The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

[DavidW]

Since Dave has no interest in leading the discussion, and Herman you seem to have thoughtful insights about this novel along with being a writer yourself and at one time lit prof (are you currently teaching?)... would you like to lead this discussion?

I think this thread is withering on the vine due to Dave's new found apathy.

[MN Dave]

Since Dave has no interest in leading the discussion, and Herman you seem to have thoughtful insights about this novel along with being a writer yourself and at one time lit prof (are you currently teaching?)... would you like to lead this discussion?

I think this thread is withering on the vine due to Dave's new found apathy.

I never said I was going to lead any discussion. I just started the thing and keep track of the books. Basicallly, it was a way to get me to read some classics.

[secondwind]

It's interesting to see how many posters here seem to think the point of reading The Great Gatsby is to identify who's the bad guy.

I'm pretty sure this is not what the writer had in mind.

No, this is not a "who done it" type of story.  Fitzgerald is portraying a society, at a particular point in time, and it's just not very appealing.  Here are all these people, young, healthy, well-to-do to filthy rich, grasping desperately for "fun" and entertainment when clearly they have lost any capacity to experience them.  Think about it--who would you want to be, in this story?  Who would you want to have as a friend or neighbor?  The only character who comes to mind for me as a half-way decent human being is Michaelis, Wilson's neighbor (neighbor--now there's a loaded word in a Christian or post-Christian society).  The rest are morally bankrupt, materialistic, solipsistic jerks.  Could they have been otherwise?  Probably, and that's where the sense of tragedy enters for me.  Jimmy Gatz's daily schedule and "general resolves", found by his father, is a heart breaker.  The gulf between the man he wanted to become and the man he did become is huge.

[MN Dave]

Fitzgerald is portraying a society, at a particular point in time, and it's just not very appealing.  Here are all these people, young, healthy, well-to-do to filthy rich, grasping desperately for "fun" and entertainment when clearly they have lost any capacity to experience them.

QFT

[Joe Barron]

Who would you want to have as a friend or neighbor?  The only character who comes to mind for me as a halfway decent human being is Michaelis,

Well, there was Owl Eyes, the guy Nick finds in the library, and the only one who attends the funeral, he who says "The poor son of a bitch."

Interesting thing about The Great Gatsby. On the Random House list of greatest novels of the 20th century, selected by writers and critics, it appears second, sandwiched between Ulysses and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. That's pretty distinguished company.

The discussion of Nick has been interesting. For what it's worth, my understanding is that Fitzgerald, following Conrad's example in The Secret Sharer, conceived of Nick as Gatsby's alter ego. Fitzgerald sometimes spoke of himself as two people: one the one hand, the self-destructive, alcoholic wastrel, and, on the other, the "spoiled priest" who stands aloof and observes. In Gatsby, he constructed his hero and his narrator out of those two parts of his psyche. Nick is the spoiled priest, Gatsby the "doer" who who is destroyed in the pursuit of his dreams. It makes sense that Nick would be complicit in Gatsby's failure: He is Gatsby. They're the same age, and they share the same modest, Midwestern background.

Daisy, Tom, Nick and Jay are all transplanted midwesterners spoiled, and in one case destroyed, by the East. In the end, Nick gives it up and returns home with that wonderful paragraph about "my" middle west.

Gatsby's list of resolutions is said to be a takeoff on Benjamin's Franklin's resolutions in the Autobiography. Franklin is the first and largest example of the distinctly American drive toward self-improvement, and more, self-reinvention, which is Gatsby's whole problem. Franklin --- the first pattern American, in D.H. Lawrence's phrase --- set out to prove that Americans can be anything they wants to be, given the will. Gatsby is Fitzgerald's counterexample. (What Larence overlooked, and what saves Franklin, I think, is his wit and irony. After all, Franklin says he gave up the whole self-improvement kick when he found, he says, he was getting too perfect, and society dislikes perfefct people.)

Sorry is this sounds like a  high school book report.

[Herman]

Sorry is this sounds like a  high school book report.

Not at all. Excellent comments. I wouldn't see Nick and Gatsby really as one person, I think it's more the case that Gatsby would not work as well, as a fiction character, without Nick to observe him. Nick is our guide into the book, and what makes it so good is that he is really a character, not just a function. If Gatsby would have been the narrator himself, it would have been really tough.

[Herman]

Since Dave has no interest in leading the discussion, and Herman you seem to have thoughtful insights about this novel along with being a writer yourself and at one time lit prof (are you currently teaching?)... would you like to lead this discussion?

I think the discussion is going well enough, and I'm afraid I'm really very very busy finishing a book of my own, right now.  Thanks however for your consideration.

[MN Dave]

I think the discussion is going well enough, and I'm afraid I'm really very very busy finishing a book of my own, right now.  Thanks however for your consideration.

Yeah, I thought it was going well too. Not sure what needs to be led.

[DavidW]

I think I agree that Carraway is the observer.  Even when he reminds that he had his own things to deal with, his own life it seemed like a sly wink to the reader, since we know full well that he's only there to tell the story.  The only way in which he interacts with people, even his own sweetheart, is to simply ask to learn more back story about the individual characters.

[MN Dave]

I think I agree that Carraway is the observer.  Even when he reminds that he had his own things to deal with, his own life it seemed like a sly wink to the reader, since we know full well that he's only there to tell the story.  The only way in which he interacts with people, even his own sweetheart, is to simply ask to learn more back story about the individual characters.

Oh, definitely.

I think the main thing the book has going for it is its prose. Maybe it was one of a kind back when it was written, but I can't speak to the fiction landscape back then.

[DavidW]

Oh, definitely.

I think the main thing the book has going for it is its prose. Maybe it was one of a kind back when it was written, but I can't speak to the fiction landscape back then.

Well the purple prose puts me off.  It's a little too over the top.  It's like he can't help but turn everything into a metaphor.

[MN Dave]

Well the purple prose puts me off.  It's a little too over the top.  It's like he can't help but turn everything into a metaphor.

Hm. Not sure I would call it "purple". In fact, I think it's fairly economical.

[DavidW]

Hm. Not sure I would call it "purple". In fact, I think it's fairly economical.

Hemingway is economical, this is very much not.  All of the descriptions are given by metaphor or simile.  I don't have the book (already returned it), but you can't swing a dead cat without hitting one.  For me there is a thin line between poetic and irritating.

[MN Dave]

Hemingway is economical, this is very much not.  All of the descriptions are given by metaphor or simile.  I don't have the book (already returned it), but you can't swing a dead cat without hitting one.  For me there is a thin line between poetic and irritating.

"Purple" doesn't equal "poetic". See Lovecraft for some purpleness. 

[DavidW]

"Purple" doesn't equal "poetic".

I know, that was my point.

[MN Dave]

I know, that was my point.

Still, see Lovecraft for purple. Then compare. 

[Herman]

Hemingway is economical, this is very much not.  All of the descriptions are given by metaphor or simile.  I don't have the book (already returned it), but you can't swing a dead cat without hitting one.  For me there is a thin line between poetic and irritating.

OK, that's it.

I just got up to locate my copy.

I'll be back.

[DavidW]

Still, see Lovecraft for purple. Then compare. 

Lovecraft is awful, he's in the area of poorly written.  Fitzgerald carefully dances on the boundary I mentioned.

[MN Dave]

Hemingway is economical, this is very much not.

Disagree.

[Joe Barron]

Hemingway is economical, this is very much not.  All of the descriptions are given by metaphor or simile.  I don't have the book (already returned it), but you can't swing a dead cat without hitting one.  For me there is a thin line between poetic and irritating.

You have to be kidding. Hemingway can be very wordy: check out the interior monologues in For Whom the Bell Tolls. In Gatsby, not a word is wasted. There's nothing wrong with a well placed metaphor, and there are long stretched without them.

Oh, and it's not a flaw that Nick is a narrator standing slightly off to one side. He has his own life, but he is telling Gatsby's story. It's only natural he would concentrate on that.