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F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby

LOL yes money might not buy happiness but I would far rather be rich and miserable than poor and miserable. :)
 
Meadow337 said:
I read it a long time ago and would really need to reread it again to comment properly, but my overriding impression was of the emptiness of wealth and would compare it with a book like 'Bonfire of the Vanities'.
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I haven't read Bonfire of the Vanities, yet. But I agree with what you say regarding the emptiness of wealth in Gatsby....but to me it was more a book of betrayal. I don't believe anyone was left standing. And money isn't necessary for betrayal.

I was a little surprised at the level of vitriol that was leveled at Gatsby on another forum...wow! I can hardly imagine anything in it to hate that much.
 
Just reread it this morning - it is profoundly a book about futility and emptiness - God is the sightless eyes of a billboard, no-one faces reality, all is illusion, and the illusion is unobtainable, just as Gatsby was never able to obtain Daisy, either the reality or the illusion of her.

The period setting is important for there is always a period of a desperate sense of the futility of life and attempting to cover up the desperation with false gaity during and after war.

They all lie and call it 'honour' and the narrator, Nick Carraway, does not, and it is this quality that qualifies him to both narrate and judge, for he is, despite his opening assertions that he does not, standing in judgment of all their actions.
 
Hmmmmm. Gatsby has always left me relatively nonplused , explore FSF's other work , of which " The Beautiful and The Damned" and the posthumously published " The Love Of The Last Tycoon" are quite worth reading and (imo) better than " Gatsby".

The intense focus on Gatsby detracts from and misses the rest of Fitzgerald's body of work. ( though yes there are only the 5 novels and the short fiction)..........
 
Bluenote said:
Hmmmmm. Gatsby has always left me relatively nonplused , explore FSF's other work , of which " The Beautiful and The Damned" and the posthumously published " The Love Of The Last Tycoon" are quite worth reading and (imo) better than " Gatsby".

The intense focus on Gatsby detracts from and misses the rest of Fitzgerald's body of work. ( though yes there are only the 5 novels and the short fiction)..........
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That is certainly my intention. I've heard much the same. Thanks. :)
 
I can't say I'm sufficiently taken with the writing to do that. :( The prose just isn't that evocative for me.
 
Fully aware I'm late to the party and that I'm about to be the outlier, I absolutely love The Great Gatsby. I think it's one of the few novels that manages to nail both zeitgeist and higher level metaphors. The prose quality is excellent too. Fitzgerald always writes elegantly, and Gatsby's prose is a perfect example of form having function.

That said, Tender is The Night was pretty incredible too. It's amazing how effortless Fitzgerald can make writing seem. Hemingway famously wrote that "His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings.". I've always thought it was the best description of Fitzgerald's writing anyone could've come up with.
 
JGL said:
Fully aware I'm late to the party and that I'm about to be the outlier, I absolutely love The Great Gatsby. I think it's one of the few novels that manages to nail both zeitgeist and higher level metaphors. The prose quality is excellent too. Fitzgerald always writes elegantly, and Gatsby's prose is a perfect example of form having function.

That said, Tender is The Night was pretty incredible too. It's amazing how effortless Fitzgerald can make writing seem. Hemingway famously wrote that "His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings.". I've always thought it was the best description of Fitzgerald's writing anyone could've come up with.
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are book discussions ever truly over? it seems to me everyone has their own perspective and that starts the discussion all over again :)
 
I read Great Gatsby almost three years ago, much before the current excitement owing to movie began. Liked it in parts only, not very impressed with either the story or the climax. But, did like Fitzgerald's writing style. I faintly remember how he described non living things like telephone and portraits, animating and assimilating them in the narrative.
 
Finished gatsby not too long ago, and didn't like it very much. It was one in my list of classics that I'm ticking off recently, and this one didn't grab me. Or should i say, *I* didn't get it.

Looking back at the threads, I miss some of the more astute members of our forums in the days gone by, now lost to the internets. Anyway, I did learn a little more about FSF here, but it didn't improve my experience much.

I liked the prose, but not being able to particularly appreciate its place in the history of American literature, or able to grasp the finer points of style that supposedly evokes the 'jazz age' and 'roaring 20s', I've unfortunately not been able to feel much beyond a very nice flowy cadence to the writing. But nothing particularly evocative of anything.

The story, though. I approached the book without knowing very much about what it's about at all, beyond its status as a must read in a lot of lists. I like being surprised. But the story was a little low key. I don't mean that I'm disappointed there weren't giant robots with a dual pilot system destroying monsters spewing out from the deep sea (wouldn't that make a nice movie), I'm disappointed there wasn't *more*. I disliked jay gatsby as a character within the first quarter of the book, and he was barely introduced at that point of the book. I liked Tom, in that he made me quite angry at the duplicity and double standards he held with some pride. But other characters where blanks. I suppose I think Nick has a little more dimension to him now after I went though previous comments here and rethought his role in the book.

But still, the ending was anticlimactic, and all prose didn't do enough to lift up the story for me. I'm so superficial.

At least it was better than Brideshead Revisited. :)
 
direstraits said:
Finished gatsby not too long ago, and didn't like it very much. It was one in my list of classics that I'm ticking off recently, and this one didn't grab me. Or should i say, *I* didn't get it.
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You and me both. The Great Gatsby? Not so great.
 
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