The Great Gatsby in flight paths

Jan 13, 2016 Kamakana rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: aa-unitedstateslit, penguin-modern, romanticlit, literature, xshort-less-200, modernlit, crime, masculinismlit, read-twice-or-more, historicity

if you like this review, i now have website: www.michaelkamakana.com

150116: please read this (again if necessary) as i enjoy reading all the other readings here on GR... read this was possibly/partly inspired by The Lost Estate...

121119 later (seventh?) review: read this yet again at least seven times now (once a year... 2016,17,18,19), 6th read is inspired by critical/bio work So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures i just decided to reread it to see if i can catch the if you like this review, i now have website: www.michaelkamakana.com

150116: please read this (again if necessary) as i enjoy reading all the other readings here on GR... read this was possibly/partly inspired by The Lost Estate...

121119 later (seventh?) review: read this yet again at least seven times now (once a year... 2016,17,18,19), 6th read is inspired by critical/bio work So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures i just decided to reread it to see if i can catch the romance. beautiful, cruel, heartbreaking. gatsby is the kind of man a seventeen year old would imagine, yes even if i was probably only fifteen when i first read it... i grew up comfortably, secure, not poor but not society... but yes, since that first uneducated reading (not for class) i wanted to be gatsby... perhaps i should think about what it has meant in my adult romantic life...?(19)

but i could always identify with his romantic readiness. i can still understand such romantic obsession, even more years since. so i rec this to all my efriends just to give it a chance, read it again, marvel at the clarity, the design, the concision, the lyrical passages... i found this particular copy designed as mock-pulp (161213), and have to remember it is related to popular culture of its time. this is now another world almost a hundred years past but it is not dated... it is forever... i will be able to quote the last paragraphs forever...

first review on goodreads: what is there to say of this? short novel that contains far more than word count suggests, the only thing i can mention is that this is very definitely sentimental favorite, as probably the first novel i saw as art capital A. read first when i was fifteen, read many times in years (decades...) since, this cruel romance encapsulates both how i wanted then and maybe want even now to believe that my self is something i can entirely create (before i had read any existentialism...), and how, whether this is worthwhile, the way to live is to love and do everything for love... heartbreaking in my youth, only after many realtime relationships can i question these ideas, these characters, these maybe illusions... it remains something i can recommend maybe to any woman who is interested in figuring me out. i can quote many lines, i can quote the ending paragraphs, i can only wish i could ever write anything so simple, beautiful, and pure... ...more

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Oct 15, 2021 Kamakana rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: aa-unitedstateslit, historicity, literature, masculinismlit, read-twice-or-more, romanticlit, xshort-less-200, modernlit, comic-satire, aaa-favoritefiction

if you like this review, i now have website: www.michaelkamakana.com

211015: do not know how much i was translating while reading, and how much is memory, but it seems to read well in French. a lot of vocabulary learned, as i have been told, if you want to learn french... just read! as this is favourite, english original on one page, french translation opposite, this is not difficult. interesting to read phrases familiar in another language. sentiment definitely plays strong role here, and i can if you like this review, i now have website: www.michaelkamakana.com

211015: do not know how much i was translating while reading, and how much is memory, but it seems to read well in French. a lot of vocabulary learned, as i have been told, if you want to learn french... just read! as this is favourite, english original on one page, french translation opposite, this is not difficult. interesting to read phrases familiar in another language. sentiment definitely plays strong role here, and i can sympathise with readers who find it too obvious in symbols, too transparent, but this keeps it concise, readable, teachable. i do not sympathise with readers who are morally offended by the characters. i believe they are rounded, real, well-sketched by our ambivalent narrator. still favourite in either language...

150116: please read this (again if necessary) as i enjoy reading all the other readings here on GR... read this was possibly/partly inspired by The Lost Estate...

121119 later (seventh?) review: read this yet again at least seven times now (once a year... 2016,17,18,19), 6th read is inspired by critical/bio work So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures i just decided to reread it to see if i can catch the romance. beautiful, cruel, heartbreaking. gatsby is the kind of man a seventeen year old would imagine, yes even if i was probably only fifteen when i first read it... i grew up comfortably, secure, not poor but not society... but yes, since that first uneducated reading (not for class) i wanted to be gatsby... perhaps i should think about what it has meant in my adult romantic life...?(19)

but i could always identify with his romantic readiness. i can still understand such romantic obsession, even more years since. so i rec this to all my efriends just to give it a chance, read it again, marvel at the clarity, the design, the concision, the lyrical passages... i found this particular copy designed as mock-pulp (161213), and have to remember it is related to popular culture of its time. this is now another world almost a hundred years past but it is not dated... it is forever... i will be able to quote the last paragraphs forever...

first review on goodreads: what is there to say of this? short novel that contains far more than word count suggests, the only thing i can mention is that this is very definitely sentimental favorite, as probably the first novel i saw as art capital A. read first when i was fifteen, read many times in years (decades...) since, this cruel romance encapsulates both how i wanted then and maybe want even now to believe that my self is something i can entirely create (before i had read any existentialism...), and how, whether this is worthwhile, the way to live is to love and do everything for love... heartbreaking in my youth, only after many realtime relationships can i question these ideas, these characters, these maybe illusions... it remains something i can recommend maybe to any woman who is interested in figuring me out. i can quote many lines, i can quote the ending paragraphs, i can only wish i could ever write anything so simple, beautiful, and pure... ...more

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Apr 06, 2011 Petra rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Tragic. Beautiful. A Love heptagon. The lives of these people are mainly shallow, self-indulgent lives with no substance, except for the Narrator. Not being rich, he lacked the self-indulgency of the others.
The consequences of the actions of this group had far-reaching and tragic results.
Beautifully written. Wonderfully told story.

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Jul 13, 2018 Barbara McEwen rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: classics

Confession time, I had judged this book before I even opened it. Let me see, an old boring white guy whose stories aren't really about anything but are considered poetic, sound familiar? I did read Tender is the Night a few years back and thought it was ok/good? Even though, as predicted, not a whole lot actually happened and I can't really remember a thing about it now.
But, I was wrong about this one. In my head it was just going to be some jazz age, tedious romantic rivals, daring glances acro ...more

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Jan 07, 2014 Mj rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, book-club-selection, 2014, westmount-bc

The Great Gatsby was a book club selection. I understand it’s considered a classic but having read the book from cover to cover, I thought it was average at best.

I found it overly wordy for my taste, oftentimes not in a good way. I consider books that use big words and long sentences rather pretentious when the additional words don’t add any extra information, further depth or evoke more emotions or empathy. Why use a twenty word sentence when ten words will accomplish the same thing and why us The Great Gatsby was a book club selection. I understand it’s considered a classic but having read the book from cover to cover, I thought it was average at best.

I found it overly wordy for my taste, oftentimes not in a good way. I consider books that use big words and long sentences rather pretentious when the additional words don’t add any extra information, further depth or evoke more emotions or empathy. Why use a twenty word sentence when ten words will accomplish the same thing and why use big words if they don’t add any more than shorter words would? So now you know my bias.

F. Scott Fitzgerald was clever in coining some new words and occasionally I thought his lengthy descriptions were well done and reread them to ponder. It was usually something that caused me look at things differently or to think more about an observation or point that I had just read. More often however, I was rereading the sentence because it was three long sentences rolled into one sentence without any punctuation. Or I was looking to find a verb or action word in the sentence to understand what I had just read.

It’s hard to know how to rate the book for its wordsmithery, since The Great Gatsby was first published in 1926 and the language at the time was definitely much different and more elaborate than it is today. I am thinking however that the wordiness is more a choice of Fitzgerald’s literary style than the period in which it was written. It reminded me of the style in two more recent books I’ve read - Rules of Civility by Amor Towles and The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes. In both of these books, at times I was similarly critical of what I deemed pretentiousness in the overuse of words; and in particular, big words. However, I also felt both books offered more to the reader in terms of plot development and / or causing one to think.

Another reason I’m not a big fan of The Great Gatsby is because I really wasn’t interested in delving further into any of its characters, with the exception of perhaps Jay Gatsby, whom the book was named after and possibly Nick Carraway (the narrator.) The other characters seemed very shallow, cold and mostly interested in petty, material things like parties, clothes and alcohol. I honestly wouldn’t want to spend thirty minutes chatting with any of them, except perhaps Jay and Nick as indicated - Jay because he was an enigma to me since besides innuendo, very little information was provided about him in the book and Nick because I wasn’t sure how I really felt about him and wanted my ambivalence clarified. Sometimes, Nick seemed to have some strong personal characteristics, including integrity and leadership. At other times, he seemed weak and a follower prone to waffle. Overall Nick generally seemed self absorbed, reflective and spending too much time observing others rather than living his own life. The major point being if I didn’t want to spend thirty minutes chatting with most of the characters, I really didn’t want to spend thirty more minutes reading about them either.

There was definitely not much plot to the book. That is usually not an issue since I thoroughly enjoy character driven books. The only problem was that I found most of the characters described seemed to to be shallow, hollow and one-dimensional – almost like caricatures. Perhaps that was Fitzgerald’s intention in The Great Gatsby – to describe an era, The Jazz Age, where self-centred shallow people, had too much money to spend, too much time on their hands and not enough responsibility, morale compass, caring friendships or loving relationships. Nonetheless in this book, I didn’t think there was enough character development to compensate for the lack of plot.

At the end, I found Jay Gatsby’s angst touching and his unattended funeral very defining of his frequent visitors and freeloaders. I also liked the focus on Gatsby’s life in the last few chapters but wish there had been more insight into Gatsby’s character and history earlier. Before the end, it was all innuendo and sort of like playing peek a boo. I found the insight into his choices touching and fascinating but thought it was too little too late to make this a great book.

I considered rating The Great Gatsby 2 stars (below average) but decided on 3 stars (my average) after taking into account that it was a period piece and perhaps I was being too harsh. I was also recognizing my personal bias against books with shallow characters and plot as a mitigating factor. The other two books that I mentioned earlier, I did rate 4 stars because despite the similar pretentiousness (my opinion), there was better character and plot development, particularly in the books’ second halves. The Great Gatsby seemed more of a caricature of rich people and the friends they had due to their wealth, who could have been living in any particular era or at any location. Their lives had little substance and not enough was happening to make an interesting plot. The character development of such superficial characters understandably was one dimensional. Too beige and pretentious for my taste. 3 stars. ...more

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Apr 21, 2009 David rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: big-white-square

I still prefer "Tender is the Night". For one thing it has a much better title.

Nick and Gatsby are a bit wet and rather annoying at the end. Kudos to Daisy, she know's the score. ...more

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May 07, 2021 Max Ostrovsky rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, classics

I get why this book is great. Doesn't mean I have to like it. ...more

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Nov 25, 2012 Mary Anne rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

No one is free from insincerity, not even the narrator. Gatsby dies because he wants to recreate his love for Daisy, and that desire is the cause of his death, set in motion by Daisy's driving, and Tom's lechery and treachery. Old money of Tom and Daisy is pitted against the illegal money of Gatsby with the narrator representing Wall Street.
I read the novel year's ago giving it 5 stars then, which I would not give today, but I wanted to refresh my memory of The Great Gatsby before I read Gorsky ...more

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Dec 08, 2010 JackieB rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

This left me cold. I'm not sure why but I just could not empathise with any of the characters. I didn't dislike them but I was indifferent to them. ...more

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