Happy Birthday, Jay Gatsby! (1 Viewer)

[CarversDog]

On this date in 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby was first published. To this day, almost 30 years after first reading the novel and reconsidering it a few more times over the years, I still ponder if perhaps it isn't indeed the fabled Great American Novel. Some scholars argue to the contrary, allowing that Nick Carraway is a classic "unreliable narrator" (because he dares to have opinions about those of whom he speaks).

 

[ROC]

Couldn't finish it myself. :o

 

[justine]

this is one of my favourite books. i had to read it for an american lit class i was taking, and the first time through i didn't think much of it. but it definitely, definitely rewards repeat readings. the layers and layers to the story are just so beautifully crafted, and there's such a sense of atmosphere specific to that time and place that i really felt through the writing.

 

[roni]

couldn't read it too.
but liked one of his stories with a related topic very beautiful: 'A winters tale'. You've read that?

as a novel, I found 'Tender is the Night' more impacting (is this a word?), esp given the 'case' of Scott and Zelda.

 

[CarversDog]

Despite all of its flaws, Roni, I, too, am a great admirer of Tender is the Night. Yes, I've read A Winter's Tale --- another good FSF short is The Lost Decade, the story of the aftermath of an architect's decade-long drinking binge.

Ruby: One can approach Gatsby from a vast number of different perspectives: the decadence of the wealthy; the American Dream, as hollow at the core as a chocolate Easter bunny; illusory love, or, as the Stones said ... You can't always get what you want.

 

[justine]

Ruby: One can approach Gatsby from a vast number of different perspectives: the decadence of the wealthy; the American Dream, as hollow at the core as a chocolate Easter bunny; illusory love, or, as the Stones said ... You can't always get what you want.

i completely agree. there's a fantastic quote that beautifully describes the atmosphere set up in the story. i'll try to find it when i get home tonight.

i've got 'tender is the night' and 'the beautiful and the damned' on my shelf, just haven't gotten round to reading either of them yet. i was so captured by GG, i'm worried that i won't enjoy the other ones as much.

there's also a great shorts collection by zelda; i forget the title, but i really enjoyed it. i think she's often been catergorised as being clever with language but ultimately shallow in her narratives and characters. i felt quite differently to this when i read her work a few years back.

 

[LickTheStar]

I'm still unsure of my feelings for the book. I read it in high school and loved it... Went back last year, after about... oh 8 years from when I first read it and wasn't as enamored... But I still like it. Happy Birthday indeed!

 

[justine]

i completely agree. there's a fantastic quote that beautifully describes the atmosphere set up in the story. i'll try to find it when i get home tonight.

The 1920s seen through the prism of Fitzgerald's novel becomes a strange distillation of unlimited wonder and opportunity foundering on human excess and waste, a heightened and yet insubstantial carnivalesque moment in which personal and national desire give way to resplendent emptiness...

-Scott Donaldson, Critical Essays on F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby

 

[roni]

anybody here read 'The Crack-up'?

 

[CarversDog]

Roni, I love The Crack-Up and only last week pitched an essay to Pop Matters about that book.

In the dark night of the soul, it is always three o'clock in the morning
"The Crack Up"

 

[Gerard K H Love]

OK 10 posts down and I'm going to be the first to mention Andy Kaufman and The Great Gatsby. He had a thing for that book.

 

[LickTheStar]

Didn't know that! Cool! I knew Hunter Thompson was insane over the book, but never knew about Kaufman. Nice factoid there, thanks!

 

[CarversDog]

Thompson retyped The Great Gatsby to get a sense of the flow of a novel. Oddly, The Rum Diary owes more to Hemingway than Fitzgerald.

 

[roni]

Roni, I love The Crack-Up and only last week pitched an essay to Pop Matters about that book.

yeah, has some very fine parts.

did you know, Hem was making a big mockery about this one. He claimed, to show to the public so much of your suffering is dishonorable.