After hearing for years what a classic "The Great Gatsby" is, I was pretty disappointed in it. Gatsby is the next-door neighbor to Nick. Gatsby throws huge and lavish parties. Gatsby is mysterious.
Nick is new to Long Island. He lives next-door to Gatsby's mansion, but is not one of the idle rich. Instead he slogs to work each day in the city, and slogs home again. Nick has other rich friends, Daisy and Tom.
Eventually Daisy and Tom meet Gatsby. No hilarious hijinks, just tragedy upon tragedy.
The Great Gatsby is a morality tale, of sorts. It's also a tale of unrequited love. It's a fascinating, if dim, peek at Long Island in the 20s, when it was possible to drive along the North Shore for miles without seeing any houses or people. But for all that, it wasn't a very interesting book. Perhaps I'm just not entertained by stories of bored rich people treating other people callously.
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Comments: 9
I liked it. I like his short stories best.
I am shocked, I loved the book. It exposes the fact that if you have money it's ok to do whatever you want. The biggest example is they are ok with drinking the alcohol but look down upon those who make it/profit from it, the double standard. I think in general the book was all about pointing out the flaws in love, life and in the end you get heartache.
yes ghostly, there was a subtlety to the tale. In terms of length it is between a long novella and a minimal novel.
SO- it's a sketch, not an oil painting. The characters are not fleshed out. There is a great deal of ambiguity, what the heck went on between Gatsby and the guy's wife. It's a hard edged tale of self indulgence and immorality without heroes. Even the narrator is a go along get along boy who stands for nothing. Well, almost nothing.
There is very little sweet in this tale, it's almost all bitter. But the lessons go deep. We think that we invented morally callous behavior and rationalizing, not so. We think Enron was something new, hell no they wrote the book on that before we even got to 1929.
The proper study of mankind is man, in the words of Alexander Pope. That's the agenda of The Great Gatsby.
Great review!
I was dissapointed in this book as well. I had to read it for a writing class I took a couple of years ago. I still have it, but it's not really a book I will repeat read~
I've never really had an interest in reading it, I'll admit. Thanks for the review!
I didn't like it much either. I thought it was okay, but it didn't hold my interest very well.
I'm so happy that you were honest. I didn't enjoy this book, either, when I read it years ago. But most often people seem to be afraid to say they didn't like any book deemed a classic. I can honestly say that I haven't liked several classics.
But now that you're familiar with this story, even if you didn't like it, you'd be interested in another book if you haven't already read it: THE DOUBLE BIND by Chris Bojalian. It's not a classic, but the whole thing refers to and sort of depends on the story in THE GREAT GATSBY. The end of THE DOUBLE BIND is quite a surprise;at least it was to me.