
the far-reaching role that physical activity habits play in promoting health
and well-being. Those who exercise regularly can be expected to experience a
decreased risk of infirmities such as coronary artery disease, obesity, hyperten-
sion, and stroke. That such diseases represent the principal causes of morbidity
and mortality in developed countries lends credence to the importance of
such efforts to improve the activity habits of the population. Moreover, in
children, who normally do not suffer from such illnesses, evidence continues
to grow that early establishment of physical activity habits may lessen the
risk of developing such adverse health outcomes in the later adult years (6).
Improving activity habits to salutary ends, then, is a high-priority public
health endeavor. To define effective strategies for accomplishing this,
the determinant facts that engage us to move around in our daily lives
need to be clarified. It is timely in this book, then, to revisit this ques-
tion of biological control of physical activity and to review the supportive
evidence and rationale for its existence, the mechanisms by which it might
function, and the implications that such involuntary regulation might carry
for interventions to improve habits of regular physical activity.
viii Preface

The chapters that follow develop the concept surrounding a sub-

conscious regulator of daily energy expenditure in a linear fashion:
evidence ➜ rationale ➜ implications. After a general introduction to the
topic, part I presents the diverse evidence, both in animals and humans, that
supports the existence of such central control over habitual physical activ-
ity. This includes lifetime activity patterns, sex differences in activity, and
the effects of experimental brain lesions in animals and disease states in
humans. Advances in molecular genetics are described that offer evidence
for genetic control of habitual activity in both animals and humans, and
the implications of the phenomenon of physical play to biologic control of
motor activity are presented.
Part II describes in further detail the possible biologic explanation for
control of energy output through activity and proposes a mechanism by which
it might function. That central control of physical activity aids in maintaining
balance between energy in and energy out seems plausible, particularly as
viewed from an aspect of developmental patterns in the various contributors
to such balance. The parallels to biologic control of appetite are obvious, and
a similar mechanism for activity regulation may be operant.
Part III addresses the most difficult and perhaps most controversial issue:
If such a biologic controller of activity exists—and the evidence is quite
convincing that, in fact, at least to some extent, it does—so what? Does it
play a minor or major role in regulating activity habits? Can it be altered?
There are currently many critical questions but few answers. The discussion
in part III also reflects on how small derangements in these determinants of
energy balance, including motor activity, can be linked to obesity outcomes.
This part also examines the intriguing possibility that pharmaceutical agents
will be identified that can influence gene action or alter energy balance
through motor activity.
This consideration of a biological controller of physical activity embraces
a range of domains, from molecular genetics to patients with hyperactivity
disorders. It might be anticipated that many readers will need to step out-
side familiar areas of knowledge to appreciate this multitude of pertinent
information. In an effort to facilitate this, the material in this book has been
generously referenced, often with citations to review articles.
The chapters in this book are liberally sprinkled with direct quotes from
expert witnesses to the issues being considered. Many have weighed in on
the question of biological control of physical activity and the factors by
which it might be modified.
Throughout this book are frequent allusions to anatomic loci in the cen-
tral nervous system, which to most will undoubtedly be entirely obscure
(the cingulate gyrus, the substantia nigra, and so forth). It has been my
 Preface ix

well-considered decision to leave such terms undefined rather than provide

an extensive tutorial in neuroanatomy. The inclusion of such terms will be
useful to those who have knowledge of brain anatomy. If, on the other hand,
such terms are foreign, the specific locations of brain function will not be
critical to understanding the point that anatomic centers can be identified in
certain experimental or clinical situations that have bearing on the question
of biologic control of activity.
The thrust of this book is an examination of the validity, rationale, and
implications of an intrinsic controller of habitual physical activity as such
a governor might operate in healthy, lean individuals. It is recognized that
the issues of the cause, prevention, and treatment of obesity are closely
linked to intrinsic versus extrinsic control of energy expenditure. Still, it
would take a separate volume to address the mass of data surrounding the
influence of biological control of activity on obesity. Chapter 13 presents a
brief excursion into this issue.
Additional caveats should be kept in mind. First, information is generally
limited to healthy individuals (except in the case when a particular illness
or disease condition might provide insight into basic mechanisms). Second,
the influence of sex is largely ignored. Male–female differences in the great
majority of the issues in this book have not been adequately studied. The
exception is the discussion in chapter 3 of sex influences on habitual physical
activity in humans, particularly at very young ages. Third, little consideration
is given to potential differences in biologic control of physical activity as it
might be influenced by age, athletic training, and physical fitness.
It should be emphasized that it is not my intention in these pages to
champion the cause of biological control of physical activity or to serve as an
advocate for its importance. Indeed, in the interests of good science—even
here in simply reviewing it—I have endeavored to maintain an objective pen.
At the same time, however, it is perhaps best to reveal early on my personal
biases about where the truth of the matter may lie. It seems to me that the
evidence for the existence of some form of involuntary central determinant
of daily energy expenditure through physical activity in human beings is
compelling and cannot be logically denied. Furthermore, I find it reason-
able that the evolutionary explanation for such a brain governor of activity
is likely to rest in the maintenance of energy balance. But beyond this, the
unanswered questions begin. Still, I cannot help but be intrigued by the pos-
sibility that knowledge regarding the influence of biologic control of activity
could play an important role in formulating strategies for improving physical
activity habits of the population.
I have thus written this book with the goal of raising consciousness
regarding the possible existence and function of a central biologic control
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x Preface

of physical activity. In particular, it is my hope

that such awareness might stimulate further
investigations to address the many unresolved
questions that remain. Specifically, we need to
know how such biologic control might share an
influence over habitual physical activity with environmental factors, and
in what proportion, and with what malleability through activity-promoting
initiatives. Is biologic control of physical activity in reality only a minor
bystander, particularly as one ages? Or does its existence signify a certain
futility of attempts to modify activity through environmental manipulation?
It is certainly possible, even perhaps likely, that the answers to such questions
bear considerable importance in our thinking regarding the exercise–health
link and how it might be most effectively and favorably influenced.
Acknowledgments
The many individuals whose ideas and insights have advanced our under-
standing of biological control of physical activity need to be acknowledged.
These include Joe Eisenmann, Alex Rowlands, Claude Bouchard, Theodore
Garland, Eric Ravussin, Sjaan Gomersall, A.W. Thorburn, David Thivel, and
Terence Wilkin. The courage of these people to challenge convention and
innovate thinking inspired the writing of this book.

xi
This page intentionally left blank.
Introduction
The premise to be weighed in the pages that follow is this: There exists within
the central nervous system an inherent control center that serves to regulate
an individual’s daily energy expenditure by motor activity. According to this
concept, such an activity governor within the brain is involuntary and acts to
influence levels of activity beneath the level of consciousness, differentiating
it from motor centers within the cerebral cortex responsible for purposeful
muscular activity. This governor is a shared function throughout the animal
kingdom. It may act as a means of maintaining the body’s energy balance,
and its existence is consistent with other feedback regulatory centers in the
brain critical to maintaining homeostasis, including controllers of tempera-
ture, pH, body fluid content, and blood glucose levels.
The credibility of this concept is strengthened by a considerable body of
observational and interventional data from diverse sources in both human
and animal models supporting the existence of such an involuntary biologic
influence on activity energy expenditure. And, in providing a scientific
foundation for such a brain function, that information raises significant
questions regarding the quantitative importance and plasticity of a biologic
controller in response to extrinsic manipulation.
The role of a deterministic biological control of habitual physical activity
needs to be considered in the context of a real-world universal model explain-
ing human motor activity. As depicted schematically in figure I.1, daily
physical activity, as with most human behaviors, reflects the causal inputs

School
Biological Physical education Environment
Central control Climate
Anthropometry Facilities access
Physical fitness Neighborhood design

Psychological Habitual physical Significant others

Self-contempt activity Family
Self-image Peers
Coaches

Positive health outcomes

Social and psychological well-being

Figure I.1 The basic schema by which multiple determinants might act to dictate physical behavior
for health outcomes in humans.

E6757/Rowland/Introduction.01/536047/HR/R1
2 Introduction

of a variety of physical, psychological, social, and environmental factors. The

central argument in the pages that follow holds that (a) such central control exists
and (b) its potential influence on activity behaviors should not be ignored.
One of the most compelling pieces of evidence for the existence of bio-
logical control of physical activity comes from the observation that levels
of daily energy expenditure through physical activity in both humans and
animals (adjusted for body size) steadily decline during the course of a life-
time. This fall in daily activity with increasing age is observed in virtually
all animal species and is consistent regardless of measurement technique.
As further supporting evidence, experimentally induced lesions in particu-
lar parts of the brain in animals can produce reduced or increased levels of
physical activity. Changes in physical activity have been observed in human
beings with certain brain tumors (i.e., craniopharyngioma). And disease
states characterized by increased motor activity (anorexia nervosa, restless
legs syndrome, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) are considered to
reflect catecholamine imbalance in the central nervous system. Biochemical
effects on the brain that alter habitual activity levels have been described for
a variety of administered drugs and chemical agents in both humans and
animals. Similarly, certain deficiency and toxic states have been associated
with changes in physical activity habits.
If a biologic controller of physical activity exists, activity levels should
be expected to demonstrate some evidence of a genetic effect. In fact, from
twin and family studies, heritability levels of daily physical activity have
been reported to range from 30% to 60%. Recent advances in molecular
genetics have permitted identification of specific gene loci that are associated
with activity energy expenditure. The observation that spontaneous physical
activity demonstrates a temporal rhythmicity expected of biological systems
provides further evidence for such an intrinsic central brain controller.
The demonstration that physical activity levels are linked to a level of
biological (sexual) development in youth supports a biological influence on
regular motor activity. That boys are consistently found to be engaged in
greater levels of habitual activity than girls during the pediatric years has
traditionally been explained by sociocultural influences. However, such sex
differences in motor activity have been documented in very early infancy
when the effects of such influences are expected to be minimal, suggesting
some biological basis.

AN EVOLUTIONARY BASIS
As every seventh-grade biology student learns, the ability to generate move-
ment is an essential property shared by all members of the animal kingdom.
 Introduction 3

From the tiniest unicellular organism to the giant mammals of the sea, all
have intrinsic mechanisms that transport themselves from one place to
another. As a basic, essential characteristic, all animals move.
They first moved about 3 billion years ago with a search for a source of
energy. At that time, plants, mostly blue-green algae, utilized chlorophyll-like
pigments to capture energy from the sun’s rays in producing a carbohydrate
food source, expelling oxygen into the air as a by-product. For most organ-
isms at the time, this oxygen was a lethal poison, but some developed a
means of utilizing this new gas in metabolic pathways that provided energy
for survival. The problem now was that since these new aerobic organisms
lacked any direct means of using the sun’s energy, they could survive only
by consuming the energy supply manufactured by plants (as well as by their
fellow primitive animals). And that meant they had to first search them out.
The obligatory need to track down a food source became the evolutionary
stimulus for the development of mechanisms of locomotion (8).
To engage the process of locomotion, the first single-cell members of the
animal kingdom probably employed the same mechanisms used by today’s
unicellular organisms—protein strands that generate force by ratcheting
by each other through the action of crossbridges, thereby generating force
to shorten (concentric) muscle, push against a stable object (isometric),
or contract during lengthening (eccentric). It is intriguing that this basic
mechanism is essentially identical to the muscular machinery that is
observed when biologists study movement in the current animal kingdom
(18). Whether it be the alternative rounding up and lengthening of an
amoeba that scoots through the water, the beating of cilia in protozoa,
the twisting of a sperm’s flagella, or the contractions of complex mam-
malian musculature, all these actions involve the sliding of protein filaments,
one past the other, by a series of ratcheting of cross-linkages. Based on this
evidence, then, there appears to have been little innovation in the basic design
of the locomotor engine of animals over the course of several millions of
years of animal evolution.
What has developed, of course, is the multitude of structural adaptations
in designs of animal musculature that have satisfied the demands of run-
ning, flying, swimming, and jumping, as well as the changes necessary for
accommodating differences in body size (18). Evolutionary developments
in muscular action not only have involved means of body transportation
but also have provided means for maintaining upright posture as well as
opposing thumbs for grasping tools and rotational action at the shoulder for
swinging through the trees. Moreover, as contended by Vogel, it can reason-
ably be suggested that “the ability to make rapid motions was what elicited
the evolution of the quick-acting sense organs and the elaborate information
4 Introduction

processing equipment of animals—that nervous systems, memory, behavior,

even emotions arose because we could move” (20, p. 265).
It takes little imagination or argument to explain the evolutionary devel-
opment of animal locomotor capacity in a Darwinian context. Those who
can survive and reproduce most effectively will be those who can escape
enemies, obtain food, and adapt to environmental challenges by means of
body movement. Moreover, perpetuation of the species will be conferred on
those whose mutational alterations provide for the most effective and energy-
economical means of doing so. Here, in its most literal form, one has survival
of the fittest. And that includes not only capacity for physical performance
but also the remarkable plasticity of human neuromuscular function—the
ability to get stronger, quicker, or more resistant to fatigue in response to
repeated use (for the contemporary reader, that’s athletic training).
Indications are that the information in the human genome that evolved to
provide these advantages has not changed in the last 10,000 years. But the
cultural context of human locomotion has. Early hunter-gatherer ancestors
relied largely on endurance fitness (walking, running, tracking), but then with
a transition to agriculture and domestication of animals came parallel shifts
in more intermittent forms of exercise with emphasis on strength. With the
advent of the Industrial Revolution, physical activity as human labor began
to wane, a trend that today, accentuated by the Information Revolution, has
resulted in the essential disappearance of physical activity—and certainly
physical fitness—as a necessary part of daily living (4). As Eaton and col-
leagues have stated, “humans living today are Stone Age hunter-gatherers
displaced through time to a world that differs from that for which our genetic
constitution was selected” (5, p. 739).
This book addresses a second evolutionary pressure involving motor activ-
ity—the reason or the purpose of a biologic control of physical activity may
rest in the need to sustain body energy balance. Maintenance of such bal-
ance between energy intake and energy expenditure to sustain a stable body
size and composition is a critical homeostatic function. Even small errors in
matching these two factors will result in insupportable changes over time.
The energy-in side of the equation—caloric intake—is under biological
control from satiety centers linked to energy substrate availability. Daily
physical activity and resting metabolic rate serve as the major factors relating
to energy out. Since the resting metabolic rate is biologically regulated, it is
intuitive to suggest that the amount of physical activity should be similarly
manipulated at least to some extent by central biologic factors in the name
of establishing body energy balance.
That such a role should serve as the purpose of central control of physical
activity is supported by trends of caloric intake, resting metabolic rate, and
 Introduction 5

physical activity that occur over time. In fact, throughout life, and particularly
during the childhood and adolescent years, these three factors demonstrate
a significant, progressive decline in parallel with each other. Thus, if energy
balance is to be maintained over time, the rate of decline of each determinant
must be precisely matched with the others. Consequently, there must exist a
biologic mechanism by which each communicates with the others.
Tight matching of the factors that establish energy balance conferred a
survival value to early humans, whose major threat to such balance was a
deficit of energy availability. In present society, certain individuals who
are susceptible to obesity may suffer from errors on the other side of the
equation, when a surfeit of energy source is available. Still, in such cases,
the degree of any such daily error in matching of the components of energy
balance is exceedingly small.
It is not surprising that the same series of historical revolutions that altered
the characteristics and importance of physical fitness in daily living have
also shrunk the magnitude of daily energy expenditure as physical activity.
Studies based on contemporary hunter-gatherer and agricultural societies
suggest that daily activity levels (adjusting for changes in body size) have
diminished with each stage of cultural progression (13).
In explaining a central control of physical activity in these terms, one can
conclude that the evolutionary process, framed in a Darwinian context, has
thus involved two separate key roles for human locomotion—optimization
of physical fitness and, as presented in the chapters that follow, control of
physical activity. Both initially were an outcome of survival benefits in
animals and early hominids. It is not without some irony, then, to note that
today they both continue to do so but for altogether different health outcomes.

NATURE OF CENTRAL ACTIVITY CONTROL

A brain center that responds to alterations in the energy in–energy out bal-
ance by adjusting levels of physical activity is entirely consistent with the
functions of the multitude of the human body’s other physiologic feedback
controllers that act to maintain homeostasis—a constant milieu intérieur.
Human survival depends on the finely tuned control of body temperature,
acid–base status, electrolyte and fluid composition, and ventilatory function,
all of which are established by feedback control centers located within the
central nervous system (12).
Although conceptually simple, such feedback centers are, in fact, highly
complex. They must receive afferent information input, translate it into a
best-case scenario (typically a given set point), and direct efferent commands
that accurately sustain a constant-state function. From an evolutionary
6 Introduction

standpoint, such feedback systems are very old. As witnessed by evidence

of biologic control of energy expenditure even in microscopic organisms,
this device for presumably establishing energy balance originated millions
of years ago. This is in distinction to brain functions developed in the more
immediate evolutionary past in which cerebral control acts in a top–down
manner, serving to control body functions rather than simply acting in an
automatic manner as receptor-responder in the classic feedback system (6).
Such function has been suggested, for example, in the form of a central
nervous system governor that limits exercise performance as a means of
protecting against body damage (16).
The proposed existence of a center that controls amount of daily physi-
cal activity should not be confused with the function of those areas of the
brain responsible for purposeful or reflex motor activity. There are in fact,
multiple areas within the central nervous system that serve to control motor
function: Simple reflexes (moving the hand away after touching a hot pan)
involve the spinal cord. Balance and coordination centers are found in
the cerebellum. Rhythmic movements such as breathing and walking are
controlled by centers in the brain stem. And purposeful motion in humans
is directed from higher centers in the frontal and prefrontal regions of the
cerebral cortex (15).
The anatomic location and neurophysiologic function of an involuntary
controller of energy expenditure by physical activity remains to be defined.
It is not unlikely, though, that such a center would share characteristics of
that of the controller of appetite (i.e., energy intake) since both are primitive
feedback controllers that (a) contribute to critical energy balance, (b) involve
a physical outcome (activity, eating), and (c) operate as biologic controllers
in the guise of apparent voluntary control. The appetite control center is a
part of the multicomponent limbic system (located in the cingulate gyrus,
hippocampus, and amygdaloid body), which functions to organize survival-
related behavior, such as feeding, drinking, and reproduction. The key center
for appetite, though, resides in the hypothalamus, which serves to organize
and relay afferent and efferent information (12). There it recognizes certain
biochemical, physical, and hormonal input to identify body energy status
and provides appropriate stimuli for caloric consumption. It is reasonable
to suggest a similar location and function for a biologic controller of physi-
cal activity.
It is not unlikely that such a biologic center would alter energy expenditure
by modifying what has been termed nonexercise activity thermogenesis
(NEAT) (11). Energy expenditure by physical activity can be divided into
(a) those voluntary activities that are purposefully designed for improving
health or physical fitness and (b) NEAT, or everything else, including “all
 Introduction 7

those activities that render us vibrant, unique and independent beings, such
as going to work, playing guitar, toe-tapping and dancing” (11, p. 310).
Several studies have, in fact, indicated that manipulation of energy balance
can effect responsive changes in NEAT.
This concept of a biologic controller of physical activity is consistent with
traditional concepts of energy homeostasis whereby food intake and activity
energy expenditure serve as negative feedbacks by which the hypothalamus
in the brain sets energy balance to a near zero-sum set point (9, 19). More
recently, this schema has been modified to include the actions of biochemical
mediators in this process, particularly insulin and leptin.
Not all, however, have been in agreement, contending that the preoc-
cupation with energy balance as a homeostatic mechanism has diverted
attention away from other factors such as motivation and pleasure that are
important in driving human behaviors of feeding and spontaneous physical
activity (1). That is, by this argument, factors beyond physiologic feedback
can alter energy balance, particularly human motivations, social forces,
preferences, and pleasure (so-called hedonistic influences). This stand is
based on evidence that activity and eating interventions do not always trigger
quantitatively expected reciprocal changes among the contributors of energy
balance and that the actions of leptin and insulin (which regulate energy
balance in animals) are not reliably observed in humans.
The take on this argument by those convinced of an energy-balance
homeostasis model might be that studies of compensations for such altera-
tions in the components of energy balance are all short term. Longer dura-
tions are necessary for assessing such reciprocal changes, which are likely to
demonstrate that homeostatic factors override and compensate for hedonistic
behavior. This controversy raises issues both important and interesting
regarding the etiology of human obesity: Should excess accumulation of
body fat be considered primarily a biological error in the energy balance
mechanism? Or, instead, is it an effect of hedonistic behavior involving
overindulgence in eating or adoption of a sedentary lifestyle? Or both?

IMPLICATIONS
Traditionally, clinicians, researchers, and public health officials have con-
sidered an individual’s participation in physical activity to be a conscious,
willful endeavor—at least conceptually amenable to change—in response
to certain identified environmental factors, also potentially modifiable. For
example, Sallis and colleagues reviewed the relationships of 40 variables with
physical activity levels of youth in 108 published studies (17). Consistently
related variables included opportunities to exercise, parent and peer support,
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8 Introduction

community sports, perceived barriers, and time spent outdoors. Approxi-

mately 60% of such associations were found to be statistically significant.
Current strategies for promoting levels of physical activity in the popu-
lation are based on such premises. It may be a bit troublesome to some,
then, to consider that a biologic controller in the brain may play a role in
determining level of physical activity, since such intrinsic governors are
typically considered largely fixed and resistant to change. Whether this is,
in fact, the case for any biologic contribution to control of physical activ-
ity is at present unknown. Current information does suggest, however, that
such public health strategies for improving activity habits need to be placed
in the context of attempts to bend a normally descending activity curve
upward over an extended period rather than focus on short-term outcomes.
At least one study has indicated the possibility that the biologic curve of
progressive decline in activity over the early years can be modified through
environmental interventions.

Response to Activity Interventions

The response that might be expected from a biologic governor of physical
activity to an activity intervention remains a central but unanswered ques-
tion. Insights into this issue bear obvious significance to those formulating
strategies for improving the physical activities of the population. And,
equally important in considering the difficulty in altering activity behaviors
in humans is the question of the extent that efforts to manipulate extrinsic
environmental factors to improve activity might be expected to be effective
in the face of any biologic control.
The response of a central brain controller of physical activity to an exercise
intervention might take one or more of several forms. First, the center could
act to establish an overall constant amount of physical activity, striving to
maintain energy expenditure by such activity over time. As a thermostat
works to keep a constant temperature in the room, this activity-stat would
function to keep physical activity at a particular set point. If a central brain
controller of activity worked this way, any effort to increase daily physical
activity would be expected to be met by a subsequent compensatory decrease
in activity. Some studies seeking to identify such a compensatory decline in
activity after an intervention have suggested this possibility, but overall, the
results of such observational studies have been mixed. A major difficulty
with these types of studies is the unknown factor of the duration over which
such compensation might occur.
On the other hand, interventional increases in physical activity could be
met with alterations in the other participants in the energy balance equa-
tion—particularly resting metabolic rate and caloric intake—to establish a
 Introduction 9

new energy balance that would result in a favorable persistence of increases

in physical activity. That is, the activity center might participate in an overall
balancing of these determinants, setting the physical activity at an appropri-
ate level considering the other factors.
Here the idea of an activity-stat has a different connotation. In this
response, the primary set point, analogous to room temperature for the
thermostat, is energy in–energy out balance. For this energy-stat, the set
point is zero, and it adjusts energy expenditure by altering physical activ-
ity, basal metabolic rate, and caloric intake at certain levels to achieve this.
So here the activity-stat is actually a part of a broader control mechanism
(the energy-stat). The set point for this activity-stat would not be fixed but
instead would vary according to the status of the other contributors to body
energy balance. This concept is not dissimilar to the proposed set point that
may defend body composition in obese individuals, one that may create a
major challenge to therapeutic interventions. In this process, one would not
necessarily expect to observe a compensatory decrease in activity after an
activity intervention.
It should be recognized, then, that whether or not compensatory changes
can be verified does not necessarily carry any implications about the exis-
tence of biologic regulation of physical activity. Instead, the importance of
such evidence for compensatory changes lies in understanding how such a
biologic controller functions. At the present time, the functional response
of biologic control of activity in the face of alterations in the determinants
of energy balance is unknown. Perhaps it is not unlikely that there are dif-
ferences between individuals in the nature and magnitude of such responses
to fluctuations of the contributors to the energy balance equation.

Obesity
The question of biological regulation of physical activity is closely linked to
the issue of the etiology and treatment of obesity. Obesity is often consid-
ered a behavioral disorder—eating to excess and exercising too little—in a
contemporary environment of ready access to cheap high-calorie food and
ease of transportation and work without need for physical exertion. If this
were the case, however, it would be difficult to explain why everyone in such
populations is not obese. Indeed, as commonly recognized, some people
seem to find it impossible to avoid obesity despite all efforts to do so, while
others seem quite impervious to perturbations of food and physical activity,
remaining persistently lean.
Normally, the biologic control of energy balance should be expected
to closely defend a stable equilibrium between energy intake and energy
expenditure. In fact, in healthy people, body weight remains remarkably
10 Introduction

stable over time, reflecting the influence of a very strict central governor.
The obese state, then, can be understood from a biological standpoint as an
error—a derangement—in the normally sage regulator of energy balance. It
follows, then, that there is an individual susceptibility to such malfunction.
It is reasonable to expect that level of caloric expenditure by physical activ-
ity would participate in this success or failure of control of energy balance.
Whether or not one becomes overweight when exposed to a milieu of
high-calorie mega-portions of fast food and drive-through doughnut shops
is an expression of individual variability, one supposed to be dictated on a
genetic basis. The subsequent search for genes responsible for common obe-
sity (i.e., beyond those cases involving specific disease states or syndromes)
has met with considerable success. At least 50 gene loci have currently been
identified that are associated with factors that contribute to the obese state.
Evidence exists, as well, that epigenetic factors—agents that determine gene
action—act to influence contributors to the obese state.
The specific error in energy balance responsible for excess storage of body
fat that would be dictated by one’s genetic complement or epigenetic actions
remains to be clarified. Alterations in efficiency of metabolic function within
the energy balance equation have been sought, but no unifying explanation
has been forthcoming. Differences in the temporal and quantitative aspects
of compensatory responses to perturbations of energy balance—including
level of habitual physical activity—may possibly play a role.
From this viewpoint, obesity is an outcome of three factors: environ-
mental, behavioral, and biological. Such a perspective can bear importance
in assessing the most effective routes for preventive and therapeutic inter-
ventions. Attempts to alter the march of progress of modern technological
societies in providing the ease of effortless transportation and access to
appetizing high-calorie foods are unlikely to be successful. The traditional
approaches of education, manipulation of the immediate environment, and
activity programs to combat obesity are logical, but they have not been met
with widespread success. Recognizing the biological basis of obesity may
open new opportunities for obesity management, including pharmacologi-
cal means of altering energy set points and correcting errors in biochemical
mediators of energy balance and direct interventions to effect changes in
gene function and the epigenetic agents that influence it.

Environmental-Biologic Interactions
With all this information considered, the bottom-line question looms: If
biologic regulation of physical activity in human beings exists—and it prob-
ably does—what are the implications for those whose previous strategies
have focused on altering extrinsic environmental factors with the goal of
 Introduction 11

improving physical activities for health outcomes? Clearly, those factors are
important in health-related behaviors; at least theoretically, they are also
malleable. One can be convinced to walk to the store for a quart of milk
instead of driving or to avoid regular consumption of high-calorie foods. On
the other hand, biologic regulators are not expected to exhibit such plastic-
ity—they’re largely fixed and generally are expected to be stubborn in their
resistance to perturbation.
The relative degree of environmental influence and cognitive choice versus
involuntary central regulation of activity and energy balance in physical
behaviors then becomes a central, critical question, currently unanswered.
One can hope that future research efforts will shed light on this important
issue, the answer to which would dictate the most effective preventive and
therapeutic efforts at combating sedentary habits. The limited insights
currently gained from considerations of compensatory changes to energy
imbalance as well as potential means of establishing lifelong habits of
exercise suggest, in fact, that interfaces may exist between biological and
environmental influences on levels of habitual physical activity. Moreover,
such relationships may be expected to manifest a considerable degree of
interindividual variability.

Neurophysiological Considerations
The existence of central control of physical activity is consistent with cur-
rent neurophysiological concepts of how the brain functions. In the past,
the brain was considered to work in a responsive fashion, receiving affer-
ent information from the periphery, analyzing it, and sending out efferent
commands in response. When an oncoming car veers into your lane, you
see it, your brain makes a quick decision, and you pull your vehicle off to
the safety of the shoulder.
Now, as German neurophysiologist Andreas Engel wrote, it is argued
that there is a need to abandon this classical view of the brain “as a passive,
stimulus-driven device that does not actively create meaning by itself” (6,
p. 704). Instead, more modern thought sees the brain as an active decision
maker in its own right, acting independently, based on experience (both within
a given individual’s lifetime as well as accumulated during millions of years of
evolutionary challenge). In this top–down model of brain function, then, a
Darwinian-based advantage is gained by which the brain itself is in charge of
initiating body actions—it does not serve simply as a slave to reflex responses
in reaction to sensory input from the environment. In this role as an active
controller, Engel wrote that the brain “must embody stored predictions that
have been acquired both during evolution and through experience-dependent
learning, and have proven to be of predictive value” (p. 714).
12 Introduction

Here’s an example. In the traditional view, a distance runner cognitively

selects a pace during a 10K race based on physiological input—how fast she
is breathing or how fatigued she feels. That is, it would likely be commonly
agreed that how fast to run during the race is a decision-making process by
the runner. But some have suggested instead that best pace is controlled by
a central governor in the brain, which knows from experience what pace
should be selected to permit the runner to cross the finish line at an optimal
point, exhausted, without energy to spare (16).
Not all have subscribed to this progressive trend toward a biologic view-
point of human behavior, arguing that the pendulum has swung too far in a
direction that robs the human mind of decision-making capabilities (7). We
do not act at the simple dictates of brain nerve cells, they say, but behave
within the context of human experience as it interacts with highly complex
neurologic systems, ones that are modifiable in response to the events we
encounter in our daily lives. Indeed, these neuro-skeptics contend that “brain
science promises much and delivers little” (7, p. 86).
Two other opposite—or, at least, contrasting—developments are pertinent
to the discussion of biologic control of physical activity in humans. On one
hand, the tools of molecular genetics can now provide increasingly specific
identification of hereditary factors that affect human behaviors. Such find-
ings are interpreted within the concept of the gene as the fundamental unit,
the blueprint, the ultimate controller of human function. In the pages of
this book, the identification of gene loci associated with levels of physical
activity provide strong evidence for a biologic regulator of activity energy
expenditure.
Others have considered this a greatly oversimplistic viewpoint. Denis
Noble, for instance, contended in his book The Music of Life: Biology Beyond
the Genome that this genocentric viewpoint is a delusion (14). “Clearly,” he
wrote, “the simplistic view that genes ‘dictate’ the organism and its func-
tion is just silly” (14, p. 32). Chromosomal DNA, the repository of gene
information, he pointed out, does not act. Instead, the control of expression
of genetic information within the DNA molecule lies in the influence of an
array of cellular proteins acting in an astounding complexity of interaction,
redundancy, and feedback loops, and these can be affected by environmen-
tal variables. These are the factors that play the gene. Noble argued for a
systems-level perspective, whereby elements at the tissue, whole-organism,
and environmental levels can influence gene expression. In the present
discussion, this idea clearly opens the door to considerations of interactions
between genes and environment that could control levels of physical activity.
For some, these biological perspectives on human behavior have not come
too soon. As Byers commented in 1998,
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 “I’ve never met so many celebrities,” Daisy exclaimed. “I liked that
man—what was his name?—with the sort of blue nose.”
Gatsby identified him, adding that he was a small producer.
“Well, I liked him anyhow.”
“I’d a little rather not be the polo player,” said Tom pleasantly, “I’d
rather look at all these famous people in—in oblivion.”
Daisy and Gatsby danced. I remember being surprised by his
graceful, conservative foxtrot—I had never seen him dance before.
Then they sauntered over to my house and sat on the steps for half
an hour, while at her request I remained watchfully in the garden.
“In case there’s a fire or a flood,” she explained, “or any act of God.”
Tom appeared from his oblivion as we were sitting down to supper
together. “Do you mind if I eat with some people over here?” he
said. “A fellow’s getting off some funny stuff.”
“Go ahead,” answered Daisy genially, “and if you want to take
down any addresses here’s my little gold pencil.”… She looked
around after a moment and told me the girl was “common but
pretty,” and I knew that except for the half-hour she’d been alone
with Gatsby she wasn’t having a good time.
We were at a particularly tipsy table. That was my fault—Gatsby
had been called to the phone, and I’d enjoyed these same people
only two weeks before. But what had amused me then turned septic
on the air now.
“How do you feel, Miss Baedeker?”
The girl addressed was trying, unsuccessfully, to slump against my
shoulder. At this inquiry she sat up and opened her eyes.
“Wha’?”
A massive and lethargic woman, who had been urging Daisy to
play golf with her at the local club tomorrow, spoke in Miss
Baedeker’s defence:
“Oh, she’s all right now. When she’s had five or six cocktails she
always starts screaming like that. I tell her she ought to leave it
alone.”
“I do leave it alone,” affirmed the accused hollowly.
“We heard you yelling, so I said to Doc Civet here: ‘There’s
somebody that needs your help, Doc.’ ”
 “She’s much obliged, I’m sure,” said another friend, without
gratitude, “but you got her dress all wet when you stuck her head in
the pool.”
“Anything I hate is to get my head stuck in a pool,” mumbled Miss
Baedeker. “They almost drowned me once over in New Jersey.”
“Then you ought to leave it alone,” countered Doctor Civet.
“Speak for yourself!” cried Miss Baedeker violently. “Your hand
shakes. I wouldn’t let you operate on me!”
It was like that. Almost the last thing I remember was standing
with Daisy and watching the moving-picture director and his Star.
They were still under the white-plum tree and their faces were
touching except for a pale, thin ray of moonlight between. It
occurred to me that he had been very slowly bending toward her all
evening to attain this proximity, and even while I watched I saw him
stoop one ultimate degree and kiss at her cheek.
“I like her,” said Daisy, “I think she’s lovely.”
But the rest offended her—and inarguably because it wasn’t a
gesture but an emotion. She was appalled by West Egg, this
unprecedented “place” that Broadway had begotten upon a Long
Island fishing village—appalled by its raw vigour that chafed under
the old euphemisms and by the too obtrusive fate that herded its
inhabitants along a shortcut from nothing to nothing. She saw
something awful in the very simplicity she failed to understand.
I sat on the front steps with them while they waited for their car.
It was dark here in front; only the bright door sent ten square feet
of light volleying out into the soft black morning. Sometimes a
shadow moved against a dressing-room blind above, gave way to
another shadow, an indefinite procession of shadows, who rouged
and powdered in an invisible glass.
“Who is this Gatsby anyhow?” demanded Tom suddenly. “Some
big bootlegger?”
“Where’d you hear that?” I inquired.
“I didn’t hear it. I imagined it. A lot of these newly rich people are
just big bootleggers, you know.”
“Not Gatsby,” I said shortly.
 He was silent for a moment. The pebbles of the drive crunched
under his feet.
“Well, he certainly must have strained himself to get this
menagerie together.”
A breeze stirred the grey haze of Daisy’s fur collar.
“At least they are more interesting than the people we know,” she
said with an effort.
“You didn’t look so interested.”
“Well, I was.”
Tom laughed and turned to me.
“Did you notice Daisy’s face when that girl asked her to put her
under a cold shower?”
Daisy began to sing with the music in a husky, rhythmic whisper,
bringing out a meaning in each word that it had never had before
and would never have again. When the melody rose her voice broke
up sweetly, following it, in a way contralto voices have, and each
change tipped out a little of her warm human magic upon the air.
“Lots of people come who haven’t been invited,” she said
suddenly. “That girl hadn’t been invited. They simply force their way
in and he’s too polite to object.”
“I’d like to know who he is and what he does,” insisted Tom. “And
I think I’ll make a point of finding out.”
“I can tell you right now,” she answered. “He owned some
drugstores, a lot of drugstores. He built them up himself.”
The dilatory limousine came rolling up the drive.
“Good night, Nick,” said Daisy.
Her glance left me and sought the lighted top of the steps, where
“Three O’Clock in the Morning,” a neat, sad little waltz of that year,
was drifting out the open door. After all, in the very casualness of
Gatsby’s party there were romantic possibilities totally absent from
her world. What was it up there in the song that seemed to be
calling her back inside? What would happen now in the dim,
incalculable hours? Perhaps some unbelievable guest would arrive, a
person infinitely rare and to be marvelled at, some authentically
radiant young girl who with one fresh glance at Gatsby, one moment
of magical encounter, would blot out those five years of unwavering
devotion.
I stayed late that night. Gatsby asked me to wait until he was
free, and I lingered in the garden until the inevitable swimming party
had run up, chilled and exalted, from the black beach, until the lights
were extinguished in the guestrooms overhead. When he came
down the steps at last the tanned skin was drawn unusually tight on
his face, and his eyes were bright and tired.
“She didn’t like it,” he said immediately.
“Of course she did.”
“She didn’t like it,” he insisted. “She didn’t have a good time.”
He was silent, and I guessed at his unutterable depression.
“I feel far away from her,” he said. “It’s hard to make her
understand.”
“You mean about the dance?”
“The dance?” He dismissed all the dances he had given with a
snap of his fingers. “Old sport, the dance is unimportant.”
He wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to Tom
and say: “I never loved you.” After she had obliterated four years
with that sentence they could decide upon the more practical
measures to be taken. One of them was that, after she was free,
they were to go back to Louisville and be married from her house—
just as if it were five years ago.
“And she doesn’t understand,” he said. “She used to be able to
understand. We’d sit for hours—”
He broke off and began to walk up and down a desolate path of
fruit rinds and discarded favours and crushed flowers.
“I wouldn’t ask too much of her,” I ventured. “You can’t repeat the
past.”
“Can’t repeat the past?” he cried incredulously. “Why of course
you can!”
He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in
the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand.
“I’m going to fix everything just the way it was before,” he said,
nodding determinedly. “She’ll see.”
 He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to
recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into
loving Daisy. His life had been confused and disordered since then,
but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it
all slowly, he could find out what that thing was…
… One autumn night, five years before, they had been walking
down the street when the leaves were falling, and they came to a
place where there were no trees and the sidewalk was white with
moonlight. They stopped here and turned toward each other. Now it
was a cool night with that mysterious excitement in it which comes
at the two changes of the year. The quiet lights in the houses were
humming out into the darkness and there was a stir and bustle
among the stars. Out of the corner of his eye Gatsby saw that the
blocks of the sidewalks really formed a ladder and mounted to a
secret place above the trees—he could climb to it, if he climbed
alone, and once there he could suck on the pap of life, gulp down
the incomparable milk of wonder.
His heart beat faster as Daisy’s white face came up to his own. He
knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable
visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again
like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to
the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her.
At his lips’ touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the
incarnation was complete.
Through all he said, even through his appalling sentimentality, I
was reminded of something—an elusive rhythm, a fragment of lost
words, that I had heard somewhere a long time ago. For a moment
a phrase tried to take shape in my mouth and my lips parted like a
dumb man’s, as though there was more struggling upon them than a
wisp of startled air. But they made no sound, and what I had almost
remembered was uncommunicable forever.
 VII

It was when curiosity about Gatsby was at its highest that the lights
in his house failed to go on one Saturday night—and, as obscurely as
it had begun, his career as Trimalchio was over. Only gradually did I
become aware that the automobiles which turned expectantly into
his drive stayed for just a minute and then drove sulkily away.
Wondering if he were sick I went over to find out—an unfamiliar
butler with a villainous face squinted at me suspiciously from the
door.
“Is Mr. Gatsby sick?”
“Nope.” After a pause he added “sir” in a dilatory, grudging way.
“I hadn’t seen him around, and I was rather worried. Tell him Mr.
Carraway came over.”
“Who?” he demanded rudely.
“Carraway.”
“Carraway. All right, I’ll tell him.”
Abruptly he slammed the door.
My Finn informed me that Gatsby had dismissed every servant in
his house a week ago and replaced them with half a dozen others,
who never went into West Egg village to be bribed by the
tradesmen, but ordered moderate supplies over the telephone. The
grocery boy reported that the kitchen looked like a pigsty, and the
general opinion in the village was that the new people weren’t
servants at all.
Next day Gatsby called me on the phone.
 “Going away?” I inquired.
“No, old sport.”
“I hear you fired all your servants.”
“I wanted somebody who wouldn’t gossip. Daisy comes over quite
often—in the afternoons.”
So the whole caravansary had fallen in like a card house at the
disapproval in her eyes.
“They’re some people Wolfshiem wanted to do something for.
They’re all brothers and sisters. They used to run a small hotel.”
“I see.”
He was calling up at Daisy’s request—would I come to lunch at her
house tomorrow? Miss Baker would be there. Half an hour later
Daisy herself telephoned and seemed relieved to find that I was
coming. Something was up. And yet I couldn’t believe that they
would choose this occasion for a scene—especially for the rather
harrowing scene that Gatsby had outlined in the garden.
The next day was broiling, almost the last, certainly the warmest,
of the summer. As my train emerged from the tunnel into sunlight,
only the hot whistles of the National Biscuit Company broke the
simmering hush at noon. The straw seats of the car hovered on the
edge of combustion; the woman next to me perspired delicately for
a while into her white shirtwaist, and then, as her newspaper
dampened under her fingers, lapsed despairingly into deep heat with
a desolate cry. Her pocketbook slapped to the floor.
“Oh, my!” she gasped.
I picked it up with a weary bend and handed it back to her,
holding it at arm’s length and by the extreme tip of the corners to
indicate that I had no designs upon it—but everyone near by,
including the woman, suspected me just the same.
“Hot!” said the conductor to familiar faces. “Some weather!…
Hot!… Hot!… Hot!… Is it hot enough for you? Is it hot? Is it… ?”
My commutation ticket came back to me with a dark stain from his
hand. That anyone should care in this heat whose flushed lips he
kissed, whose head made damp the pyjama pocket over his heart!
… Through the hall of the Buchanans’ house blew a faint wind,
carrying the sound of the telephone bell out to Gatsby and me as we
waited at the door.
“The master’s body?” roared the butler into the mouthpiece. “I’m
sorry, madame, but we can’t furnish it—it’s far too hot to touch this
noon!”
What he really said was: “Yes… Yes… I’ll see.”
He set down the receiver and came toward us, glistening slightly,
to take our stiff straw hats.
“Madame expects you in the salon!” he cried, needlessly indicating
the direction. In this heat every extra gesture was an affront to the
common store of life.
The room, shadowed well with awnings, was dark and cool. Daisy
and Jordan lay upon an enormous couch, like silver idols weighing
down their own white dresses against the singing breeze of the fans.
“We can’t move,” they said together.
Jordan’s fingers, powdered white over their tan, rested for a
moment in mine.
“And Mr. Thomas Buchanan, the athlete?” I inquired.
Simultaneously I heard his voice, gruff, muffled, husky, at the hall
telephone.
Gatsby stood in the centre of the crimson carpet and gazed
around with fascinated eyes. Daisy watched him and laughed, her
sweet, exciting laugh; a tiny gust of powder rose from her bosom
into the air.
“The rumour is,” whispered Jordan, “that that’s Tom’s girl on the
telephone.”
We were silent. The voice in the hall rose high with annoyance:
“Very well, then, I won’t sell you the car at all… I’m under no
obligations to you at all… and as for your bothering me about it at
lunch time, I won’t stand that at all!”
“Holding down the receiver,” said Daisy cynically.
“No, he’s not,” I assured her. “It’s a bona-fide deal. I happen to
know about it.”
Tom flung open the door, blocked out its space for a moment with
his thick body, and hurried into the room.
“Mr. Gatsby!” He put out his broad, flat hand with well-concealed
dislike. “I’m glad to see you, sir… Nick…”
 “Make us a cold drink,” cried Daisy.
As he left the room again she got up and went over to Gatsby and
pulled his face down, kissing him on the mouth.
“You know I love you,” she murmured.
“You forget there’s a lady present,” said Jordan.
Daisy looked around doubtfully.
“You kiss Nick too.”
“What a low, vulgar girl!”
“I don’t care!” cried Daisy, and began to clog on the brick
fireplace. Then she remembered the heat and sat down guiltily on
the couch just as a freshly laundered nurse leading a little girl came
into the room.
“Bles-sed pre-cious,” she crooned, holding out her arms. “Come to
your own mother that loves you.”
The child, relinquished by the nurse, rushed across the room and
rooted shyly into her mother’s dress.
“The bles-sed pre-cious! Did mother get powder on your old
yellowy hair? Stand up now, and say—How-de-do.”
Gatsby and I in turn leaned down and took the small reluctant
hand. Afterward he kept looking at the child with surprise. I don’t
think he had ever really believed in its existence before.
“I got dressed before luncheon,” said the child, turning eagerly to
Daisy.
“That’s because your mother wanted to show you off.” Her face
bent into the single wrinkle of the small white neck. “You dream,
you. You absolute little dream.”
“Yes,” admitted the child calmly. “Aunt Jordan’s got on a white
dress too.”
“How do you like mother’s friends?” Daisy turned her around so
that she faced Gatsby. “Do you think they’re pretty?”
“Where’s Daddy?”
“She doesn’t look like her father,” explained Daisy. “She looks like
me. She’s got my hair and shape of the face.”
Daisy sat back upon the couch. The nurse took a step forward and
held out her hand.
“Come, Pammy.”
 “Goodbye, sweetheart!”
With a reluctant backward glance the well-disciplined child held to
her nurse’s hand and was pulled out the door, just as Tom came
back, preceding four gin rickeys that clicked full of ice.
Gatsby took up his drink.
“They certainly look cool,” he said, with visible tension.
We drank in long, greedy swallows.
“I read somewhere that the sun’s getting hotter every year,” said
Tom genially. “It seems that pretty soon the earth’s going to fall into
the sun—or wait a minute—it’s just the opposite—the sun’s getting
colder every year.
“Come outside,” he suggested to Gatsby, “I’d like you to have a
look at the place.”
I went with them out to the veranda. On the green Sound,
stagnant in the heat, one small sail crawled slowly toward the
fresher sea. Gatsby’s eyes followed it momentarily; he raised his
hand and pointed across the bay.
“I’m right across from you.”
“So you are.”
Our eyes lifted over the rose-beds and the hot lawn and the
weedy refuse of the dog-days alongshore. Slowly the white wings of
the boat moved against the blue cool limit of the sky. Ahead lay the
scalloped ocean and the abounding blessed isles.
“There’s sport for you,” said Tom, nodding. “I’d like to be out there
with him for about an hour.”
We had luncheon in the dining-room, darkened too against the
heat, and drank down nervous gaiety with the cold ale.
“What’ll we do with ourselves this afternoon?” cried Daisy, “and
the day after that, and the next thirty years?”
“Don’t be morbid,” Jordan said. “Life starts all over again when it
gets crisp in the fall.”
“But it’s so hot,” insisted Daisy, on the verge of tears, “and
everything’s so confused. Let’s all go to town!”
Her voice struggled on through the heat, beating against it,
moulding its senselessness into forms.
 “I’ve heard of making a garage out of a stable,” Tom was saying to
Gatsby, “but I’m the first man who ever made a stable out of a
garage.”
“Who wants to go to town?” demanded Daisy insistently. Gatsby’s
eyes floated toward her. “Ah,” she cried, “you look so cool.”
Their eyes met, and they stared together at each other, alone in
space. With an effort she glanced down at the table.
“You always look so cool,” she repeated.
She had told him that she loved him, and Tom Buchanan saw. He
was astounded. His mouth opened a little, and he looked at Gatsby,
and then back at Daisy as if he had just recognized her as someone
he knew a long time ago.
“You resemble the advertisement of the man,” she went on
innocently. “You know the advertisement of the man—”
“All right,” broke in Tom quickly, “I’m perfectly willing to go to
town. Come on—we’re all going to town.”
He got up, his eyes still flashing between Gatsby and his wife. No
one moved.
“Come on!” His temper cracked a little. “What’s the matter,
anyhow? If we’re going to town, let’s start.”
His hand, trembling with his effort at self-control, bore to his lips
the last of his glass of ale. Daisy’s voice got us to our feet and out
on to the blazing gravel drive.
“Are we just going to go?” she objected. “Like this? Aren’t we
going to let anyone smoke a cigarette first?”
“Everybody smoked all through lunch.”
“Oh, let’s have fun,” she begged him. “It’s too hot to fuss.”
He didn’t answer.
“Have it your own way,” she said. “Come on, Jordan.”
They went upstairs to get ready while we three men stood there
shuffling the hot pebbles with our feet. A silver curve of the moon
hovered already in the western sky. Gatsby started to speak,
changed his mind, but not before Tom wheeled and faced him
expectantly.
“Have you got your stables here?” asked Gatsby with an effort.
“About a quarter of a mile down the road.”
 “Oh.”
A pause.
“I don’t see the idea of going to town,” broke out Tom savagely.
“Women get these notions in their heads—”
“Shall we take anything to drink?” called Daisy from an upper
window.
“I’ll get some whisky,” answered Tom. He went inside.
Gatsby turned to me rigidly:
“I can’t say anything in his house, old sport.”
“She’s got an indiscreet voice,” I remarked. “It’s full of—” I
hesitated.
“Her voice is full of money,” he said suddenly.
That was it. I’d never understood before. It was full of money—
that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of
it, the cymbals’ song of it… High in a white palace the king’s
daughter, the golden girl…
Tom came out of the house wrapping a quart bottle in a towel,
followed by Daisy and Jordan wearing small tight hats of metallic
cloth and carrying light capes over their arms.
“Shall we all go in my car?” suggested Gatsby. He felt the hot,
green leather of the seat. “I ought to have left it in the shade.”
“Is it standard shift?” demanded Tom.
“Yes.”
“Well, you take my coupé and let me drive your car to town.”
The suggestion was distasteful to Gatsby.
“I don’t think there’s much gas,” he objected.
“Plenty of gas,” said Tom boisterously. He looked at the gauge.
“And if it runs out I can stop at a drugstore. You can buy anything at
a drugstore nowadays.”
A pause followed this apparently pointless remark. Daisy looked at
Tom frowning, and an indefinable expression, at once definitely
unfamiliar and vaguely recognizable, as if I had only heard it
described in words, passed over Gatsby’s face.
“Come on, Daisy,” said Tom, pressing her with his hand toward
Gatsby’s car. “I’ll take you in this circus wagon.”
He opened the door, but she moved out from the circle of his arm.
 “You take Nick and Jordan. We’ll follow you in the coupé.”
She walked close to Gatsby, touching his coat with her hand.
Jordan and Tom and I got into the front seat of Gatsby’s car, Tom
pushed the unfamiliar gears tentatively, and we shot off into the
oppressive heat, leaving them out of sight behind.
“Did you see that?” demanded Tom.
“See what?”
He looked at me keenly, realizing that Jordan and I must have
known all along.
“You think I’m pretty dumb, don’t you?” he suggested. “Perhaps I
am, but I have a—almost a second sight, sometimes, that tells me
what to do. Maybe you don’t believe that, but science—”
He paused. The immediate contingency overtook him, pulled him
back from the edge of theoretical abyss.
“I’ve made a small investigation of this fellow,” he continued. “I
could have gone deeper if I’d known—”
“Do you mean you’ve been to a medium?” inquired Jordan
humorously.
“What?” Confused, he stared at us as we laughed. “A medium?”
“About Gatsby.”
“About Gatsby! No, I haven’t. I said I’d been making a small
investigation of his past.”
“And you found he was an Oxford man,” said Jordan helpfully.
“An Oxford man!” He was incredulous. “Like hell he is! He wears a
pink suit.”
“Nevertheless he’s an Oxford man.”
“Oxford, New Mexico,” snorted Tom contemptuously, “or
something like that.”
“Listen, Tom. If you’re such a snob, why did you invite him to
lunch?” demanded Jordan crossly.
“Daisy invited him; she knew him before we were married—God
knows where!”
We were all irritable now with the fading ale, and aware of it we
drove for a while in silence. Then as Doctor T. J. Eckleburg’s faded
eyes came into sight down the road, I remembered Gatsby’s caution
about gasoline.
 “We’ve got enough to get us to town,” said Tom.
“But there’s a garage right here,” objected Jordan. “I don’t want to
get stalled in this baking heat.”
Tom threw on both brakes impatiently, and we slid to an abrupt
dusty stop under Wilson’s sign. After a moment the proprietor
emerged from the interior of his establishment and gazed hollow-
eyed at the car.
“Let’s have some gas!” cried Tom roughly. “What do you think we
stopped for—to admire the view?”
“I’m sick,” said Wilson without moving. “Been sick all day.”
“What’s the matter?”
“I’m all run down.”
“Well, shall I help myself?” Tom demanded. “You sounded well
enough on the phone.”
With an effort Wilson left the shade and support of the doorway
and, breathing hard, unscrewed the cap of the tank. In the sunlight
his face was green.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt your lunch,” he said. “But I need
money pretty bad, and I was wondering what you were going to do
with your old car.”
“How do you like this one?” inquired Tom. “I bought it last week.”
“It’s a nice yellow one,” said Wilson, as he strained at the handle.
“Like to buy it?”
“Big chance,” Wilson smiled faintly. “No, but I could make some
money on the other.”
“What do you want money for, all of a sudden?”
“I’ve been here too long. I want to get away. My wife and I want
to go West.”
“Your wife does,” exclaimed Tom, startled.
“She’s been talking about it for ten years.” He rested for a moment
against the pump, shading his eyes. “And now she’s going whether
she wants to or not. I’m going to get her away.”
The coupé flashed by us with a flurry of dust and the flash of a
waving hand.
“What do I owe you?” demanded Tom harshly.
 “I just got wised up to something funny the last two days,”
remarked Wilson. “That’s why I want to get away. That’s why I been
bothering you about the car.”
“What do I owe you?”
“Dollar twenty.”
The relentless beating heat was beginning to confuse me and I
had a bad moment there before I realized that so far his suspicions
hadn’t alighted on Tom. He had discovered that Myrtle had some
sort of life apart from him in another world, and the shock had made
him physically sick. I stared at him and then at Tom, who had made
a parallel discovery less than an hour before—and it occurred to me
that there was no difference between men, in intelligence or race, so
profound as the difference between the sick and the well. Wilson
was so sick that he looked guilty, unforgivably guilty—as if he had
just got some poor girl with child.
“I’ll let you have that car,” said Tom. “I’ll send it over tomorrow
afternoon.”
That locality was always vaguely disquieting, even in the broad
glare of afternoon, and now I turned my head as though I had been
warned of something behind. Over the ash-heaps the giant eyes of
Doctor T. J. Eckleburg kept their vigil, but I perceived, after a
moment, that other eyes were regarding us with peculiar intensity
from less than twenty feet away.
In one of the windows over the garage the curtains had been
moved aside a little, and Myrtle Wilson was peering down at the car.
So engrossed was she that she had no consciousness of being
observed, and one emotion after another crept into her face like
objects into a slowly developing picture. Her expression was
curiously familiar—it was an expression I had often seen on women’s
faces, but on Myrtle Wilson’s face it seemed purposeless and
inexplicable until I realized that her eyes, wide with jealous terror,
were fixed not on Tom, but on Jordan Baker, whom she took to be
his wife.
There is no confusion like the confusion of a simple mind, and as we
drove away Tom was feeling the hot whips of panic. His wife and his
mistress, until an hour ago secure and inviolate, were slipping
precipitately from his control. Instinct made him step on the
accelerator with the double purpose of overtaking Daisy and leaving
Wilson behind, and we sped along toward Astoria at fifty miles an
hour, until, among the spidery girders of the elevated, we came in
sight of the easygoing blue coupé.
“Those big movies around Fiftieth Street are cool,” suggested
Jordan. “I love New York on summer afternoons when everyone’s
away. There’s something very sensuous about it—overripe, as if all
sorts of funny fruits were going to fall into your hands.”
The word “sensuous” had the effect of further disquieting Tom,
but before he could invent a protest the coupé came to a stop, and
Daisy signalled us to draw up alongside.
“Where are we going?” she cried.
“How about the movies?”
“It’s so hot,” she complained. “You go. We’ll ride around and meet
you after.” With an effort her wit rose faintly. “We’ll meet you on
some corner. I’ll be the man smoking two cigarettes.”
“We can’t argue about it here,” Tom said impatiently, as a truck
gave out a cursing whistle behind us. “You follow me to the south
side of Central Park, in front of the Plaza.”
Several times he turned his head and looked back for their car,
and if the traffic delayed them he slowed up until they came into
sight. I think he was afraid they would dart down a side-street and
out of his life forever.
But they didn’t. And we all took the less explicable step of
engaging the parlour of a suite in the Plaza Hotel.
The prolonged and tumultuous argument that ended by herding
us into that room eludes me, though I have a sharp physical
memory that, in the course of it, my underwear kept climbing like a
damp snake around my legs and intermittent beads of sweat raced
cool across my back. The notion originated with Daisy’s suggestion
that we hire five bathrooms and take cold baths, and then assumed
more tangible form as “a place to have a mint julep.” Each of us said
over and over that it was a “crazy idea”—we all talked at once to a
baffled clerk and thought, or pretended to think, that we were being
very funny…
The room was large and stifling, and, though it was already four
o’clock, opening the windows admitted only a gust of hot shrubbery
from the Park. Daisy went to the mirror and stood with her back to
us, fixing her hair.
“It’s a swell suite,” whispered Jordan respectfully, and everyone
laughed.
“Open another window,” commanded Daisy, without turning
around.
“There aren’t any more.”
“Well, we’d better telephone for an axe—”
“The thing to do is to forget about the heat,” said Tom impatiently.
“You make it ten times worse by crabbing about it.”
He unrolled the bottle of whisky from the towel and put it on the
table.
“Why not let her alone, old sport?” remarked Gatsby. “You’re the
one that wanted to come to town.”
There was a moment of silence. The telephone book slipped from
its nail and splashed to the floor, whereupon Jordan whispered,
“Excuse me”—but this time no one laughed.
“I’ll pick it up,” I offered.
“I’ve got it.” Gatsby examined the parted string, muttered “Hum!”
in an interested way, and tossed the book on a chair.
“That’s a great expression of yours, isn’t it?” said Tom sharply.
“What is?”
“All this ‘old sport’ business. Where’d you pick that up?”
“Now see here, Tom,” said Daisy, turning around from the mirror,
“if you’re going to make personal remarks I won’t stay here a
minute. Call up and order some ice for the mint julep.”
As Tom took up the receiver the compressed heat exploded into
sound and we were listening to the portentous chords of
Mendelssohn’s Wedding March from the ballroom below.
“Imagine marrying anybody in this heat!” cried Jordan dismally.
 “Still—I was married in the middle of June,” Daisy remembered.
“Louisville in June! Somebody fainted. Who was it fainted, Tom?”
“Biloxi,” he answered shortly.
“A man named Biloxi. ‘Blocks’ Biloxi, and he made boxes—that’s a
fact—and he was from Biloxi, Tennessee.”
“They carried him into my house,” appended Jordan, “because we
lived just two doors from the church. And he stayed three weeks,
until Daddy told him he had to get out. The day after he left Daddy
died.” After a moment she added as if she might have sounded
irreverent, “There wasn’t any connection.”
“I used to know a Bill Biloxi from Memphis,” I remarked.
“That was his cousin. I knew his whole family history before he
left. He gave me an aluminium putter that I use today.”
The music had died down as the ceremony began and now a long
cheer floated in at the window, followed by intermittent cries of “Yea
—ea—ea!” and finally by a burst of jazz as the dancing began.
“We’re getting old,” said Daisy. “If we were young we’d rise and
dance.”
“Remember Biloxi,” Jordan warned her. “Where’d you know him,
Tom?”
“Biloxi?” He concentrated with an effort. “I didn’t know him. He
was a friend of Daisy’s.”
“He was not,” she denied. “I’d never seen him before. He came
down in the private car.”
“Well, he said he knew you. He said he was raised in Louisville.
Asa Bird brought him around at the last minute and asked if we had
room for him.”
Jordan smiled.
“He was probably bumming his way home. He told me he was
president of your class at Yale.”
Tom and I looked at each other blankly.
“Biloxi?”
“First place, we didn’t have any president—”
Gatsby’s foot beat a short, restless tattoo and Tom eyed him
suddenly.
“By the way, Mr. Gatsby, I understand you’re an Oxford man.”
 “Not exactly.”
“Oh, yes, I understand you went to Oxford.”
“Yes—I went there.”
A pause. Then Tom’s voice, incredulous and insulting:
“You must have gone there about the time Biloxi went to New
Haven.”
Another pause. A waiter knocked and came in with crushed mint
and ice but the silence was unbroken by his “thank you” and the soft
closing of the door. This tremendous detail was to be cleared up at
last.
“I told you I went there,” said Gatsby.
“I heard you, but I’d like to know when.”
“It was in nineteen-nineteen, I only stayed five months. That’s
why I can’t really call myself an Oxford man.”
Tom glanced around to see if we mirrored his unbelief. But we
were all looking at Gatsby.
“It was an opportunity they gave to some of the officers after the
armistice,” he continued. “We could go to any of the universities in
England or France.”
I wanted to get up and slap him on the back. I had one of those
renewals of complete faith in him that I’d experienced before.
Daisy rose, smiling faintly, and went to the table.
“Open the whisky, Tom,” she ordered, “and I’ll make you a mint
julep. Then you won’t seem so stupid to yourself… Look at the mint!”
“Wait a minute,” snapped Tom, “I want to ask Mr. Gatsby one
more question.”
“Go on,” Gatsby said politely.
“What kind of a row are you trying to cause in my house
anyhow?”
They were out in the open at last and Gatsby was content.
“He isn’t causing a row,” Daisy looked desperately from one to the
other. “You’re causing a row. Please have a little self-control.”
“Self-control!” repeated Tom incredulously. “I suppose the latest
thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to
your wife. Well, if that’s the idea you can count me out… Nowadays
people begin by sneering at family life and family institutions, and
next they’ll throw everything overboard and have intermarriage
between black and white.”
Flushed with his impassioned gibberish, he saw himself standing
alone on the last barrier of civilization.
“We’re all white here,” murmured Jordan.
“I know I’m not very popular. I don’t give big parties. I suppose
you’ve got to make your house into a pigsty in order to have any
friends—in the modern world.”
Angry as I was, as we all were, I was tempted to laugh whenever
he opened his mouth. The transition from libertine to prig was so
complete.
“I’ve got something to tell you, old sport—” began Gatsby. But
Daisy guessed at his intention.
“Please don’t!” she interrupted helplessly. “Please let’s all go
home. Why don’t we all go home?”
“That’s a good idea,” I got up. “Come on, Tom. Nobody wants a
drink.”
“I want to know what Mr. Gatsby has to tell me.”
“Your wife doesn’t love you,” said Gatsby. “She’s never loved you.
She loves me.”
“You must be crazy!” exclaimed Tom automatically.
Gatsby sprang to his feet, vivid with excitement.
“She never loved you, do you hear?” he cried. “She only married
you because I was poor and she was tired of waiting for me. It was
a terrible mistake, but in her heart she never loved anyone except
me!”
At this point Jordan and I tried to go, but Tom and Gatsby insisted
with competitive firmness that we remain—as though neither of
them had anything to conceal and it would be a privilege to partake
vicariously of their emotions.
“Sit down, Daisy,” Tom’s voice groped unsuccessfully for the
paternal note. “What’s been going on? I want to hear all about it.”
“I told you what’s been going on,” said Gatsby. “Going on for five
years—and you didn’t know.”
Tom turned to Daisy sharply.
“You’ve been seeing this fellow for five years?”
 “Not seeing,” said Gatsby. “No, we couldn’t meet. But both of us
loved each other all that time, old sport, and you didn’t know. I used
to laugh sometimes”—but there was no laughter in his eyes—“to
think that you didn’t know.”
“Oh—that’s all.” Tom tapped his thick fingers together like a
clergyman and leaned back in his chair.
“You’re crazy!” he exploded. “I can’t speak about what happened
five years ago, because I didn’t know Daisy then—and I’ll be
damned if I see how you got within a mile of her unless you brought
the groceries to the back door. But all the rest of that’s a God
damned lie. Daisy loved me when she married me and she loves me
now.”
“No,” said Gatsby, shaking his head.
“She does, though. The trouble is that sometimes she gets foolish
ideas in her head and doesn’t know what she’s doing.” He nodded
sagely. “And what’s more, I love Daisy too. Once in a while I go off
on a spree and make a fool of myself, but I always come back, and
in my heart I love her all the time.”
“You’re revolting,” said Daisy. She turned to me, and her voice,
dropping an octave lower, filled the room with thrilling scorn: “Do
you know why we left Chicago? I’m surprised that they didn’t treat
you to the story of that little spree.”
Gatsby walked over and stood beside her.
“Daisy, that’s all over now,” he said earnestly. “It doesn’t matter
any more. Just tell him the truth—that you never loved him—and it’s
all wiped out forever.”
She looked at him blindly. “Why—how could I love him—possibly?”
“You never loved him.”
She hesitated. Her eyes fell on Jordan and me with a sort of
appeal, as though she realized at last what she was doing—and as
though she had never, all along, intended doing anything at all. But
it was done now. It was too late.
“I never loved him,” she said, with perceptible reluctance.
“Not at Kapiolani?” demanded Tom suddenly.
“No.”
 From the ballroom beneath, muffled and suffocating chords were
drifting up on hot waves of air.
“Not that day I carried you down from the Punch Bowl to keep
your shoes dry?” There was a husky tenderness in his tone…
“Daisy?”
“Please don’t.” Her voice was cold, but the rancour was gone from
it. She looked at Gatsby. “There, Jay,” she said—but her hand as she
tried to light a cigarette was trembling. Suddenly she threw the
cigarette and the burning match on the carpet.
“Oh, you want too much!” she cried to Gatsby. “I love you now—
isn’t that enough? I can’t help what’s past.” She began to sob
helplessly. “I did love him once—but I loved you too.”
Gatsby’s eyes opened and closed.
“You loved me too?” he repeated.
“Even that’s a lie,” said Tom savagely. “She didn’t know you were
alive. Why—there’s things between Daisy and me that you’ll never
know, things that neither of us can ever forget.”
The words seemed to bite physically into Gatsby.
“I want to speak to Daisy alone,” he insisted. “She’s all excited
now—”
“Even alone I can’t say I never loved Tom,” she admitted in a
pitiful voice. “It wouldn’t be true.”
“Of course it wouldn’t,” agreed Tom.
She turned to her husband.
“As if it mattered to you,” she said.
“Of course it matters. I’m going to take better care of you from
now on.”
“You don’t understand,” said Gatsby, with a touch of panic. “You’re
not going to take care of her any more.”
“I’m not?” Tom opened his eyes wide and laughed. He could
afford to control himself now. “Why’s that?”
“Daisy’s leaving you.”
“Nonsense.”
“I am, though,” she said with a visible effort.
“She’s not leaving me!” Tom’s words suddenly leaned down over
Gatsby. “Certainly not for a common swindler who’d have to steal
the ring he put on her finger.”
“I won’t stand this!” cried Daisy. “Oh, please let’s get out.”
“Who are you, anyhow?” broke out Tom. “You’re one of that
bunch that hangs around with Meyer Wolfshiem—that much I
happen to know. I’ve made a little investigation into your affairs—
and I’ll carry it further tomorrow.”
“You can suit yourself about that, old sport,” said Gatsby steadily.
“I found out what your ‘drugstores’ were.” He turned to us and
spoke rapidly. “He and this Wolfshiem bought up a lot of side-street
drugstores here and in Chicago and sold grain alcohol over the
counter. That’s one of his little stunts. I picked him for a bootlegger
the first time I saw him, and I wasn’t far wrong.”
“What about it?” said Gatsby politely. “I guess your friend Walter
Chase wasn’t too proud to come in on it.”
“And you left him in the lurch, didn’t you? You let him go to jail for
a month over in New Jersey. God! You ought to hear Walter on the
subject of you.”
“He came to us dead broke. He was very glad to pick up some
money, old sport.”
“Don’t you call me ‘old sport’!” cried Tom. Gatsby said nothing.
“Walter could have you up on the betting laws too, but Wolfshiem
scared him into shutting his mouth.”
That unfamiliar yet recognizable look was back again in Gatsby’s
face.
“That drugstore business was just small change,” continued Tom
slowly, “but you’ve got something on now that Walter’s afraid to tell
me about.”
I glanced at Daisy, who was staring terrified between Gatsby and
her husband, and at Jordan, who had begun to balance an invisible
but absorbing object on the tip of her chin. Then I turned back to
Gatsby—and was startled at his expression. He looked—and this is
said in all contempt for the babbled slander of his garden—as if he
had “killed a man.” For a moment the set of his face could be
described in just that fantastic way.
It passed, and he began to talk excitedly to Daisy, denying
everything, defending his name against accusations that had not
been made. But with every word she was drawing further and
further into herself, so he gave that up, and only the dead dream
fought on as the afternoon slipped away, trying to touch what was
no longer tangible, struggling unhappily, undespairingly, toward that
lost voice across the room.
The voice begged again to go.
“Please, Tom! I can’t stand this any more.”
Her frightened eyes told that whatever intentions, whatever
courage she had had, were definitely gone.
“You two start on home, Daisy,” said Tom. “In Mr. Gatsby’s car.”
She looked at Tom, alarmed now, but he insisted with
magnanimous scorn.
“Go on. He won’t annoy you. I think he realizes that his
presumptuous little flirtation is over.”
They were gone, without a word, snapped out, made accidental,
isolated, like ghosts, even from our pity.
After a moment Tom got up and began wrapping the unopened
bottle of whisky in the towel.
“Want any of this stuff? Jordan?… Nick?”
I didn’t answer.
“Nick?” He asked again.
“What?”
“Want any?”
“No… I just remembered that today’s my birthday.”
I was thirty. Before me stretched the portentous, menacing road
of a new decade.
It was seven o’clock when we got into the coupé with him and
started for Long Island. Tom talked incessantly, exulting and
laughing, but his voice was as remote from Jordan and me as the
foreign clamour on the sidewalk or the tumult of the elevated
overhead. Human sympathy has its limits, and we were content to
let all their tragic arguments fade with the city lights behind. Thirty—
the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to
know, a thinning briefcase of enthusiasm, thinning hair. But there
was Jordan beside me, who, unlike Daisy, was too wise ever to carry
well-forgotten dreams from age to age. As we passed over the dark
bridge her wan face fell lazily against my coat’s shoulder and the
formidable stroke of thirty died away with the reassuring pressure of
her hand.
So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight.

The young Greek, Michaelis, who ran the coffee joint beside the ash-
heaps was the principal witness at the inquest. He had slept through
the heat until after five, when he strolled over to the garage, and
found George Wilson sick in his office—really sick, pale as his own
pale hair and shaking all over. Michaelis advised him to go to bed,
but Wilson refused, saying that he’d miss a lot of business if he did.
While his neighbour was trying to persuade him a violent racket
broke out overhead.
“I’ve got my wife locked in up there,” explained Wilson calmly.
“She’s going to stay there till the day after tomorrow, and then we’re
going to move away.”
Michaelis was astonished; they had been neighbours for four
years, and Wilson had never seemed faintly capable of such a
statement. Generally he was one of these worn-out men: when he
wasn’t working, he sat on a chair in the doorway and stared at the
people and the cars that passed along the road. When anyone spoke
to him he invariably laughed in an agreeable, colourless way. He was
his wife’s man and not his own.
So naturally Michaelis tried to find out what had happened, but
Wilson wouldn’t say a word—instead he began to throw curious,
suspicious glances at his visitor and ask him what he’d been doing at
certain times on certain days. Just as the latter was getting uneasy,
some workmen came past the door bound for his restaurant, and
Michaelis took the opportunity to get away, intending to come back
later. But he didn’t. He supposed he forgot to, that’s all. When he
came outside again, a little after seven, he was reminded of the
conversation because he heard Mrs. Wilson’s voice, loud and
scolding, downstairs in the garage.
 “Beat me!” he heard her cry. “Throw me down and beat me, you
dirty little coward!”
A moment later she rushed out into the dusk, waving her hands
and shouting—before he could move from his door the business was
over.
The “death car” as the newspapers called it, didn’t stop; it came
out of the gathering darkness, wavered tragically for a moment, and
then disappeared around the next bend. Mavro Michaelis wasn’t
even sure of its colour—he told the first policeman that it was light
green. The other car, the one going toward New York, came to rest a
hundred yards beyond, and its driver hurried back to where Myrtle
Wilson, her life violently extinguished, knelt in the road and mingled
her thick dark blood with the dust.
Michaelis and this man reached her first, but when they had torn
open her shirtwaist, still damp with perspiration, they saw that her
left breast was swinging loose like a flap, and there was no need to
listen for the heart beneath. The mouth was wide open and ripped a
little at the corners, as though she had choked a little in giving up
the tremendous vitality she had stored so long.

We saw the three or four automobiles and the crowd when we were
still some distance away.
“Wreck!” said Tom. “That’s good. Wilson’ll have a little business at
last.”
He slowed down, but still without any intention of stopping, until,
as we came nearer, the hushed, intent faces of the people at the
garage door made him automatically put on the brakes.
“We’ll take a look,” he said doubtfully, “just a look.”
I became aware now of a hollow, wailing sound which issued
incessantly from the garage, a sound which as we got out of the
coupé and walked toward the door resolved itself into the words
“Oh, my God!” uttered over and over in a gasping moan.
“There’s some bad trouble here,” said Tom excitedly.
 He reached up on tiptoes and peered over a circle of heads into
the garage, which was lit only by a yellow light in a swinging metal
basket overhead. Then he made a harsh sound in his throat, and
with a violent thrusting movement of his powerful arms pushed his
way through.
The circle closed up again with a running murmur of
expostulation; it was a minute before I could see anything at all.
Then new arrivals deranged the line, and Jordan and I were pushed
suddenly inside.
Myrtle Wilson’s body, wrapped in a blanket, and then in another
blanket, as though she suffered from a chill in the hot night, lay on a
worktable by the wall, and Tom, with his back to us, was bending
over it, motionless. Next to him stood a motorcycle policeman taking
down names with much sweat and correction in a little book. At first
I couldn’t find the source of the high, groaning words that echoed
clamorously through the bare garage—then I saw Wilson standing
on the raised threshold of his office, swaying back and forth and
holding to the doorposts with both hands. Some man was talking to
him in a low voice and attempting, from time to time, to lay a hand
on his shoulder, but Wilson neither heard nor saw. His eyes would
drop slowly from the swinging light to the laden table by the wall,
and then jerk back to the light again, and he gave out incessantly
his high, horrible call:
“Oh, my Ga-od! Oh, my Ga-od! Oh, Ga-od! Oh, my Ga-od!”
Presently Tom lifted his head with a jerk and, after staring around
the garage with glazed eyes, addressed a mumbled incoherent
remark to the policeman.
“M-a-v—” the policeman was saying, “—o—”
“No, r—” corrected the man, “M-a-v-r-o—”
“Listen to me!” muttered Tom fiercely.
“r—” said the policeman, “o—”
“g—”
“g—” He looked up as Tom’s broad hand fell sharply on his
shoulder. “What you want, fella?”
“What happened?—that’s what I want to know.”
“Auto hit her. Ins’antly killed.”
 “Instantly killed,” repeated Tom, staring.
“She ran out ina road. Son-of-a-bitch didn’t even stopus car.”
“There was two cars,” said Michaelis, “one comin’, one goin’, see?”
“Going where?” asked the policeman keenly.
“One goin’ each way. Well, she”—his hand rose toward the
blankets but stopped halfway and fell to his side—“she ran out there
an’ the one comin’ from N’York knock right into her, goin’ thirty or
forty miles an hour.”
“What’s the name of this place here?” demanded the officer.
“Hasn’t got any name.”
A pale well-dressed negro stepped near.
“It was a yellow car,” he said, “big yellow car. New.”
“See the accident?” asked the policeman.
“No, but the car passed me down the road, going faster’n forty.
Going fifty, sixty.”
“Come here and let’s have your name. Look out now. I want to get
his name.”
Some words of this conversation must have reached Wilson,
swaying in the office door, for suddenly a new theme found voice
among his grasping cries:
“You don’t have to tell me what kind of car it was! I know what
kind of car it was!”
Watching Tom, I saw the wad of muscle back of his shoulder
tighten under his coat. He walked quickly over to Wilson and,
standing in front of him, seized him firmly by the upper arms.
“You’ve got to pull yourself together,” he said with soothing
gruffness.
Wilson’s eyes fell upon Tom; he started up on his tiptoes and then
would have collapsed to his knees had not Tom held him upright.
“Listen,” said Tom, shaking him a little. “I just got here a minute
ago, from New York. I was bringing you that coupé we’ve been
talking about. That yellow car I was driving this afternoon wasn’t
mine—do you hear? I haven’t seen it all afternoon.”
Only the negro and I were near enough to hear what he said, but
the policeman caught something in the tone and looked over with
truculent eyes.
 “What’s all that?” he demanded.
“I’m a friend of his.” Tom turned his head but kept his hands firm
on Wilson’s body. “He says he knows the car that did it… It was a
yellow car.”
Some dim impulse moved the policeman to look suspiciously at
Tom.
“And what colour’s your car?”
“It’s a blue car, a coupé.”
“We’ve come straight from New York,” I said.
Someone who had been driving a little behind us confirmed this,
and the policeman turned away.
“Now, if you’ll let me have that name again correct—”
Picking up Wilson like a doll, Tom carried him into the office, set
him down in a chair, and came back.
“If somebody’ll come here and sit with him,” he snapped
authoritatively. He watched while the two men standing closest
glanced at each other and went unwillingly into the room. Then Tom
shut the door on them and came down the single step, his eyes
avoiding the table. As he passed close to me he whispered: “Let’s
get out.”
Self-consciously, with his authoritative arms breaking the way, we
pushed through the still gathering crowd, passing a hurried doctor,
case in hand, who had been sent for in wild hope half an hour ago.
Tom drove slowly until we were beyond the bend—then his foot
came down hard, and the coupé raced along through the night. In a
little while I heard a low husky sob, and saw that the tears were
overflowing down his face.
“The God damned coward!” he whimpered. “He didn’t even stop
his car.”

The Buchanans’ house floated suddenly toward us through the dark

rustling trees. Tom stopped beside the porch and looked up at the
second floor, where two windows bloomed with light among the
vines.
 “Daisy’s home,” he said. As we got out of the car he glanced at me
and frowned slightly.
“I ought to have dropped you in West Egg, Nick. There’s nothing
we can do tonight.”
A change had come over him, and he spoke gravely, and with
decision. As we walked across the moonlight gravel to the porch he
disposed of the situation in a few brisk phrases.
“I’ll telephone for a taxi to take you home, and while you’re
waiting you and Jordan better go in the kitchen and have them get
you some supper—if you want any.” He opened the door. “Come in.”
“No, thanks. But I’d be glad if you’d order me the taxi. I’ll wait
outside.”
Jordan put her hand on my arm.
“Won’t you come in, Nick?”
“No, thanks.”
I was feeling a little sick and I wanted to be alone. But Jordan
lingered for a moment more.
“It’s only half-past nine,” she said.
I’d be damned if I’d go in; I’d had enough of all of them for one
day, and suddenly that included Jordan too. She must have seen
something of this in my expression, for she turned abruptly away
and ran up the porch steps into the house. I sat down for a few
minutes with my head in my hands, until I heard the phone taken up
inside and the butler’s voice calling a taxi. Then I walked slowly
down the drive away from the house, intending to wait by the gate.
I hadn’t gone twenty yards when I heard my name and Gatsby
stepped from between two bushes into the path. I must have felt
pretty weird by that time, because I could think of nothing except
the luminosity of his pink suit under the moon.
“What are you doing?” I inquired.
“Just standing here, old sport.”
Somehow, that seemed a despicable occupation. For all I knew he
was going to rob the house in a moment; I wouldn’t have been
surprised to see sinister faces, the faces of “Wolfshiem’s people,”
behind him in the dark shrubbery.
“Did you see any trouble on the road?” he asked after a minute.