Gatz is like a staged audiobook, with one crucial difference:

We are not in control of the text. 

A fundamental component of literature is that the reader/listener can move through the story at our own pace, with the ability to pause and repeat whenever so desired.

But on Elevator Repair Service’s stage, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s tale keeps chugging along, and the audience is powerless to stop this forward churn…

…which seems relevant for a story about time’s ceaseless progress, how none of us can go back — no matter how much we want to, no matter what we do.

To riff on the novel’s final line:

Gatz ceaselessly beats on…