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F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby

Yes, good work SFG. There should be more encouragement of joint reads like this (outside the Book Group, I mean).

Now: the Fitzgerald I've never been able to finish is Tender is the Night. You wouldn't mind reading that one for me next?
 
Shade said:
Yes, good work SFG. There should be more encouragement of joint reads like this (outside the Book Group, I mean).

Now: the Fitzgerald I've never been able to finish is Tender is the Night. You wouldn't mind reading that one for me next?
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Thanks for the positive note, it is appreciated. I've been wanting to do this for awhile now as my dislike for the book has popped up more than once. Not everyone is on the same page when it comes to reading a particular book, but I figure that when other folks get around to it, they'll add their thoughts later. Tender is the Night......I'll have to give it a shot. Honestly, I'm having a blast with this and could see it spiral into a general "all Fitzgerald, all the time" type of thread.:D
 
After I've finished The Silver Darlings, I'll probably read The Great Gatsby with you. It's one that some classes in school got to read while others didn't and got some other book that I no longer remember. In fact, since my current read is approaching six hundred pages and I'm making slow progress, I'll probably polish off The Great Gatsby in a sitting on Saturday morning.

Richard Yates, I believe, held Fitzgerald in high regard so, being a fan of Yates, I suppose - sight unseen - I'm going to like the man. Some things gang aft agley, a poet once said, so we'll see... :)
 
I had a very eventful weekend, so I took some time off from reading. I came back yesterday to work and during my break, finished up reading about how Mrs. Wilson died. I have to say that I was very shocked with the "suddenness" in which it occured. The overall degradation and loose morality of the period was capitalized in that event IMHO. It was particularly heartless considering that Nick was hushed by Gatsby when Nick almost described in detail as to how the victim looked. The factors of the weather and of course, the ever watchful *eyes* were interesting to note, though I have to confess, I could care less what the weather symbolizes, though I didn't miss the connection in regards to Gatsby desiring to not have the pool drained with the change of season upon him.

From an earlier episode, I had a good chuckle about Tom and Daisy visiting the Gatsby mansion during one special party that went to excess. The passage where Tom states that Daisy would be thrilled holding the hair of a madam who had "overindulged" was quite humours. It was easy to picture a deadly serious man with disgust on his face, while his vacuous, wide-eyed mate is enthralled. Not a major part of the book, but good humor at any rate.
 
I have read the book a time ago and have watched the movie afterwards. I have no trouble reading it again especially with SFG’s enthusiasm :) . After all it’s a very influential book in it’s themes. I haven’t read other books for Fitzgerald. Are they as good as the Great Gatsby?
 
Samerron said:
I have read the book a time ago and have watched the movie afterwards. I have no trouble reading it again especially with SFG’s enthusiasm :) . After all it’s a very influential book in it’s themes. I haven’t read other books for Fitzgerald. Are they as good as the Great Gatsby?
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I loved the Great Gatsby and went straight on to Tender is the Night (not a scientific selection, I was inspired by the Blur song of the same name). It has the same world-weary, "we're all doomed" feeling of Gatsby, but I found the story a bit flabby. The problem is that Gatsby manages to fit so much into such a small book, and I was expecting Tender is the Night to do the same but on a larger scale. With appropriately lowered expectations, I think it's a good read.
 
I'm surprised so many people didn't like this book. I thought it was really good! I could actually understand it, and the plot was good enough that I was actually wanting to read it instead of it feeling like a chore.
 
The Great Gatsby. 4/5.

It's about dreams, isn't it? The illusion, as in chasing after, building something upon nothing. James Gatz has a dream, becomes it, and never realizes that the very chasing of that dream is what makes it impossible. It's the very symbol of Gatsby's success and the prize he was looking for that brings him down in the end (the car and the girl - what else, that's the American dream, right?) To get what he wants, be what he wants, he has to become someone whom that person, that life doesn't want. The brief summer, the onset of autumn, the unstoppable passage of time. I could go on. I might, after I've had time to revisit some earlier posts in this thread (back from when this forum actually discussed books). Stewart, did you ever get around to it?

I gather this is one of those books that all American schoolchildren are made to read, and it shows; it's a bit like being handed a decoder ring, recognizing themes and images that later turn up in lots of others, from Nabokov and Salinger to Dylan...

Plus, there's Fitzgerald's language. It mystifies me; almost sloppy at times, then suddenly highly (almost too highly) poetic, mixing what is today almost hokey dialogue with sentences that just burn into my head.

"So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight." One of those sentences that turns out to be actual foreshadowing, worked before we knew that, and still works afterwards.
 
Stewart said:
Er, no. But, he's getting plugged all the way through Richard Yates' biography, A Tragic Honesty, that I'm certainly going to have to delve in at some point soon.
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Interesting you should say that; I just read my first Yates (Eleven Kinds of Loneliness) a while back, and I kept finding similarities in both prose - though Fitzgerald's (or his narrator's) is much more flowery - and in the characterizations; that sense of the characters being... um... I guess blind, in a way, to what we as readers realize is going to happen to them; everyone's got a plot of his/her own, where everyone's convinced that THEY are the main character, yet the plot is carrying them somewhere they don't expect to go... flawed characters, immaculately drawn.
 
We had to read this book for my English class - however, I think there is a different response I receive from reading a book for a class and for my own personal interest...I'll probably end up reading it again.

I did enjoy it, but there was something lacking behind it. I suppose I didn't believe the subject matter to be very interesting.
 
Having just finished The Great Gatsby, about an hour ago, I'm not quite as perplexed about the 3D as one would imagine. As a way of being part of Gatsby's parties, and getting a feel for it, it's not such a bad idea. However, the 3D notion would possibly detract from the ambience of the novel.
 
I'm reading Tender Is the Night, and I sincerely hope it gets better. The Great Gatsby - if it wants to be read by me - had better be an improvement on Tender, because so far the literary fireworks ain't airborne.
 
Books are like that mystery flavour gum we get to try once in a while: everyone takes it in differently.

Because of our life experiences, no book review can be the same except for its literary observation (vocabulary, use of allusions, etc).

What i took from the novel, personally, was the notion that one must learn to forget their past, do not dwell on it; don't let it haunt you.

Gatsby devoted his entire life to earning a woman's attention, a lady who "got away".

I learned that sometimes it's best to forget or let the past go, to learn from it and move on. Or else you may end up in such regret and turmoil, trying to fix something that happened years ago.
 
'Gatsby devoted his entire life to earning a woman's attention, a lady who "got away".

I learned that sometimes it's best to forget or let the past go, to learn from it and move on. Or else you may end up in such regret and turmoil, trying to fix something that happened years ago.'

*sigh* I know that feeling.
 
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