Trimalchio: An Early Version of the Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Jul 31, 2007

svnh rated it

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Shelves: noch-einmal

Edit 04.08.10:

Hm. I'm still amazed by the fact that people are still commenting on this review. I didn't think, three years ago when this review bounded from my 21-year-old egotism, that it would cause such an internet stir.

Yes, I realize the former "review" was pithy and unwarranted, but again, it was just an internet review written by a hot-headed 21 year old girl in resistance to a novel that everyone else seems to worship, and for which I had acquired (and s...more

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Razael Someone is wrong in the inrenet. Lol
Feb 10, 2012 09:44am

Esdaile Ioanna wrote: "Esdaile wrote: "Ioanna wrote: "I so agree with your original review. I could not have said it better myself."
....moreIoanna wrote: "Esdaile wrote: "Ioanna wrote: "I so agree with your original review. I could not have said it better myself."
...
Someone says of the original review, "I could not have said it better myself". No o..."

Writing a comment on "almost everything anyone says" is a little exaggerated, I have made a few comments here and there. "Comment" invites people to comment, so there should be no surprise if they do in fact comment. You describe the original reaction or whatever it was as a "review" and I took it from there. As a review the original opinion is hardly literate. The point about "rights" and "likes" and "dislikes" is that they are unhelpful to everyone else if they are not explained. If someone reacts negatively to a novel which has been admired and enjoyed by a great many people, it is not unreasonable to expect them either to be able to give cogent reasons or alternbatively for them to say that theirs was a personal reaction which they cannot explain. That would be honest. You write, "I am definitely not obliged to justify my opinion in a manner that would attempt to persuade a literature expert to agree with me"-who is the literary expert here? In answer to the point, you are not "obliged" to do so in the sense that nobody can compel you to of course, yet as a matter of fact I do think there is a certain ethical obligation to do so. If you are going to shoot down popular works of art, then yes I do think there is an obligation to give a reason. Also, why is it that people who criticise any work of art always assume the fault lies with the artist and not with them? Has it even occurred to you that your not enjoying The Great Gatsby might conceivably be the result of shortcomings you might have and not be a shortcoming of the book? Why express any opinion if you cannot back it up? You can claim your "right" to say to the entire world that you don't enjoy "The Great Gatsby" or any other book, but whom will that interest if you cannot offer intelligent reasons?(less)
updated 5 hours, 44 min ago

Feb 15, 2011

Bird Brian rated it

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Shelves: literature-20th-century

A Valentine's Day Quiz

Do you know true love, the way F. Scott Fitzgerald knows true love?

...take this fun quiz to find out!

1. You fall in love with beautiful Daisy Fay, but your blossoming romance is interrupted when you are sent off to war. On your return, you discover she has married some rich dude, Tom Buchanan. How do you interpret these events?

a) She must have never loved me.
b) Well, at least I got some. Time to move on.
c) We're...more

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Mar 10, 2008

Alex rated it

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The Great Gatsby is your neighbor you're best friends with until you find out he's a drug dealer. It charms you with some of the most elegant English prose ever published, making it difficult to discuss the novel without the urge to stammer awestruck about its beauty. It would be evidence enough to argue that F. Scott Fitzgerald was superhuman, if it wasn't for the fact that we know he also wrote This Side of Paradise.

But despite its magic, the rhetoric is just that, and it is a crue...moreThe Great Gatsby is your neighbor you're best friends with until you find out he's a drug dealer. It charms you with some of the most elegant English prose ever published, making it difficult to discuss the novel without the urge to stammer awestruck about its beauty. It would be evidence enough to argue that F. Scott Fitzgerald was superhuman, if it wasn't for the fact that we know he also wrote This Side of Paradise.

But despite its magic, the rhetoric is just that, and it is a cruel facade. Behind the stunning glitter lies a story with all the discontent and intensity of the early Metallica albums. At its heart, The Great Gatsby throws the very nature of our desires into a harsh, shocking light. There may never be a character who so epitomizes tragically misplaced devotion as Jay Gatsby, and Daisy, his devotee, plays her part with perfect, innocent malevolence. Gatsby's competition, Tom Buchanan, stands aside watching, taunting and provoking with piercing vocal jabs and the constant boast of his enviable physique. The three jostle for position in an epic love triangle that lays waste to countless innocent victims, as well as both Eggs of Long Island. Every jab, hook, and uppercut is relayed by the instantly likable narrator Nick Carraway, seemingly the only voice of reason amongst all the chaos. But when those boats are finally borne back ceaselessly by the current, no one is left afloat. It is an ethical massacre, and Fitzgerald spares no lives; there is perhaps not a single character of any significance worthy even of a Sportsmanship Award from the Boys and Girls Club.

In a word, The Great Gatsby is about deception; Fitzgerald tints our glasses rosy with gorgeous prose and a narrator you want so much to trust, but leaves the lenses just translucent enough for us to see that Gatsby is getting the same treatment. And if Gatsby represents the truth of the American Dream, it means trouble for us all. Consider it the most pleasant insult you'll ever receive.(less)

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Sep 27, 2011

Stephen rated it

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Shelves: easton-press, audiobook, classics-americas, literature, love-those-words, 1900-1929

Casual, self-absorbed decadence, the evaporation of social grace, money calling all the shots and memories of the past holding people hostage from the future that lies before them. Yes, Mr. Fitzgerald has nailed it and written one of THE great American novels.

This book was a surprise. I LOVED it and all of the deep contradictions swimming around its heart. At once a scathing indictment on the erosion of the American Dream, but also a bittersweet love letter to the unfail...more

Casual, self-absorbed decadence, the evaporation of social grace, money calling all the shots and memories of the past holding people hostage from the future that lies before them. Yes, Mr. Fitzgerald has nailed it and written one of THE great American novels.

This book was a surprise. I LOVED it and all of the deep contradictions swimming around its heart. At once a scathing indictment on the erosion of the American Dream, but also a bittersweet love letter to the unfailing optimism of the American people. Call it dignified futility…obstinate hopefulness. Whatever you call it, this novel is shiny and gorgeous, written with a sort of breezy pretension that seems to mirror the loose morality of the story. Rarely have I come across a book whose style so perfectly enhances its subject matter.

Set in the eastern United States just after World War I, Fitzgerald shows us an America that has lost its moral compass. This fall from grace is demonstrated through the lives of a handful of cynical “well-to-dos” living lavish but meaningless lives that focus on nothing but the pursuit of their own pleasures and whims.

Standing apart from these happenings (while still being part of them) is our narrator, Nick Carraway. As the one honest and decent person in the story, Nick stands in stark contrast to the other characters. “Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.” Nick relays the story of the summer he spent in Long Island’s West Egg in a small house sandwiched between the much larger mansions of the area. His time in Long Island is spent with a group that includes his second cousin, Daisy Buchanan, and her rich husband Tom who live in Long Island’s East Egg. At one point in the story, Nick provides the following description of the pair which I do not think can be improved upon:

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy--they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.

In addition, we have Jordan Baker who is a poster child for the pretty, amoral, self-centered rich girl whose view of the world is jaded and unsentimental. Basically, she’s a bitch.

The most intriguing character by far is Jay Gatsby himself, both for who he is and for how Fitzgerald develops him through the course of the narrative. When we are first introduced to Gatsby, he comes across as a polite, gracious, well-mannered gentleman with a magnetic personality who our narrator takes to immediately.

He had one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced, or seemed to face, the whole external world for an instant and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself.

However, from that very first encounter, Fitzgerald slowly chips away at the persona and peels back the layers of the “Great” Gatsby until we are left with a flawed and deeply tragic figure that in my opinion ranks among the most memorable in all of classic literature. Nick’s journey in his relationship with Gatsby mirrors our own. “It is invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which you have expended your own powers of adjustment.”

Through a series of parties, affairs, beatings, drunken escapades, the lives of the characters intermesh with terrible consequences. I don’t want to give away major parts of the story as I think they are best experienced for the first time fresh, but at the heart of Fitzgerald’s morality tale is a tragic love that for me rivaled the emotional devastation I felt at the doomed relationship of Heathcliff and Catherine in Wuthering Heights. In general, Fitzgerald’s world of excessive jubilance and debauchery is a mask that the characters wear to avoid the quiet torments that haunt them whenever they are forced to take stock of their actions. Rather than do this, they simply keep moving. "I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others--young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life."

In the end, Fitzgerald manages the amazing feat of creating a sad, bleak portrait of America while maintaining a sense of restrained optimism in the future. Both heart-wrenching and strangely comforting at the same time. I guess in the end, this was a book that made me feel a lot and that is all I can ever ask. I’m going to wrap this up with my second favorite quote from the book (my favorite being the one at the very beginning of the review):

And as I sat there, brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out Daisy's light at the end of his dock. He had come such a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close he could hardly fail to grasp it. But what he did not know was that it was already behind him, somewhere in the vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

5.0 stars. HIGHEST POSSIBLE RECOMMENDATION!!

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Oct 23, 2007

Gina rated it

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Shelves: pans-labyrinth

Over drinks, I’ve observed—like so many smart alacks—that much of The Great Gatsby’s popularity relies heavily on its shortness. At a sparse 180 pages, Fitzgerald’s masterpiece could be argued to be the “Great American novella.” Gatsby, like so many other short classics, is easily readable, re-readable, and assessable to everyone from the attention-deficient young to mothers juggling a kid, a career, and a long-held desire to catch up on all those books “they should have read but haven’t gotte...moreOver drinks, I’ve observed—like so many smart alacks—that much of The Great Gatsby’s popularity relies heavily on its shortness. At a sparse 180 pages, Fitzgerald’s masterpiece could be argued to be the “Great American novella.” Gatsby, like so many other short classics, is easily readable, re-readable, and assessable to everyone from the attention-deficient young to mothers juggling a kid, a career, and a long-held desire to catch up on all those books “they should have read but haven’t gotten around to yet”.

I’ve now read Gatsby three times, and I admit that on my first reading during (like handfuls of others) my senior year English class, I wasn’t particularly fond of the book; I believe I used the adjective “overrated” on numerous occasions. Daisy Buchanan seemed like a twit of a woman, and I found Jay Gatsby to be pathetically clawing in his attempt to attain her. Nick, my guide, only annoyed me further with his apparent hero-worshiping of a man I found one-dimensional and his adoration for the kind of woman I’ve seen other men purport to be goddesses, but in fact, are dim-witted simpletons with nice figures.

Over my two subsequent readings—pushed along by friends whose judgment I trusted and who swore the book was “so funny and ironic”—I discovered within Fitzgerald’s fable a sardonic social wit and a heavily layered critique of the American Dream: the poor, working (wo)man rising above his or her social situation to discover money conquers all.

Fitzgerald has a discerning ability for sharp critiques of the economically privileged and, like Jane Austin, has an ear for realistic, bantering dialogue. Through Nick’s narration, we see a world that so many Americans dream of (its enviableness only further accentuated by our open disdain for it): a life of endless parties, delicious food, beautiful clothes, and Paris Hilton. Nick who’s paradoxically drawn to his cousin, Daisy’s, and her husband, Tom’s, lifestyle with gloating contempt echoes the contemporary American idolization of an elite lifestyle that none but a select few attain.

We watch Daisy with her voice that “sounds of money” flit about with uncompromising shallowness and vivacious school-girl frivolity, and through her, see so many of the inconsequential remarks and actions others (as well as ourselves) have made for the sheer sake of “having a good time”. In spite of her frivolity and weak disposition, we become, like Gatsby, “overwhelmingly aware of the youth and mystery that wealth imprisons and preserves, of the freshness of many clothes, and of Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor.”

Through Gatsby’s veneration of Daisy, we not only imagine what so many Americans desire (success), but also we see the goal and glittering fixation of all humanity: beauty. And like many Americans in the throws of Capitalism, Gatsby believes that money can buy beauty as well as love. Fitzgerald articulates this disillusion with haunting force, particularly voiced through Nick’s obsessive repulsion with the extravagant society his social status has allowed him and the sadness he finds while watching a “working man” attempt to enter it.

One critique of The Great Gatsby, which could also be argued as a positive, is the limited scope of action and themes Fitzgerald chooses to encapsulate. We only see the wealthy elite (or people wanting to be the wealthy elite), and only Nick really has any depth of characterization. Unlike a tome, such as War and Peace, Gatsby fails to have numerous interwoven plotlines within a grand historical context. Yes, the Jazz Age is the novel’s backdrop, but Fitzgerald fails to engage in any discussion beyond a summer among the wealthy youth partying into the wee hours of the night in the West Egg. Yet, the control with which Fitzgerald expresses his limited themes makes the novel’s lack of scope forgivable.

Gatsby is short and easily accessible, and I have no doubt these aspects of the novel do lend to its everlasting popularity. At the same time, it should never diminish its truly admirable ability to tease apart some of the most confounding qualities American culture values: money, beauty, youth, hardwork, and the ever effusive, love. (less)

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Feb 28, 2008

LooseLips rated it

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Recommends it for: the people who live in upstate egg.

Shelves: hmmm, re-reading

The eh Gatsby

Classic. Yes. THE great American novel. Hmph, so I heard. I suppose it should make one more interested, or at least feel more compelled to read something (or re-read as is the case here) when it has "classic" and "everyone else loves it!" stamped all over it. And has a movie made out of it, though what beloved novel hasn't these days? Of course, I originally read FSF's Gatsby because I was expected to for a high school English class. So, even though I...moreThe eh Gatsby

Classic. Yes. THE great American novel. Hmph, so I heard. I suppose it should make one more interested, or at least feel more compelled to read something (or re-read as is the case here) when it has "classic" and "everyone else loves it!" stamped all over it. And has a movie made out of it, though what beloved novel hasn't these days? Of course, I originally read FSF's Gatsby because I was expected to for a high school English class. So, even though I was never the type to do homework, I read The Great Gatsby because it had a neat cover, Fitzgerald is fun to say, and, of course, the legend of Zelda.

Unfortunately for Meredyth, my thoughts on Gatsby 10 years ago are pretty similar to the thoughts I have on it today: How pretty. Pretty decedant. How drippy. How zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

It's not that I was completely uninterested. It's that my interest was never piqued to the point of really giving a shit. Sure, who doesn't love a hot mysteriously wealthy man with serious heart ache for a serious material girl? What about those rich dudes who may be crooks but no one can figger out how crooked they are exactly because how crooked can you be if you throw such mean hoedowns?!

Oh, and I love a good morally ambiguous-protaganist/narrator-who-hates-parties-and-society-but-just-can't-seem-to-stay-away as much as the next person, but Nick, our hero, just wants to be liked so very much, and unfortunately, he reads like a sap. And when all the other characters are unforgivable bores, I would prefer that my ambiguous, socially mandated narrator manage to keep me awake.

What about those three stars? You ask. Well I can't lie. I do think Fitz had a way with words. I did find that those subtle nuances of the variations in lifestyle during the depression to be very much in effect, and I would be happy to visit any fictional small town called West Egg. Or East Egg for that matter. And I get the kind of crazy he was going for in his more psychopathic character, George Wilson, who, because he was in love, becomes the bastiOn of normalcy even when he is driven to murder and his own suicide.

FSF did manage to be believably compassionate towards his seemingly less insane characters, (who are all on the brink of insanity) (but still made me drowsy). There is definitely a part of me that sees how one could be drawn into the twinkly lit world FSF created, supposedly, out of his own reality, and I have noted his passion for the beauty of the unfolding story, such as it is.

But I was disappointed 10 years ago by the story's inability to convince me it wasn't nap time, its unwillingness to point out the the relevance of the individual over society, and the irrelevance of the world Gatsby inhabits, and I was disappointed again this past week.

In summation, be sure to keep an eye out for this writer. Once he writes something more appealing to the masses he's sure to bust out onto the scene soon. You heard it here first.(less)

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Jan 16, 2011

Malak Alrashed rated it

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Recommends it for: NO ONE

*Note: if you are one of the The Great Gatsby's fans, then the following photo might be too violent.

description

Seriously, this book is now where it belongs to for it's a real TRASH!
Though it's considered as one the greatest books of the 20th Century and it's so admired by many Americans readers, but WHY ? I don't have any idea!

And here's why I didn't like it; the story is told by Nick Carraway,the guy who hardly done\said anything at all, it takes place in ...more

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May 25, 2010

Kemper rated it

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Shelves: plain-old-fiction, 100, classic-lit, favorites

Jay Gatsby, you poor doomed bastard. You were ahead of your time. If you would have pulled your scam after the invention of reality TV, you would have been a huge star on a show like The Bachelor and a dozen shameless Daisy-types would have thrown themselves at you.

Mass media and modern fame would have embraced the way you tried to push your way into a social circle you didn’t belong to in an effort to fulfill a fool’s dream as your entire existence became a lie and you desperate...more

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Jul 31, 2010

Rolls rated it

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Recommends it for: Everybody and their mother

"The Great Gatsby" is considered by many to be the zenith of american fiction writing in the last century. I won't say that it is the best american novel I've read but I will say it is probably the most perfect.

Along with J.D. Salinger, Fitzgerald has got to be my favorite writer of fiction. As opposed to Hemingway's bluntness, and Faulkner's artiness, Fitzgerald's prose seems(to paraphrase Michael Chabon) to rain down from style heaven. His style in fact is like the ladies...more"The Great Gatsby" is considered by many to be the zenith of american fiction writing in the last century. I won't say that it is the best american novel I've read but I will say it is probably the most perfect.

Along with J.D. Salinger, Fitzgerald has got to be my favorite writer of fiction. As opposed to Hemingway's bluntness, and Faulkner's artiness, Fitzgerald's prose seems(to paraphrase Michael Chabon) to rain down from style heaven. His style in fact is like the ladies he writes about: cool, lean and absolutely enchanting. He would never dream of overwriting and knows exactly when to hold back for maximum effect. His use of the language is assured and consequently eminently readable. For that alone this should be considered the Mona Lisa of prose.

What is astounding though is how he puts his sparsely elegant style to use giving his characters shade and depth. Fitzgerald is a true student of humanity and his skills of observation are razor sharp. He sums up his characters in sentences that read like aphorisms bulging with truth about the human condition. There's not a page goes by I'm not gasping at the depth of his vision and the economy he uses to express it.

So far I've dwelt on how he wrote and not on what he wrote. People who'd back another nag in the Great American Novel derby knock Fitzgerald's sophomoric (their word not mine) obsession with romance between men and women. They reduce his works to the level of melodramatic tear jerkers. This is a gross simplification of his talents. Yes "Gatsby" focuses on a doomed love affair but it does so to illustrate the errors in thinking that he felt marred his generation.

Gatsby is about the hollowness of the American dream as dreamt in the twenties. Fitzgerald looked around him (and in the mirror)and saw men and women locked in a frenzied and ultimatley doomed race for speed, money and sin. Gatsby and Daisy's love is doomed because their values have been distorted by money and comfort and opulence. They cannot see the depths because they are too easily distracted by shiny surfaces. When Daisy cries as Gatsby shows off his elegantly tailored shirts because she has never seen clothes so beautiful sums up perfectly how for her exteriors matter most. This is at the heart of the tragedy that unfolds before us in this delicious little novel.

There is no denying this is one of the GREAT BOOKS. If you haven't read it do so. I dare you to not fall in love with it.
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Dec 01, 2011

Lou rated it

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Shelves: may-read, adapted-to-screen

Gatsby, Jay a millionaire who just throws his money around a tycoon of sorts bites off more than he can chew. Fitzgerald is trying to show us maybe how shallow these rich characters are how they play against each other and how their friendships are paper thin badgered by suspicions, envy and jealousy. Gatsby leads a lavish and hedonistic lifestyle. The protagonist strikes some similarities to what i have heard of Fitzgerald's lifestyle. The author writes with a nice writing prose. Adapted...more

Gatsby, Jay a millionaire who just throws his money around a tycoon of sorts bites off more than he can chew. Fitzgerald is trying to show us maybe how shallow these rich characters are how they play against each other and how their friendships are paper thin badgered by suspicions, envy and jealousy. Gatsby leads a lavish and hedonistic lifestyle. The protagonist strikes some similarities to what i have heard of Fitzgerald's lifestyle. The author writes with a nice writing prose. Adapted to screen four times and another movie on the way with Di'caprio, what's the attraction with this story? Do we envy their lives, do we maybe look at them and say well I would do things different do it better and have a different partner, spend that money in other ways? Well thats the beauty of stories sometimes we get some food for thought.

Last few sentences of the novel..
"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning---- So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

Some trivia about the author
His wife, Zelda Fitzgerald, died eight years after he did, in a fire at the mental hospital where she was institutionalized.

Died of a heart attack in Hollywood while writing "The Last Tycoon", a novel that was published unfinished.

First novel was 'This Side of Paradise', written shortly after attending Princeton
The Gatsby Style, named for his 1925 novel "The Great Gatsby", was honored on one of fifteen 32¢ US commemorative postage stamps in the Celebrate the Century series, issued 28 May 1998, celebrating the 1920s.

He tried writing movie scripts but was frustrated by the image-based medium, which he had difficulty comprehending as it was so different from the language-based forms of the novel and short-story that he excelled in.

Was a mentor and close friend of the young Ernest Hemingway, who grew more distant with him as Hemingway's fame grew and Fitzgerald's declined and he became increasingly more dependent on alcohol. Hemingway disapproved of Fitzgerald's lowering his great talent to write high-priced stories for slick commercial magazines like The Saturday Evening Post and his sojourns to Hollywood to make money writing screenplays. Unlike his great contemporaries Fitzgerald, William Faulkner and John Steinbeck, Hemingway never wrote for the movies, but he had no objection to selling his novels and short stories to the studios.

Coined the term the Jazz Age in reference to the Roaring Twenties.

Is portrayed by Malcolm Gets in "Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle"

He was nominated in the 2007 inaugural New Jersey Hall of Fame for his services to literature.
Is buried at St. Mary's Catholic Cemetery in Rockville, Maryland

The Author

Fitzgerald and the family.

Some info i found about the many movies.

The Great Gatsby has been filmed six times and is being filmed for a seventh:
1. The Great Gatsby, in 1926 by Herbert Brenon – a silent movie of a stage adaptation, starring Warner Baxter, Lois Wilson, and William Powell. It is a famous example of a lost film. Reviews suggest that it may have been the most faithful adaptation of the novel, but a trailer of the film at National Archives is all that is known to exist.

2. The Great Gatsby, in 1949 by Elliott Nugent – starring Alan Ladd, Betty Field, and Shelley Winters; for copyright reasons, this film is not readily available.

3. The Great Gatsby, in 1974, by Jack Clayton – the most famous screen version, starring Sam Waterston as narrator Nick Carraway, with Mia Farrow as Daisy Buchanan and Robert Redford as Gatsby, with a script by Francis Ford Coppola.

4. The Great Gatsby, in 2000 by Robert Markowitz – a made-for-TV movie starring Toby Stephens, Paul Rudd and Mira Sorvino.

5. G, in 2002 by Christopher Scott Cherot - a modernized, loosely based adaptation starring Richard T. Jones, Blair Underwood, and Chenoa Maxwell.

6. The Great Gatsby, in 2007 by Lee Kang-hoon – a Korean adaptation starring Kang Kyeong-joon, Park Ye-jin and MC Mong.

7. The Great Gatsby, to be directed by Baz Luhrmann and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan, Tobey Maguire, Isla Fisher, Elizabeth Debicki, and Joel Edgerton. Luhrmann purchased the rights in 2008.Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire were the first to be cast, as Jay Gatsby and Nick Carraway respectively. In November 2010, Luhrmann selected Mulligan to portray Daisy Buchanan.In April 2011, Isla Fisher was offered the role of Myrtle Wilson. In May, the Australian newcomer Elizabeth Debicki landed the role of Jordan Baker, while Joel Edgerton was cast as Tom Buchanan, a role which Luhrmann initially intended for Ben Affleck. Pre-production began in Sydney, Australia in March 2011 and the film is scheduled to film in 3D from August for 17 weeks, followed by an additional thirty weeks of post-production, with a view to a 2012 release.

The more known movie so far,

Lets hope DiCaprio does a good job playing Jay Gatsby.
http://more2read.com/?review=the-great-gatsby-by-f-scott-fitzgerald(less)

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Aug 03, 2007

Jason rated it

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Recommends it for: people who can read

Shelves: favorites

Most Americans are assigned to read this novel in high school. Few American high schoolers have the wherewithal to appreciate this novel in full. I certainly did not. It is on a shortlist of novels that should, every 5 years starting at age 25, return to any American's required reading list.

First things first: The opening of The Great Gatsby -- its first 3-4 pages -- ranks among the best of any novel in the English language, and so too does its ending. Both for their content and fo...moreMost Americans are assigned to read this novel in high school. Few American high schoolers have the wherewithal to appreciate this novel in full. I certainly did not. It is on a shortlist of novels that should, every 5 years starting at age 25, return to any American's required reading list.

First things first: The opening of The Great Gatsby -- its first 3-4 pages -- ranks among the best of any novel in the English language, and so too does its ending. Both for their content and for their prose, the latter of which is stunning and near perfect throughout the novel.

As for that between the novel's opening and conclusion, two things first. (1) History is fairly clear that the term "the American Dream" did not exist at the time Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby, and regardless it almost certainly did not exist in the popular consciousness. (2) Few great American novelists after Fitzgerald have not attempted to write "the great American novel". Most of these efforts are absurdly long and often tortured. The Great Gatsby, on the other hand, is relatively short, fluid, and of seemingly effortless yet pristine expression. At a point in history where Fitzgerald's express focus could hardly have been a tale regarding "the American dream" per se or the writing of "the great American novel", Fitzgerald nevertheless crafts the definitive tale of "the American Dream", as well as, his successors' endeavors aside, "the great American novel". Period.

In not so many pages, Fitzgerald paints a brilliantly cogent picture of the potential pleasures, joys, and benefits an individual might deem achievable -- uniquely so -- in an America filled with possibilities. Paired with that picture, Fitzgerald besprinkles The Great Gatsby with the numerous pitfalls and evils that both stand as a barrier to what's imagined achievable in America, and threaten to accompany that which is achieved. Neither the quest for, nor (if possible) the achievement of, the American Dream is a thing untainted. Nor, in Fitzgerald's view, can it be.

Fitzgerald, frankly, writes all that need be written on this subject; whatever his successors' ambitions may be. And he writes it in prose so perfect, so impressive, and so beautiful, I occasionally find myself at a loss to name a novel in the English language constructed with greater skill, and apparent ease thereof.

In short: The Great Gatsby is an inimitable wonder of American fiction. And, for lack of a better word, an "application" of the English language that has few equals. The novel is astounding.
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Feb 08, 2010

Elizabeth rated it

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Shelves: in-by-of-the-americas, reviewed, look-what-love-has-done

I saw this yesterday. I sat in a full theater in one of the most-self-importantly-intellectual capitals of the world and had it read to me for seven hours. It was an audience who would get off, in several ways, to say they had seen such a production. An audience that included Cornel West, and possibly less visibly famous intellectuals (there were a lot of very hairy men of an older generation in clothes of that aggressively inexpensive sort, all bought in the early eighties, all frayed miserably...moreI saw this yesterday. I sat in a full theater in one of the most-self-importantly-intellectual capitals of the world and had it read to me for seven hours. It was an audience who would get off, in several ways, to say they had seen such a production. An audience that included Cornel West, and possibly less visibly famous intellectuals (there were a lot of very hairy men of an older generation in clothes of that aggressively inexpensive sort, all bought in the early eighties, all frayed miserably, all in shades of brown and green, at least). And I have to count myself among them (I can pick Cornel West out of a crowd after all) even if I don't like to admit anything of the sort - I'm not someone who talks about metafiction or deconstructs anything and I bolted when that guy tried to pick me up in Peets by telling me he was an author and his favorite playwright was Samuel Beckett.* But I'm in a theater to see The Great Gatsby, one of those books that gets called "the great American novel" without irony and we all had to read it in high school and, sitting there, in that theater that is growing warmer and warmer from all the hot air rising from the pre-production discussions, I had a moment of doubt. What if it isn't as good as I remember? (I remember it being the only novel I read in a high school class that I loved). What if it is overrated, pretentious drivel, with text that sounds like Hemingway educated at Princeton and platitudes about what we, as Americans, should think and feel, without the true realism of Steinbeck or the awareness of Ralph Ellison? What if it really should be regulated to high school classrooms where a good book is anything that can get through the obsessive self-involvement of the audience and the message is obvious enough that its light only has to shine through for a moment?

Then the play/reading started and I forgot all my worries. The moment Nick first held Daisy's hand and described her murmur as designed to get people to lean towards her, I was in love. I was in love the way we all are with Daisy at first. And then I was with Nick, on the outside, watching the parties, enjoying the cavalcade that surrounds him while he tries to maintain his middle-west propriety and rules of conduct, and we see him slipping, even if he doesn't. I flinched at the unthinking racism that dates the book. I watched as eyes rose over the ash heap and it shocked me again how much Tom reminds me of men I meet who really believe that Obama is ruining the country with his socialism and that we need to go back to a simpler time when they were less confused about their own place in the world (I'm not talking just about the ones on t.v. with tea bags stapled to their hats either). Tom is just as heart breaking as all the others. Tom, Wilson, Myrtle, Nick, Mr. Gatz, they all break my heart.

Having it read to you, you notice how many times Fitzgerald describes Jordon as "jaunty" and uses the word "wan." You can't help it. The flaws are there. But so is the power. When Nick says that this is a book about "the west" and describes the "green breast" of the land when it was first seen by the European settlers and asks us all to think about what it means to be an American, you can't help but think about it. It isn't a gimmick. It isn't meant as a joke or because the author felt he needed to ask to get published or to be considered an important writer. He was writing from his heart about what he loves and what he wants to understand and about the heartbreak of loss.

I walked home with my friend afterward and we talked about how his writing is akin to Heminway's in style, but that he was much more like Virginia Woolf with his sense of loss, the melancholy feeling that they both have, as they write looking back on events that they know will come to a tragic end. That "world-weariness" that represses any hope you might have when starting the book that things will work out well for anyone because, after all, we are human and therefore we will all die, one way or another. My friend, who is currently reading Mere Christianity talked about the difference between them and C.S. Lewis as the belief in Heaven. That Woolf and Fitzgerald don't believe in that better place to which we may all go, and to which we should all aspire. I was thinking about how much that sounded like something Mr. Gatz would have said (not the part about Woolf, or Lewis, about aspiring to Heaven, but don't tell her I said that).

I don't want to leave this page on that last discussion. This was not an intellectual exercise. Walking home in ten degree weather, bundling the scarf closer and turning up my collar and wondering exactly how stupid my refusal to wear hats is if I end up in the emergency room for frostbite on my ears, was as significant as the conversation. Having the conversation with this friend (she's actually the ex-girlfriend of one of my brothers) was significant. Her belief and my lack of. The streets we walked on, looking at the houses dating back and back (for us, US), a long time, and listening to the animated voices echoing off the dark houses in the clear night. The experience of the reading and thinking about what Fitzgerald was saying and bringing in the knowledge of other writers and their ideas and doing it all in Cambridge, of all places, was important, as important, as when I first read the book as a teenager and feel in love the first time.

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* This is a funny story. To get rid of him I told him mine was Tom Stoppard, which also happens to be true, and that I thought Shakespeare in Love was the best film ever made, which was a BIG lie. It was effective. No one should have to put up with Beckett fans while trying to have a cup of coffee.(less)

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Jul 22, 2008

Martine rated it

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Shelves: early-twentieth-century, film, modern-fiction, north-american

Like many people, I first read The Great Gatsby when I was too young to understand it. I appreciated the beauty of Fitzgerald's prose and his gift for describing scenes, but disliked quite a few of his characters and couldn't fathom why they inspired in each other the degree of devotion and obsession that they seemed to do. I also found the narrator a bit dull and the ending a huge let-down. In short, I was convinced Fitzgerald was a good writer (I actually went on to check out some of his short...moreLike many people, I first read The Great Gatsby when I was too young to understand it. I appreciated the beauty of Fitzgerald's prose and his gift for describing scenes, but disliked quite a few of his characters and couldn't fathom why they inspired in each other the degree of devotion and obsession that they seemed to do. I also found the narrator a bit dull and the ending a huge let-down. In short, I was convinced Fitzgerald was a good writer (I actually went on to check out some of his short stories immediately afterwards), but couldn't see what all the Gatsby fuss was about.

I think I can see it now, having reread the book a couple of times since then. Yes, it's a novel about the American Dream -- a rags-to-riches story about a poor man who re-invents himself as a mysterious millionaire in hopes of winning the heart of the beautiful rich girl he has fancied ever since they were young. But it's also about the shallowness of that dream, and about the corruption inherent in it -- about the lengths to which people will go for success and acceptance, not necessarily in an admirable way. It's about the gap between dreams and reality, between reality and perception, and about how modern, status-obsessed America is increasingly on the perception side of the gap. It's an indictment of materialism, of the thin veneer of wealth which hides the moral decay underneath. And last but not least, it's a story about what makes us who we are. About how we are shaped by our pasts and backgrounds, and how, no matter how far we run and how hard we try to re-invent ourselves, we are what we are, what we always were. It's a depressing message for the would-be self-improvers among us, but a true one, I think.

Of course, the book also works on a shallower level. The Gatsby-Daisy romance is fascinating, even if both of its protagonists ultimately turn out to be rather vapid and deluded. And Gatsby's dream is nothing if not powerful. If it ends up failing, that's because it was based on wrong assumptions -- assumptions arising from ignorance and greed as well as hope. There's a lot of greed and ignorance in the book, and it makes for memorable (albeit heavily flawed) characters. (I actually believe Jordan Baker is the most interesting character in the book. I'd have loved to see a bit more of her, although I guess it's precisely her elusiveness which makes her so fascinating.) For his part, old-fashioned Nick proves to be an excellent narrator, whose 'provincial squeamishness' adds just the right kind of perspective to all the modern goings-on described in the book. Nick may be unspectacular and unreliable, but to my mind, he's one of the best narrators in the history of modern fiction. Now that I've learnt to appreciate the novel, his disappointment and disillusionment will stay with me for ever, as will his sad resignation. (If, in fact, that is what it is. One never knows with this endlessly subtle novel.)(less)

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Mar 10, 2008

Lisa rated it

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Recommends it for: Anyone!

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I first read the Great Gatsby when I was sixteen. Gatsby’s relentless pursuit of unrequited love was enough to set my adolescent pulse racing and send me to the library with the grand ambition of reading everything Fitzgerald ever wrote. A decade later I am even more awed by the book than I was the first time I followed Gatsby’s story through the breathless pages of Fitzgerald’s modernist American classic.
The story takes place over the course of one summer, not coincidentally beginning ...moreI first read the Great Gatsby when I was sixteen. Gatsby’s relentless pursuit of unrequited love was enough to set my adolescent pulse racing and send me to the library with the grand ambition of reading everything Fitzgerald ever wrote. A decade later I am even more awed by the book than I was the first time I followed Gatsby’s story through the breathless pages of Fitzgerald’s modernist American classic.
The story takes place over the course of one summer, not coincidentally beginning just before Independence Day. The narrator, Nick, moves to a peninsula out side of the city called West Egg which looks straight across to its physical double, East Egg. Despite the outward similarity of these two locations, the inhabitants of East Egg are from old money while the prosperity of the citizens of West Egg is due to much more recently acquired wealth. The towns are therefore described as, in actuality, bearing a “bizarre and not a little sinister contrast” to one another. This juxtaposition sets up a narrative of the push and pull of opposites: east versus west, new versus old, truth versus illusion.
The two worlds of West Egg and East Egg are brought onto a collision course through Nick who rents the house next door to James Gatsby’s enormous mansion and who happens to be the cousin of Gatsby’s love interest, Daisy, and friend to Daisy’s old moneyed, old fashioned husband, Tom Buchanan. As the summer unfolds, it becomes clear that none of the characters are whom they appear to be, Gatsby is not from a rich family nor is he an alumni of Oxford, as a matter of fact, when he first met and fell in love with Daisy he had almost no money at all. Tom is an outspoken proponent of the traditional family structure while he simultaneously carries on an affair, and Daisy is neither quite as brave nor quite as independent as she would like the world to believe. Even Jordan Baker, Daisy’s friend who has an affair with Nick that summer, is a professional golfer who has been accused of cheating and is described by Nick as “incurably dishonest.” Each character can also be understood to stand for a different arch type within American society, Tom is the wealthy patrician, carrying in his blood and his bearing decades of privilege and position, yet he has recently begun to read pseudo-science books about the impending fall of civilization. In other words, that civilization which has been shaped and protected by men in Tom’s social class is in jeopardy. Daisy is a modern woman, witty and provocative, she has even had sex before her wedding night, but when she announces to Nick that she is sophisticated he feels “the basic sincerity of what she has said.” Flappers of the twenties may have looked and behaved unconventionally, but when it came right down to it, most of them married men liked Tom who could provide them with material security. Jordan is more the truly modern woman, a professional who mostly takes care of herself, but she has achieved this position through various acts of dishonesty. Gatsby, of course, is the self made man, the challenge to the established order of society. It is not Gatsby’s existence that threatens the world of East Egg, America has always boasted of self-made men, it is the fact that he has suddenly come so close. He is just across the bay and his mansion, while gaudy and tasteless, is nevertheless every bit as big as Tom’s. Gatsby is finally in a position to make a claim on Daisy’s love, and therefore on Tom’s social superiority. He is so close to fulfilling the American dream he can almost reach right out and touch it.
Like Fitzgerald himself, Gatsby pursues his dream through the vehicle of fiction. Gatsby invents a new persona for himself in order to enter Daisy’s world; Fitzgerald created windows into the lives of the rich and glamorous and through these stories, became a figure of fame and fortune himself. In the end, Gatsby does not succeed in winning Daisy, but it isn’t really about her, it’s about his dream, his belief in limitless possibilities, that quality of bravery and ingenuity that has come to be known as the American dream. “The orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther...And one fine morning--"(less)

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Oct 28, 2009

Mrs. Crane rated it

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This is my least-favorite classic of all time. Probably even my least favorite book, ever.
I didn't have the faintest iota of interest in neither era nor lifestyle of the people in this novela. So why did I read it to begin with? well, because I wanted to give it a chance. I've been surprised by many books, many a times. Thought this could open a new literary door for me.
Most of the novel was incomprehensibly lame. I was never fully introduced to the root of the affair that existed b...more

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Nov 29, 2011

Annalisa rated it

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Shelves: classics, movies, literary, favorites

The book starts off a little slow and I wasn't quite sure what direction it was taking, but by the end I'm left with such a melancholy feeling I wanted to devour it again the minute I closed it. Yes, it has it's place as an American classic.

I could feel the desperation of the American Dream in this short novel. Poor Gatsby, who dedicated his life to being good enough for a shallow girl with a magical voice when old money would never accept cheap money. His parties were so needy it wa...moreThe book starts off a little slow and I wasn't quite sure what direction it was taking, but by the end I'm left with such a melancholy feeling I wanted to devour it again the minute I closed it. Yes, it has it's place as an American classic.

I could feel the desperation of the American Dream in this short novel. Poor Gatsby, who dedicated his life to being good enough for a shallow girl with a magical voice when old money would never accept cheap money. His parties were so needy it was depressing. I could visualize all those moochers who feed off his wealth for a good time when they were never there to accept him and even gossiped about him in his own home. Although Fitzgerald couldn't have known at the time how the opulence of the twenties would crash into the Depression of the thirties, I could feel a warning in his display of the overindulgence, the inability to see past oneself, the complete lack of moral and social consequence. If only we could learn from the past.

Not a single character in this book is likable, except for maybe Nick--who was too inactive to be too likable but I still liked his counterbalance to the overindulgence and his reality check on the American Dream--and Jordan who isn't so much likable as much as interesting. But all the characters are strong and quirky and classic. I particularly hated Tom. I was so angered with him at his last meeting with Nick that I wanted to strangle him. I wanted to see some fear or regret in him, but he couldn't see past his own nose. He couldn't see that the pain he felt was the same pain he caused. So shallow and self-involved it was almost sad. He and Daisy deserved each other.

Daisy was never worth the pedestal Gatsby put her on. Since I read this in high school, I've always pictured Daisy Buchanan when I think about unrequitted love, especially love that has warped over time to be something bigger than it originally was, something unattainable and unrealistic. I hated the way Daisy used up Gatsby and then spit him out when he wasn't worth anything to her anymore. And I hated that Gatsby let her, that he put her on that pedestal and spend five years trying to be something for her instead of for himself or his family or something other than greed and childish love. Gatsby is such a great tragic character, not only because of what happens to him, but because he is so naive about the wealth and people around him. It's what makes Fitzgerald's irony and satire of the American Dream so desperate.

I loved the New York Fitzgerald paints and his scarce analogy, leaving us the reader to define the novel. I loved this book in high school so much I read an anthology of F. Scott Fitzgerald's short stories (my favorite of which is Bernice Bobs Her Hair and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button). Along with Catcher in the Rye, I consider The Great Gatsby to be the Quintessential American novel and F. Scott Fitzgerald one of my favorite authors.

Reread 11/21-11/28/11(less)

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Mar 10, 2008

Peter added it · review of another edition

The Great Gatsby is the story of a presidential primary.

—I’m sorry; my notes must be confused here. Ah yes. Let me begin again:

The Great Gatsby is the story of the emptiness of the American Dream. Set in and around New York City in the 1920’s, Gatsby explores the lives of the rich as they pursue fulfillment in an era of booming stock markets, prohibition, bustling crime bosses, and jazz.

Three figures dominate a cast of smaller, if no less compelling, chara...more

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Dec 30, 2011

Jennifer (aka EM) rated it

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I read my high school copy - just about every one of its brittle, yellowing pages marked up; each colour and number circled, as though Fitzgerald's ham-fisted symbolism was the most important thing. I certainly remembered the novel most vividly for all its golds and pinks and whites and 12s and flowers and ashes, and of course for the lassitudinous debauchery; that feeling that can only be described as "Gatsbyesque" with the full range of connotation that describing something as Kafka...more

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Dec 18, 2007

Brad rated it

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Recommends it for: Car owners

This book becomes far better when you take all of Gatsby's mystery and just think of him as Batman. The whole book falls into place!

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Oct 26, 2011

Bonnie rated it

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Recommended to Bonnie by: 1001 Books to Read Before You Die and BBC Book List

Shelves: classics, audiobooks, 1001, read-in-2011, bbc-said-so

Interested in more of my reviews? Visit my blog!

One of the great classics of the 20th century... well, a statement like that will definitely get anyone interested in reading it. Many of you read this in school, but naturally I missed out on this one as well. This one is not only on the BBC Book List but the 1001 books to read before you die.

’For a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as I ...more

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Aug 26, 2011

Luana rated it

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Titolo: Il Grande Gastby
Sottotitolo: Quando uno scrittore sa scrivere anche gli aspetti più ordinari della vita, scritti da lui, assumono il carattere della più completa fascinazione

Leggo 'Il grande Gastby' a 20 anni, Fitzgerald l'ha scritto a 29, in pratica io e l'autore abbiamo solo 9 anni di differenza, eppure in questo quasi trentenne c'è una consapevolezza della vita, una riflessione così fondamentale che me lo rende ancora più distante, che mi atterrisce e allo stesso te...moreTitolo: Il Grande Gastby
Sottotitolo: Quando uno scrittore sa scrivere anche gli aspetti più ordinari della vita, scritti da lui, assumono il carattere della più completa fascinazione

Leggo 'Il grande Gastby' a 20 anni, Fitzgerald l'ha scritto a 29, in pratica io e l'autore abbiamo solo 9 anni di differenza, eppure in questo quasi trentenne c'è una consapevolezza della vita, una riflessione così fondamentale che me lo rende ancora più distante, che mi atterrisce e allo stesso tempo mi magnifica. Fitzgerald è uno di quegli autori a cui è stato fatto dono, o che si sono conquistati - mi piace di più pensarla così - la capacità di rendere stra-ordinario ciò che è banalmente ordinario. Di arrivisti, di ricchi, di spregiudicati, di opportunismo ed ipocrisia non si sentiva parlare sono negli Anni Ruggenti, se ne sente parlare, li si può quasi toccare anche oggi, nel 2011, in Italia, lontani dall'America per terra e tempo. Eppure, attraverso il prisma Fitzgerald si leggono nuove prospettive, si sente il senso tragico di vivere una vita ad un gradino più su di quella che ci si può permettere. Le feste, la gente, la paura del silenzio, il senso opprimente del vuoto che si traduce in continuo bisogno di pieno, pieno e strapieno che cercano di colmare una vita di povertà, una vita in continua scalata in cui non basta impugnare una Montblanc per scrivere un nome diverso da quello vero che il destino ha affibbiato. La forza pungente di un amore per bene che trafigge un ragazzino 'per male', povero e malvestito e che conduce il per male a trasferirsi nel mondo del per bene senza nemmeno sapere se davvero, la nuova vita tanto anelata, ha lo stesso gusto delle case dei ricchi o se invece ha il sapore della solitudine e del grigio di New York. I pregiudizi e le radici, i due mostri sacri dai quali non si può sfuggire nemmeno quando si vive nella più totale sventatezza e nemmeno se si indossa una camicia di seta invece che gli abiti rozzi del contadino; il marito che tradisce non vuol essere un marito tradito, una donna frivola arriverà al 'punto di' ma non si muoverà verso l'oltre, mai, sopratutto se i soldi le han fatto da compagni di vita, quella donna preferirà i soldi all'amore. E poi Gatsby...
Pochi sono gli scrittori che ci hanno restituito attraverso silenzi, confessioni late, frammenti di verità ritratti così belli di un personaggio così intenso che mosso dall'amore arriva ai soldi e che dai soldi viene tradito perché i soldi non comprano le persone, sopratutto quelle che già li hanno.
Nick Carraway, il narratore, che alla fine di questo episodio ha capito che è meglio tenersi le proprie radici che andare a scavare in una terra fertile all'apparenza, ma arida sino al midollo, che ha capito che Jordan Baker appartiene a quel mondo di cui lui non riesce e non vuole divenire facente parte, unico personaggio che si salva dalla frenesia del Jazz e dalla corsa all'opulenza.
Un ritratto dell'America come un ritratto dell'umanità all'insegna della capacità di uno scrittore che sa inserire la parola 'pane' in una frase d'amore e farne comunque la frase d'amore più romantica mai scritta.
A Tom e Daisy, che si preservino nei loro pregiudizi, nelle loro finte infelicità, io mi getto anima e cuore a seguire l'insegnamento che Nick, vero amico e vera persona, mi ha dato.(less)

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Feb 16, 2009

Robin rated it

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This was a bookclub read that I've not read for many many years. It was of course assigned reading in both high school and college. I remember pouring over all the various aspects of this book and picking it a part like disecting a frog.

Now that I'm older....much older. This reading broght a whole new light on this book for me. And I'm sorry to say....I think this book is HIGHLY overrated.

This book was never a sucess (either critically or via sales) when it was relea...more

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Jan 19, 2008

Jason Pettus rated it

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(The full review I wrote of this book is much longer than GoodReads' word-count limitations. Find the entire essay at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com].)

The CCLaP 100: In which I read a hundred so-called "classic" books for the first time, then write reports on whether I think they deserve the label

Book #3: "The Great Gatsby," by F Scott Fitzgerald

The story in a nutshell:
Considered by many to be the b...more(The full review I wrote of this book is much longer than GoodReads' word-count limitations. Find the entire essay at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com].)

The CCLaP 100: In which I read a hundred so-called "classic" books for the first time, then write reports on whether I think they deserve the label

Book #3: "The Great Gatsby," by F Scott Fitzgerald

The story in a nutshell:
Considered by many to be the best American novel ever written, The Great Gatsby is set in the years immediately following World War I (known as the Great War to his generation, in that World War II hadn't happened yet); it was an era known as the "Jazz Age," from a term that Fitzgerald himself coined in an earlier novel, a time of great moral confusion and upheaval around the world. And in fact, that's an important thing to know going into this novel, that it is as much an examination of a period in history as it is the unique story of certain fictional characters; the main reason to read the book, in fact, is to not only follow along with the potboilerish plot on display, but to indeed understand an entire generation of Americans and how they got to the point that they did. Because the fact is that the Great War left an entire generation in numb shock after it was over; turns out that no one quite realized the kind of carnage that could be caused by adding Industrial-Age machines to organized warfare, not to mention the millions upon millions of fresh victims who could be easily shipped to the front now via modernized rail, leaving a nihilistic shell of a generation behind in its blood-soaked wake. The youth that emerged from that war were very quick to discard the Victorian/Edwardian morality and mannerisms of previous generations, simply from seeing what it got them all; instead, this generation was the first to embrace free jazz, experimental poetry, pornography and more, done through a haze of illegal booze and drugs and with none of them really expecting to live past the age of 40.

It's among such a backdrop, then, that we meet a series of individuals from the Jazz Age, all of them connected in one way or another to a ritzy section of New York borough Long Island: there is Jordan, for example, the haughty pro golfer who's also a pathological liar; Daisy, a preternaturally jaded young wife and alcoholic; Tom, her blustery and frat-boyish husband; Myrtle, the swarthy mechanic's wife who Tom is having an affair with; Nick, the middle-class midwesterner everyman narrator of our tale; and a lot more, emphasizing Fitzgerald's point that such people tend to become interchangeable when met under the blurry lights of an endless series of cocktail parties. All of these people, however, hinge around the mystery man in the center, the charming and attractive Jay Gatsby (Nick's next-door neighbor, through a strange series of circumstances), who has so many rumors swirling about him that they are like an industry unto themselves: that he is a bootlegger, that he is a war profiteer, that he is a relative of the deposed Kaiser, that he was a secret agent, that he actually lives on a giant yacht that never pulls ashore.

What's the real story? And why does Gatsby go to so much trouble to cloud the issue? Well, to understand that is to understand...(less)

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Jan 14, 2012

Callista rated it

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Shelves: read-more-than-once, literature-esd, four-star-novels

Re-read 12-14 January, 2012. First read 1987. Read again c. 1990/1.
Before I re-read this, I didn't remember a lot of the particulars, only Gatsby's obsession with Daisy and eventual fate, some appalling behaviour by a number of people, a certain elegance in the prose, the famous last line--and the name Jordan Baker (only because I unkindly nicknamed an annoying high school classmate that behind her back).
I was too young the first couple of times I read this to really appreciate it...moreRe-read 12-14 January, 2012. First read 1987. Read again c. 1990/1.
Before I re-read this, I didn't remember a lot of the particulars, only Gatsby's obsession with Daisy and eventual fate, some appalling behaviour by a number of people, a certain elegance in the prose, the famous last line--and the name Jordan Baker (only because I unkindly nicknamed an annoying high school classmate that behind her back).
I was too young the first couple of times I read this to really appreciate it. Fitzgerald's writing is more elegant and poetic that I recalled--it's amazing. The story is sharp yet melancholy and more timeless than I remembered. The technological details may change with time; but awful, shallow, fickle people like Tom, Daisy, Myrtle, Jordan, and Gatsby's various hangers-on exist today. You can see them on so-called "reality" shows. The story shows the dark side of the American dream.
Tom's small-mindedness and hypocrisy are astonishing. Any sympathy I tried to have for Daisy as a woman trapped by stupid social conventions went out the window as she stood for Tom's lousy treatment of her, strung Gatsby along, then failed to take responsibility for the accident and walked away from everything as if nothing had happened. She deserves to be stuck with a boor like Tom.
But I find Gatsby and Nick sympathetic. Gatsby's misguided, obsessive love for Daisy and his deluded quest of creating a life to impress her are so heartbreakingly pathetic. He actually believes Daisy will choose him. He may have done illegal things but still doesn't come off as someone completely careless like Tom or Daisy. And the fact that only the servants, Nick, and one other person attend Gatsby's funeral when hundreds of people were happy to attend Gatsby's parties is so very sad. Nick is the only person who really sees the starry-eyed, foolish young man within Gatsby. Nick deludes himself for a while as he tries to fit in with the fast crowd, but there's still a naïveté about him. He's not a judgmental person, so he floats along with a collection of cruel and flighty people--but, in the end, he is not one of them and never was. For a moment, I wanted to fault Nick for not reporting what he knows to the police, but then I realised that no one would probably believe him and the worst case scenario is Tom would destroy Nick for speaking up. No good would come of it. Nick figures out what Gatsby never could understand and manages to rescue himself, which gives Gatsby's tragedy some meaning.(less)

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Mar 23, 2009

Claire rated it

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Fitzgerald’s insight in this book cuts through the blinding American optimism of the time. Though at the time he wrote The Great Gatsby he could not have foreseen the economic and cultural crisis approaching in 1929, he is clearly suspicious and wary of the culture surrounding him, and the tone of this book expresses that he expects evil will come of it. His characters put their faith and their trust in unstable things- wealth, social superiority, commercialism, the power of culture- and their...more

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Oct 03, 2008

Erin added it · review of another edition

you know what the most awkward thing about getting compliments on goodreads is? when you traipse over to that person's booklist to stalk them--- er... return the favor on one of their reviews, i mean. you're all happy and hopeful and like "squee! a new friend!" until *le gasp*:

you realize there is absolutely NOTHING on their booklist you have ever read. or considered reading. or, actually... heard of.

now, it's either one of two things. they're a super hippy...more

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Jul 30, 2007

Monday rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: adults who are neither poor nor frustrated by frivolity

Shelves: miscellaneous

I couldn't stand this book. I understand that it captures a moment in time and a moment in life and blah blah blah, but this book is recommended to be taught to students all over MA, and let me tell you, that's a shitty thing to do.

It's not that this book can't be taught. it's not that the book can't be appreciated. However, I teach in places where students have no money, where they don't understand this idea of wealth. Instead they see a world they'll never have and it makes the...more

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Sep 25, 2007

Erin rated it

· review of another edition

I just don't get the hype on this one. Then again, I guess there's a reason why this book was unpopular and forgotten about for the first 20-30 years after it was first published. Personally, it makes no difference to me that this is supposed to be an "important" literary novel, as I like to make those conclusions for myself rather than going with the masses just because it's the masses. I found this book to be quite boring and rather depressing. Thankfully it was a short one day r...more

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Apr 26, 2011

Jeanette rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: classics, all-fiction, five-star-fiction, to-be-read-again, domestic-and-relationship-fiction

We studied this in Senior English. I was seventeen years old. All these years later I finally re-read it, and I'm adding another star. It's hard to believe how much of the depth I missed back then, when I was a dewy-eyed whelp with no life experience. My focus at that time was on the excesses and drunken debauchery of the Roaring '20s.

This book is a masterpiece. My strongest impression on this second reading was how much all of us are like Gatsby, to varying degrees. We all cheris...more

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Jan 11, 2011

Brandon Hunter rated it

· review of another edition

Dear Potential Reader,
The Great Gatsby is an okay book about love, hate, friendship,betrayal, symbolism, murder, and money. The book starts off as the narrator, also known as Nick Carraway, moving to a town named West Egg. Nick Carraway is a 1915 Yale Graduate. When Nick moved to West Egg, he made a new friend, named Jay Gatsby. Jay Gatsby is a millionaire that likes to throw parties. He throws great parties every Saturday night that can last until 3 am.
Nick has a married cousin ...more

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title link	preview: Trimalchio: An Early Version of the Great Gatsby
avg rating	preview: Trimalchio: An Early Version of the Great Gatsby Goodreads rating: 3.70 (665087 ratings)
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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4723.Trimalchio?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165448547m/4723.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4723.Trimalchio?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Trimalchio: An Early Version of the Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald[/url]

Trimalchio: An Early Version of the Great Gatsby

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