The Great Gatsby - Wyrmsign.org

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Published 2012 by Feedbooks.

(1 review)

The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in the Jazz Age on Long Island, near New York City, the novel depicts first-person narrator Nick Carraway's interactions with mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and Gatsby's obsession to reunite with his former lover, Daisy Buchanan. The novel was inspired by a youthful romance Fitzgerald had with socialite Ginevra King, and the riotous parties he attended on Long Island's North Shore in 1922. Following a move to the French Riviera, Fitzgerald completed a rough draft of the novel in 1924. He submitted it to editor Maxwell Perkins, who persuaded Fitzgerald to revise the work over the following winter. After making revisions, Fitzgerald was satisfied with the text, but remained ambivalent about the book's title and considered several alternatives. Painter Francis Cugat's cover art greatly impressed Fitzgerald, and he incorporated its imagery into the novel. After its publication …

The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in the Jazz Age on Long Island, near New York City, the novel depicts first-person narrator Nick Carraway's interactions with mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and Gatsby's obsession to reunite with his former lover, Daisy Buchanan. The novel was inspired by a youthful romance Fitzgerald had with socialite Ginevra King, and the riotous parties he attended on Long Island's North Shore in 1922. Following a move to the French Riviera, Fitzgerald completed a rough draft of the novel in 1924. He submitted it to editor Maxwell Perkins, who persuaded Fitzgerald to revise the work over the following winter. After making revisions, Fitzgerald was satisfied with the text, but remained ambivalent about the book's title and considered several alternatives. Painter Francis Cugat's cover art greatly impressed Fitzgerald, and he incorporated its imagery into the novel. After its publication by Scribner's in April 1925, The Great Gatsby received generally favorable reviews, though some literary critics believed it did not equal Fitzgerald's previous efforts. Compared to his earlier novels, such as This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and Damned, Gatsby was a commercial disappointment. It sold fewer than 20,000 copies by October, and Fitzgerald's hopes of a monetary windfall from the novel were unrealized. When the author died in 1940, he believed himself to be a failure and his work forgotten. During World War II, the novel experienced an abrupt surge in popularity when the Council on Books in Wartime distributed free copies to American soldiers serving overseas. This new-found popularity launched a critical and scholarly re-examination, and the work soon became a core part of most American high school curricula and a part of American popular culture. Numerous stage and film adaptations followed in the subsequent decades. Gatsby continues to attract popular and scholarly attention. Contemporary scholars emphasize the novel's treatment of social class, inherited versus self-made wealth, gender, race, and environmentalism, and its cynical attitude towards the American Dream. One persistent item of criticism is an allegation of antisemitic stereotyping. The Great Gatsby is widely considered to be a literary masterwork and a contender for the title of the Great American Novel.

80 editions

Gertie MacDowell reviewed The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (Everyman's Library Classics)

Gatsby might be 'great' but the book he's in is not.

3 stars

I freely admit that what finally got me to read this after so long was an article in The New York Times where it is described as a 'quick read' at barely 200 pages and possible to get through in an afternoon. I did not use an entire afternoon, but had a few evenings and therefore found myself reading about Jay Gatsby for the first time at the centenary of his emergence.

My first thought was that the book is quite funnier than I'd imagined. Fitzgerald loves to throw in lines for Nick Carraway that capture the silliness that surrounds him. This made the book a far more amusing read than I had anticipated and helped keep my interest throughout.

As a story, The Great Gatsby is terribly straightforward. There's little in the way of ingenuity per se, and it is the characters, their setting, the culture that surrounds them, …

I freely admit that what finally got me to read this after so long was an article in The New York Times where it is described as a 'quick read' at barely 200 pages and possible to get through in an afternoon. I did not use an entire afternoon, but had a few evenings and therefore found myself reading about Jay Gatsby for the first time at the centenary of his emergence.

My first thought was that the book is quite funnier than I'd imagined. Fitzgerald loves to throw in lines for Nick Carraway that capture the silliness that surrounds him. This made the book a far more amusing read than I had anticipated and helped keep my interest throughout.

As a story, The Great Gatsby is terribly straightforward. There's little in the way of ingenuity per se, and it is the characters, their setting, the culture that surrounds them, and the choices they make that serve as the real interest of the novel. Hindsight also aids in this regard as Nick becomes a 'bond man' like so others in New York City and from this vantage point, that seems like a fatalistic choice given what happened at the end of the decade. Not before Nick gives it up, but it gives the novel an extra sheen of cluelessness that has only become brighter as the years go by.

None of the characters particularly appealed to me. Yes, Gatsby is the most interesting but then his intrigue is half the point of the whole book. Everyone else is quite two-dimensional either interested in money, or the trappings of it. There's so little given to their motivations and thoughts its kind of frustrating. (That said, there is a scene towards the end where Fitzgerald brilliantly, and through only describing the physical scene, shares what Daisy and Tom are thinking.)

I can see why it's a favourite of schools. It's short, has a simple enough story, and embodies enough themes that can be related to by young readers otherwise ignorant of the world. Is that the sum of its worthiness in the literary world? I don't think so, but I don't think the Great Gatsby is near the paragon of 20th century literature, or even Jazz Age literature for that matter.

Overall, three stars for being amusing enough to read straight through, but really, this is just a book to check off your list.