Tag Archives: books: the great gatsby

Meme: 10 Books That Have Stuck With You

fiction, humor, memes September 16, 2014 Leave a comment

This meme is going around on Facebook, and I thought I’d share my list here.

In your status, list 10 books that have stayed with you in some way. Don’t take more than a few minutes, and do not think too hard. They don’t have to be the “right” books or great works of literature, just books that have affected you in some way.

01. All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque
02. Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
03. The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
04. The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
05. Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
06. A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
07. Dave Barry’s Book of Bad Songs – Dave Barry
08. And Then There Were None – Agatha Christie
09. Rebecca – Daphne DuMaurier
10. The Haunting of Hill House – Shirley Jackson

Why I Disagree With Critics Of The New Gatsby Film

fiction May 14, 2013 Leave a comment

This review is everything I thought about the new ‘The Great Gatsby’ film. EVERYTHING. I really liked the film, with a few, relatively minor exceptions that the author mentions.

Robert's avatar101 Books

I missed the boat.

I missed the boat filled with people who believe the new Gatsby movie sucked. That ship sailed and I wasn’t on it. I don’t know what’s up with those people.

In this post, I’ll explain why I disagree with most critics on The Great Gatsby movie. The film has been critically panned, receiving 49% on Rotten Tomatoes. I’ve read several recurring arguments online, and I want to take a look at each of those.

As a reminder, I’ve read the Gatsby novel five times. It’s my favorite book, and if a director did a crappy job of putting Fitzgerald’s story on screen, I would be more than happy to ridicule said director.

In this case, I think Baz Luhrmann did a (mostly) excellent job of making this classic novel into a Hollywood film. But let’s take a look at what some of his critics are…

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Ezra Klein’s Problem with ‘The Great Gatsby’

fiction May 13, 2013 Leave a comment

Obviously I’ve been on a bit of a The Great Gatsby kick lately, so it should come as no surprise that I’ve been reading articles about it when I find them.

Ezra Klein of the Washington Post (and one of my favorite nerds) wrote a blog entry on his problem with The Great Gatsby. Lots of people have problems with the book, but this was the first time I encountered his particular problem with it.

Spoilers, obviously, but the book is 88 years old, so…

Klein’s ultimate conclusion is that the way the end of the book unfolds – a series of unfortunate coincidences and a lot of bad timing – takes away from the lessons the book teaches. I disagree with this. I think it’s part of Fitzgerald’s point that nobody shows up at Gatsby’s funeral. He is used by people who don’t know him for his money and free liquor and they don’t care that he’s gone, they’ll just get their booze somewhere else now. His business associates don’t turn out, and woman he’s loved and dreamed about for years doesn’t show up either.

It’s usually at funerals when everyone in the deceased’s life comes out of the woodwork to say goodbye and nobody shows up. But in order to show that, in order to have a funeral, Gatsby has to die somehow. Healthy 30ish year olds don’t just drop dead, even in 1925, so he has to be actively killed in some manner.

Klein also says that Fitzgerald got the ending wrong. He’s right in the sense that he means it. In 2013, it’s clear that Tom may have won the battle against Gatsby, but Tom, and the guys like Tom, don’t win the war. Tom’s a symbol of the establishment of the time: white, wealthy, powerful, connected, racist, etc… and that part of society is ultimately defeated – or at least, has a lot of their untouchable-ness taken away from them – by social progress.

At the time, Fitzgerald probably couldn’t see Tom ever not winning. Foresight is hard. And looking back on it now, isn’t it good to see how wrong Fitzgerald was?

Gatsby and Us

fiction May 12, 2013 Leave a comment

this is a post I wrote for another blog I contribute to, but it was book oriented, so I’m reblogging it here.

The first time I read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, I was 16 and a junior in high school. As far as books we were forced to read in high school went, it wasn’t bad. It was relatively short, with a story that was easy to understand. Even the green light, the book’s most obvious symbol, was stated to be a symbol in the book – a great help on quizzes.

It wasn’t just me. Most of my classmates liked The Great Gatsby too. While we all had different opinions on Fahrenheit 451 and A Tale of Two Cities and The Lord of the Flies, it was Jay Gatsby who managed to win his way into our hearts with, as Nick puts it, his “extraordinary gift for hope.”

Although I’ve read two other books by Fitzgerald since then, I didn’t revisit East Egg and West Egg again until last summer. I loved Gastby even more the second time through.

The film version of Gatsby that came out yesterday, and stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Gatsby, was not a bad film. It has taken hits from critics, and that’s easy to understand. There are risks when you bring a beloved story from page to screen, and unless you’re Peter Jackson filming a Lord of the Rings movie, you’re probably not going to be universally acclaimed.

But the film stayed very true to the novel, the soundtrack and the costumes in the new movie are phenomenal, and DiCaprio continues his streak of incredible performances. His Gatsby shines and his costars, particularly Tobey Maguire (Nick Carraway), Carey Mulligan (Daisy Buchanan), and Joel Edgerton (Tom Buchanan) turn in strong performances.

Director Baz Luhrmann and cast members such as Carey Mulligan have stated that this was a good time to bring Gatsby back to the screen as we’ve seen history repeat itself as the economic boom of the 1990s and 2000s came crashing to the ground in 2008 the way the roaring economic good times of the 1920s gave way to the Great Depression of the 1930s.

But The Great Gatsby, the great American novel, has been adapted to film six times now, and those adaptations range from fairly decent (2013) to nearly unwatchable (1974). Part of the problem with adapting Gatsby is that much of the story takes place through Nick’s internal narration. This is true, but the biggest criticism of Luhrmann’s Gatsby adaptation seems to be that it’s too big. The roaring twenties are just too roaring in the film. Gatsby’s parties are too enormous. The film is too visually amazing. Yeah, critics can be very strange.

But what is it about The Great Gatsby, the novel, that has earned it a place in the hearts of millions of Americans? Why do read it over and over?

Most of the characters are unsympathetic. Tom Buchanan is brutal, manipulative, and abusive. Daisy is shallow, spoiled, weak, and cowardly. Jordan’s a liar. George and Myrtle Wilson are both unlikeable in their own ways. The only two characters anyone can really like or root for are Nick and Gatsby.

Deirdre Donohue at USAtoday.com theorizes that The Great Gatsby is open to new interpretations in ways that keep it relevant. Could Gatsby be a black man? Could Nick be in love with Gatsby? Is Daisy trapped in her life?

And the novel is stylistically beautiful. It’s succinct, with no wasted sentences. It captures the excess and apathy and hope of the roaring twenties, juxtaposing the spoiled, shallow, old money of the Buchanans with the new money, hope, and deep(er) love of Gatsby for Daisy.

Finally, there’s the theory that most of us, as Americans, identify with Gatsby. He’s a nobody from nothing and nowhere who makes himself into a success story, doing everything to win the girl he loves. In fact, love is the primary motivation for wealth. He isn’t in it because he’s greedy, he’s in it to win Daisy. And in spite of all Daisy’s terrible qualities, she does love Gatsby too.

But it’s Daisy and Tom who eventually do Gatsby in, and it’s Gatsby who loses everything. As Nick observes, “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

It does feel timeless, doesn’t it? In 2013 we’re still recovering from the financial crash of 2008, from rich, careless people like Tom and Daisy who drove our economy into the ground and left a lot of our lives in ruins, who retreated to their mansions and money and let the rest of us bail out their banks and clean up their messes.

And so maybe most Americans don’t love The Great Gatsby just because we identify with Gatsby, even though we do identify with him. Maybe most of us read The Great Gatsby over and over because we periodically like to remember Tom and Daisy, and remind ourselves of who, thankfully, we’re not.

The Great Gatsby Tees!

fiction May 8, 2013 Leave a comment

https://i0.wp.com/outofprintclothing.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/gatsby_new-shirts_688.jpg

One of my favorite clothing websites is Out of Print Clothing. They have shirts printed with classic covers of classic books.

They have always had a The Great Gatsby classic shirt, but in honor of the movie (due out this Friday) they’re doing all kinds of special edition tee shirts in all kinds of colors and styles.

Check them out here. I totally want the ‘kelly green’ and ‘heavy metal’ first edition shirts.

Also, they have this really cute Gatsby video game where 25,000 points gets a book donated and completing the game gets you a special offer.

This Side of Paradise

fiction January 11, 2012 Leave a comment

I loved This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald as much as I hated The Beautiful and Damned (also by Fitzgerald).

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From Amazon…

Fitzgerald’s first novel…uses numerous formal experiments to tell the story of Amory Blaine, as he grows up during the crazy years following the First World War.

…beware, spoilers ahead!

We follow the life of Amory Blaine from childhood until just after college. He spends a lot of time trying to discover himself and we spend a lot of time examining this kid’s ego. Amory’s ego is a running theme throughout the story. He is convinced he has exceptional promise and is an exceptional person. He’s entitled, boastful, and quite conceited throughout the story.

Amory has a strange relationship with his mother – he calls her Beatrice – but she sends him to expensive schools and he befriends a former lover of hers, Darcy, who is now a monsignor in the church. Amory has long conversations with him, mostly about how alike and special they each are. It’s almost as if he’s actually Beatrice’s baby-daddy, rather than Amory’s father.

Mostly, we follow Amory’s romantic and intellectual pursuits as he discovers and makes peace with his place in the world. From his manipulating his way into a first kiss as a thirteen-ish year old at a birthday party through to his failed college relationships, Amory’s focus is always on Amory unless it’s on his latest beloved. He attends Princeton University, and on vacation kindles a romance with the beautiful Isabelle (who reminded me of The Beautiful and Damned’s Gloria). He quickly becomes disillusioned with her, and he goes back to Princeton. From early on in the novel, it’s clear that Amory is both attracted and repulsed by romance with women.

Amory is then shipped out to serve during World War I. One of his friends dies in combat or something, but Amory doesn’t seem particularly bothered by this. In fact, throughout the entire book, Amory doesn’t seem to care when people die much at all. This includes his father, as he’s completely unemotional when his father passes away, and is more interested in the state of his family’s finances and how they will affect him. He’s completely self-involved to the point where it’s actually kind of disgusting, and he only seems affected by having to look at dead bodies, but he never really seems bothered by death. He watches one of his friends die in a car accident, and only really seems bothered that he had to look at the body.

The only time he seems affected by the death of a person is when Monsignor Darcy dies, and that mostly seems like it’s because he and Darcy would sit together and talk about how exceptional they were, and now he can’t do that anymore.

Anyway, the real turning point in his life is meeting Rosalind Connage, a New York debutant. The pair of them are madly in love, but because he is now poor (his parents, mostly his father, irresponsibly lost their fortune), Rosalind chooses to marry a rich man, which devastates Amory.

There’s also a scene where Amory and a different girlfriend play a game of chicken on horses towards a cliff – she leaps off her horse and the horse goes over. Actually, I’m not sure it’s a game of chicken as much as she’s crazy and Amory dumps her soon afterwards. But yeah, that kind of upset me a lot. Poor horse, stupid bitch.

Anyway, at the end of all this, when Monsignor Darcy dies, Amory makes his most iconic statement, after forming an opinion on everything and then un-forming his opinions on everything, he says, “I know myself, but that is all.”

In spite of the fact that Amory is arrogant, self-centered, and kind of smug most of the novel, I do really like him. As he grows up, he realizes more and more that he doesn’t really know anything very well at all. He does fall in love, even if it is a superficial, shallow kind of love a lot of the time (like with Gloria and Anthony in The Beautiful and Damned), and he does think a lot. A lot of the book is his conversations with his good friends about philosophy, art, life, etc…

This novel was particularly interesting because it blends a bunch of different types of writing. Sometimes it’s a fictional narrative, there are poems and things that Amory writes, sometimes written as a play, sometimes free verse, etc… Actually, it was interesting but I did find it a bit irritating. Pick what you want to write and stick with it; none of this switching over from one thing to another.

The whole story is semi-autobiographical – Fitzgerald needed to publish a novel in order to win over his socialite love who wouldn’t marry him unless he made some money (like Rosalind and Amory). A bunch of the characters, including Amory’s best friend, Thomas Parke D’Invilliers, who is the fictional writer of the poem at the start of The Great Gatsby (I looked it up because I remembered the name), are based on actual people that Fitzgerald knew. Beatrice was based on a friend’s mother, and Rosalind was based on Fitzgerald’s wife, Zelda.

Amory’s final lament, “I know myself, but that is all,” is the culmination of what has gone on throughout the book. After trying to figure out what has interested him, and formed him, from his mother to losing or discarding love (and abandoning the idea of finding inspiration or love in women after Rosalind), after shunning convention (which he finds he despises), and losing all his money, Amory has finally solved the quest of the book, which is to discover himself.

This book is a bit disjointed. It makes odd jumps in both time and style, and can be a bit unclear. There is an episode where Amory is in New York City with friends and believes he is being chased by some sort of supernatural specter (the devil maybe)? All this happens after an evening of heavy drinking. Amory drinks frequently throughout the novel to cope with physical and emotional pain and it can get quite tedious both listening to his self-indulgent whining and his arrogant conversations with friends. His belief in his own exceptionalism is irritating, and watching someone go back and forth from engaged to apathetic with his own life is downright infuriating.

His love affairs are melodramatic and for someone like me, who doesn’t fall in love easily, unbelievable in a lot of ways. Love at first sight? No. Never love again because you got dumped once as a twenty-ish year old? No. More infatuation than actual love? Definitely.

But Amory is a lot like me, a lot like many people I know, a lot like many people who have been forced to grow up, whether early by circumstance or just the passage of time. He’s got more of an ego than a lot of people, but for the most part, he is a kid who experiences the ups and downs of love, both the desire to be normal and the desire to be different, the pressures of school and a social life, and is just trying to figure out who he is and where he fits in the world.

…And then he grows up.

This culminates at the end of the story, with the payoff being that Amory comes to realize his own selfishness, something a lot of Fitzgerald characters never do. And I loved him, and this book, for it.