The Great Gatsby

TelePaul

A masterpiece in my opinion, and definetely one of my all-time favourites. Your thoughts?

BossArky

Yes, I really like to it too. Loved the style of writing and how vivid the characters and scenes were.

Dades

Read it a few times over the years! Great book.

RonMexico

It was Hunter S. Thompsons favourite book.

kraggy

Couldn't get into it. Not my type of book.

Earthhorse

Read it. Didn't think much of it. Can't see why everyone is so impressed with the writing, it didn't stand out to me at all.

skybluejay

Didn't warm to it at all. I was left bemused as to why it was so popular. I read it a few years ago - think I was about 17 at the time - and I now have the impression that I may have slightly missed the point of the book.
Maybe... I should reread it?

Imhof Tank

Having recently read the excellent A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemmingway, which includes a lot of stuff about Hemmingway and F Scott Fitzgerald when they both lived in Paris in the 1920s, I decided to re-read The Great Gatsby.

I found it to be a glorified short story really - good for what it is, but not nearly substantial enough to qualify as a masterpiece.

Or alternatively, it is possible that as in the case of a few other posters here, I just amn't getting it

BossArky

From what I remember, there wasn't anything to "get". It was just a well written story.

rowlandbrowner

I read it a few years ago, really enjoyed it. Fitzgerald’s short story collection is worth seeking out; I remember one story called Bernice Bobs Her Hair with particular fondness.

Serpentine

The Great Gatsby is one of my all time favourites, I love that line where he compares Daisy's voice as sounding like money. I always though it tragically ironic that FSF own funeral mirrored that of Jay Gatsby's though. I've read everything by Scott Fitzgerald (I'm quite obsessed) but I do believe his style really flaired in short story form, eg Magnetism, The Bridal Party, The Diamond as Big As The Ritz.

A moveable Feast was a great insight although I am with Zelda on my opinion of Ernest Hemingway I would thoroughly recommend the Crack Up for anyone who wants to delve into the more autobiographical of Scott's writing

Earthhorse

BossArky wrote: »

From what I remember, there wasn't anything to "get". It was just a well written story.

I discussed this with someone once and they maintained that the point is that there was no point. Gatsby and his friends lead essentially empty lives. When something genuinely shocking happens they don't react because they don't know how to. That's a good an interpretation I've heard as any.

buck65

I liked it alot, read it in a day. Actually I read John Cheever's short stories and alot of the themes from Fitzgerald are modernised here.

tHE vAGGABOND

I dont get what all the fuss is about. Its not too bad, but I dont see how/where folks see it as a masterpeice at all!

YogiBear

A great book!!
His short stories are well worth a read too!!

The Short Stories of F.Scott Fitzgerald:

• ISBN-10: 068480445X
• ISBN-13: 978-0684804453

Talliesin

Clearly not one of the themes, but it's strange how many little things would be read as references to World War II in this book, even though it was written in the 1920s.

TelePaul wrote: »

A masterpiece in my opinion, and definetely one of my all-time favourites. Your thoughts?

Nowhere near one of my favourites, but yes clearly a masterpiece.

Imhof Tank wrote: »

I found it to be a glorified short story really - good for what it is, but not nearly substantial enough to qualify as a masterpiece.

It's too long to be a short short story, it's in the novella range, but even if it was only two paragraphs how would that exclude it from being a masterpiece?

BossArky wrote: »

From what I remember, there wasn't anything to "get". It was just a well written story.

Some things don't come of the page now as much as they did then (the cinematic qualities are now very much the norm in novels) but there's plenty to this.

The very position of Gatsby as in some ways greater and in some ways less than the old money couple and his invention of himself has a rather obvious relation to the concept of the "American dream", but the exploration of it goes beyond the obvious.

One example; the potential for distasteful activity behind the success of Gatsby that is hinted at and as such argues against the American Dream concept, but there is no less of a suggestion of distaste in the counter-pointed old-money couple.

The American dream is also argued against in the few working class characters that are mentioned. Their insignificance, and disposability belies the idea that they have the potential opportunity to "make themselves" in the way Gatsby does.

Throughout issues of position and class, their value purpose and mechanism are explored, and the answers are invariably depressing. At the end of the book the underprivileged are still underprivileged or else dead and pretty much disappeared, the privileged that won those privileges for themselves have lost them and are failures, and those born into privilege are shown to be hollow and without hope for any true fulfilment. All of them are damned by the failure of the American Dream in different ways.

Another theme is inevitability and fate verses free will. Again this relates to Gatsby's making of himself. Doing so is clearly an act that argues against the idea of having a fated position in life, and yet the circular references in the book speaks of a tragic inevitability to the events which argues that this is not the case at all, and we have less control over the outcome of our lives than an ambition like Gatsby's requires.

At the same time the carelessness ("careless" is a word that recurs very frequently) of Jordan and particularly of Tom and Daisy is roundly condemned and as such Gatsby is the bigger man for all his failings. Everyone in this book is a failure and everyone is condemned, but Gatsby at least had tried to take control of his life and he has the honour of having failed as a man and not as a barely concious animal floating through life because they are desensitised by either their abundance or lack of position and opportunity.

Those are just a few things that stand out well in my mind though I haven't read it in a long time. It's a very dense book and there's much more to it than I've pointed to here.

Amazotheamazing

Imhof Tank wrote: »

Having recently read the excellent A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemmingway, which includes a lot of stuff about Hemmingway and F Scott Fitzgerald when they both lived in Paris in the 1920s, I decided to re-read The Great Gatsby.

I found it to be a glorified short story really - good for what it is, but not nearly substantial enough to qualify as a masterpiece.

Or alternatively, it is possible that as in the case of a few other posters here, I just amn't getting it

Pretty sure what Hemingway wrote about FitzGerald in a Moveable Feast has been rubbished. More to do with Hemingway's imagination that reality i'm afraid.

The Great Gatsby is an incredible book, one of the best of the first half of the century. Has anyone read on the parallels between it and Le Grand Mealunes?

Esmereldina

I read this years ago and loved it. I don't remember too much of the detail now, I just have an idea of the atmosphere it created in my mind, with its mixture of glamour, nostalgia, regret, emptiness etc.

It doesn't matter if it's a novella, a novel or a short story, does it? In fact a lot of the time, the shorter a book, the better crafted it is, because the author had to think much more about what to put in and how to structure it. I'd imagine it's easier to write a longer, rambling book than a short and well structured one...

I really liked A Moveable Feast too, and the portrait of Fitzgerald was interesting... I didn't realise it has since been denounced as a work of Hemingway's imagination!

Sandwich

Talliesin wrote: »

It's too long to be a short short story, it's in the novella range, but even if it was only two paragraphs how would that exclude it from being a masterpiece?

It wouldnt of course. But it would cut across it being a masterpiece of a novel. Somehow I dont think Fitzgerald would have like tht idea that he had written The Great American Novella.

On the book, I think it is lost on the young and not really a good choice for school reading. It is a looking-backwards book, that requires a certain life experience of longing/loss, ambition/failure to get under its skin.

BossArky

A few quotes from the book which I like:

"I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby's house I was one of the few guests who had actually been invited. People were not invited--they went there."

"He smiled understandingly-much more than understandingly. It was 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."

"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."

"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."

owlwink

Hey if you liked this you should check out the much shorter story called The Diamond As Big As the Ritz. Quite an enjoyable little read...

aghastlrbaboon

This was a favourite of my English teacher at school who I greatly admire. I can remember soaking it up at face value and writing about the messages from it i derived but its been so long i can hardly remember the subject matter now. For what little it's worth presently i do remember looking on it as a masterpiece back then.

The boards keeps my reading list growing mostly with books i have to reread