"It was all very careless and confused." F. Scott Fitzgerald's own words at the end of his most famous novel pretty much sum the whole thing up. I found The Great Gatsby to be disjointed, vague, and morally ambiguous.
The Great Gatsby was first published in 1925 to mixed reviews. It was not received well, and Fitzgerald died of a heart attack in 1940 at the age of 44 believing himself to be a failure and his work forgotten. Today, however, The Great Gatsby is considered a literary classic and one of the greatest American ones at that. (I strongly disagree.)
In this novel, we meet Nick Carraway (also the narrator and the only character I liked at all), Jay Gatsby (aka Jimmy Gatz), Tom and Daisy Buchanan (who are married, y'all), Jordan Baker (a famous female tennis star), and the Wilsons (also a sad married couple). Most fiction reflects the author who writes it, but Fitzgerald's work was particularly autobiographical and he was an alcoholic, unfaithful husband who lived beyond his means to keep up an image throughout his life. Need I say more? The Great Gatsby is ultimately a tragic tale that should caution any sane reader against the dangers of decadence, excess, and infidelity—not attract them toward it. Maybe that seems obvious, but I think people tend to glamorize the past and the Roaring 20s especially seem to be looked back on as a Golden Age in America when in reality, they just weren't great, y'all. The Great Gatsby paints a picture of a lot of miserable, lonely people trying to party away the emptiness of their lives.
I already mentioned that I found the writing to be very disjointed. On top of that, the dialogue was confused and rarely advanced the story. I think the idea of the story was good and The Great Gatsby could have been a good novel (I can see why this is such a popular one to adapt for the screen—even I would give filmmakers a lot of creative license to bring this to life), but the writing ruined it for me. I can appreciate a tragic tale if it's written well (I'm looking at you, Hardy, Steinbeck), but this one just didn't jive with me. The best parts of the book were the commentaries by Carraway at the very beginning and the very end. Everything in between was kindof a crap-shoot.
Even having said all that, I am glad that I read this one. Unlike A Wrinkle in Time (which I could have lived the rest of my life without ever having read), I didn't come away from this novel feeling like it was a colossal waste of my time. Even though I didn't enjoy the writing and I would never put Fitzgerald in the same category as Mark Twain or Nathaniel Hawthorne or James Fenimore Cooper as one of the greatest American writers of all time, nor would I even class him with Harper Lee or John Steinbeck as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century, somehow I appreciated The Great Gatsby and I'm satisfied that I can check an F. Scott Fitzgerald off my list. The concept was there even if the execution was poor.
Quantity-wise, I've started 2018 strong reading 5 books in January; but quality-wise, I've been pretty disappointed with my book list books thus far. Hopefully we're getting the duds out of the way and the rest of my reading this year will be a little more fulfilling.
Have you read The Great Gatsby or anything else by F. Scott Fitzgerald? Did you like it? Would you recommend any of his other novels? Were you sympathetic to Mr. Gatsby or disgusted with him?
This is another one I read in high school that I don't remember well. I do remember generally liking it though. I want to reread it now that I'm not a teenager and see what I think. Kind of like The Scarlet Letter. I feel like I should reread that one as an adult.
ReplyDeleteLove, love, LOVE The Scarlet Letter! I like reading that one around Halloweentime. :)
Delete"Morally ambiguous" is a phrase I feel can be contributed to others of Fitzgerald's works as well. It's troubling to me that they have gathered such acclaim when the crux of the stories tend to be so completely ambivalent to the innate human compass for justice. The Sun Also Rises is an excellent example of this.
ReplyDeleteI understand that he was doing something "different;" namely, writing about personal freedom & liberty coming out of a time where, culturally, the need to survive trumped frivolity & when, literarily speaking, tales tended to be didactic. But when we start to laud "different" above "good," we run the risk of devaluing the whole system & eventually replacing it with one of our own, of which I might argue, we are seeing the extreme in our own generation. I fear I'll never find F. Scott as compelling as I'm told I should...
^this...*slow clap building to thunderous applause*
DeleteCaroline, he actually did physically applaud you in real life when he read that comment.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
Deletehahaha I see we're all in agreement here...
Delete(Had to delete previous comment because TYPO).
#kindredspirits
Deletethis is one of the cases where i find the author of the work much more compelling than the work itself. Fitzgerald was a mess of a person, and the ambiguity of his own self-identity, while fascinating, comes through in his work in a way that i find opaque and off-putting. you don't want to root for his characters because they're a reflection of Fitzgerald's own time period and the kind of people he surrounded himself with. i would implore you, Hannah, to read an account on the author himself rather than dive into more of his work. it's a sad, strange, but fascinating story.
ReplyDelete"Fitzgerald was a mess of a person, and the ambiguity of his own self-identity, while fascinating, comes through in his work in a way that i find opaque and off-putting." —THIS. So much this. It was as if this story just kindof accidentally spilled onto some paper and he just kindof pushed it out there and was like, "here it is, whatever." From everything I've read about his life, it just makes me sad. Have you read a particular biography on him that'd you recommend?
Deleteinterestingly, one of my favorite takes on Fitzgerald is from Hemingway in "A Moveable Feast". his perspective on F. Scott and Zelda in particular is pretty great. and it's a pretty good book, too (this coming from a not-huge Hemingway fan).
DeleteHmm...I'll keep it in mind. For the far, FAR distant future because YOU'VE SEEN MY BOOKSHELVES!
Delete