2014 Book Review #38: The Great Gatsby

[jethrien]

Title: The Great Gatsby
Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
Genre: Classic literature
Thingummies: 4.5

Synopsis: A naive Midwesterner watches a Jazz Age tragedy with all the rubbernecking of a slow motion car wreck.

Thoughts: We can lay a lot of the flaws of modern literature at Hemingway and Fitzgerald's feet.

It's been years since I read this book, and I was surprised to find how many details I remembered precisely and how many I'd filled in, which were only alluded to in the surprisingly short text.

Reading this after years of adulthood in New York City, I think I'm a little less bowled over by the world-weary glamour than when I first read about Gatsby's over-the-top parties and hopeless love and shockingly pointless fate. It's easier to look past the glitz, the way I think Fitzgerald intended, to see the utter emptiness of his characters' lives. Even our narrator, who is set up to be the wholesome Midwesterner, has nothing. He does nothing. He is simply a passive observer, a plot device to keep the tragedy properly on track. He has a meaningless job he mostly ignores, a sad and empty relationship with a tennis star known for cheating, and a friendship with Tom, who he secretly holds himself above without a lot of data. But everyone is terrible, really--Daisy's thoughtlessness, Tom's infidelity, Jordan's casual coldness, Myrtle's passionate stupidity. It's a bunch of horrible people trying desperately to be sophisticated, undermining the very notion of sophistication.

But Fitzgerald captures the lot in such sophisticated language that he lends his sordid characters dignity, even as he undermines their pretensions at dignity. It's a sad tale about disillusionment in which most characters learn nothing, but Fitzgerald himself gives it back the glamour. And so a thousand literary novelists have written aimless tales about reprehensible people and tried to cover it up with style.

Fortunately, in this case, there's a stubborn substance beneath.

Comments

[caranille.livejournal.com]

It's interesting how your impression of a book can progress. I first read this in high school and I passionately hated it. I thought everyone was worthless and nasty and that they should all go get jobs and stop throwing parties. Then I came back to it in college after having several people try to convince me how great it was, and that time I understood what he was doing a little better. I still don't like most of his characters, but he sure knows how to use language.