The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Great Gatsby
Book Review: A Consciously Artistic Achievement
Summary: 5 Stars
At only 182 pages in the paperback edition, The Great Gatsby looms far larger in the life of American fiction than its slim dimensions. Unlike many novels with a great deal of hype latched to them, Gatsby lives up to its reputation in every blessed way. Perhaps part of the staying power and widespread appeal of this work is that it and its author were nearly forgotten. This powerful work was hardly read for more than 25 years, and now it is widely assumed to be one of the greatest works of American fiction in the 20th century. It earned its kingdom through dark years. From amnesia to aggrandizement shows that behind the swirl of its reputation is a powerfully complete artistic vision. Like all great work, Gatsby can be read on many levels: as a critique of the shifting American psyche, as a critique of the pitfalls of capitalism, as a time capsule of the roaring 20's... each reading brings new surprises. Perhaps the most refreshing reading is the uniqueness of the language. Fitzgerald here created prose masterpiece. Every sentence is finely wrought and cleverly designed, like jewels in an exquisite setting. He created, as he stated, a consciously artistic achievement.Book Review: A FAVORITE
Summary: 5 Stars
THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald is considered one of the best novels of the 20th century, primarily because it is. If you haven't read it, read it.
Book Review: A Glittering Reflection of a Darkening America
Summary: 5 Stars
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) lived fast, achieved success early, and then descended into a ferocious alcoholism from which he never emerged. His literary star was already in decline when he published THE GREAT GATSBY in 1925. Although the book had admirers, critical reception was lukewarm and public interest was virtually nonexistent. At the time of his death Fitzgerald and his works were regarded as trivial relics of an era noted for its superficiality; it would not be until the late 1940s that both critics and readers began to re-discover and re-assess them.
THE GREAT GATSBY has often been described as "the great American novel." In some ways this is unfortunate, for it has resulted in the academic world's force-feeding of the novel to exactly those least likely to have any appreciation of the work: high school and college students, who most often lack the maturity required to grasp the nature of the work. It is short but remarkably complex and requires skills of critical analysis that seldom arrive short of thirty years experience.
On the surface the story is not unique. Nick Carraway, a well-to-do young man from the midwest, has come to New York to learn the bond business. He takes a small house and afterward discovers that his cousin Daisy, now married to Tom Bucchanan, lives directly across the bay. A visit to their luxurious home introduces Nick to professional golfer Jordan Baker, an attractive woman in which Nick is soon interested; it also alerts him to the fact that Daisy is disillusioned in her marriage to Tom, who for all his wealth and social status is limited in his views of the world and more than a little brutish in his habits.
Nick is only casually interested in Daisy, Tom, and Jordan, but he is soon propelled into constant contact with all three through his own neighbor, Jay Gatsby, a mysterious yet charismatic man whose chief occupation seems to be staging parties. After some little time, Nick learns that Gatsby knew Daisy before her marriage, and indeed his parties are set forth as bait, an attempt to lure Tom and Daisy to his home on the less fashionable side of the bay. For Gatsby loves Daisy, and his memory of their romance has propelled him to fame and riches, all in an attempt to bring her to his side. Through Nick, Gatsby arranges to meet Daisy once more, and the lost love blooms anew.
Or does it? THE GREAT GATSBY never allows us entry into Daisy as a person; we are never privy to her thoughts but are instead required to see her through the eyes of those around her, and the way in which we read her changes according to the people and circumstances involved. As the novel climaxes Nick and Gatsby and we ourselves do at last understand both her and Tom and the others of their kind, but the understanding comes too late to avert the three deaths and profound disillusionment that conclude the book.
Like most great novels, THE GREAT GATSBY is about a great many things, but it is perhaps most particularly about America's drift into a terrible sort of materialism in which human beings become less valued for their humanity than for what--and in a very real sense--who they own. Almost everything the characters of the novel do, say, or plan is done "for show." Gatsby's parties and his car, Jordan's golf competitions, Tom's mistress, Daisy's child, Nick's job are masks that conceal the screaming emptiness of a world in which what you have has become more important than who you are. "What shall we do with ourselves this afternoon?" Daisy asks at one point in the novel. "And the day after that, and the next thirty years?" Who would you be if you had only yourself? Would you still be what your possessions seemed to indicate--or would you be a different person, perhaps better or perhaps worse?
Although THE GREAT GATSBY has always been admired for the cool, languid beauty of Fitzgerald's language, many felt the core statements of the novel were rendered largely irrelevant by the Great Depression and World War II. But like Gatsby's memories, which he himself cannot lay to rest, the book has a way of resurfacing in our minds in a remarkably disquieting sort of way, again and again with each generation. The great literary diamond of the Deco age still glitters, and it does so all the more in the face of the "on demand" confused consumerism that has arisen in the internet age. We know it should not be like this, and we wish it were not so, but we expect someone else to deal with it--or, as Fitzgerald writes with such profound clarity near the end of the novel, we, in this most American of American novels, are a people prone to smashing up things and creatures and then retreating back into our money and vast carelessness. We prefer to let other people clean up the mess we have made.
A brilliant work.
GFT, Amazon Reviewer
Book Review: A Great, Quick Read. . . .
Summary: 4 Stars
.....and although a quick read, you will be thinking about this book for a long time. I find myself going back to it, rereading passages and discovering something new each time. I found the book totally relevant to our time; apparently decadence and ignorance are timeless human qualities. ; )
As for the characters, they are tremendously engaging and presented in an un-heavyhanded way by Fitzgerald. They are almost like puzzles to be solved by the reader, in our own personal way.
I myself have mixed feelings for them all. I don't trust any of them; least of all Nick, who as narrator definitely has an advantage in shaping our opinions of the other characters. His "are you or aren't you" engaged status is revealed at the beginning of the book, and led me to immediately take his musings with a grain of salt. His treatment of Jordan smacks of milque-toast-style hypocrisy as well. Consequently, his "you're better than all of them" claim to Gatsby doesn't win me over; I found Gatsby to be a rather unlikable and shallow fellow. Gatsby was clearly in over his head in courting Daisy, but continued to do it, full throttle. Real love, or pie-in-the-sky hubris? He admitted that the fact that Daisy was desired by so many other men made him want her even more. This, and his inability to accept that Daisy may have loved Tom at some point hints that he is not really a man in love with a real woman, but rather a shallow twit infatuated with an ideal. And to think, that having money is all that matters, and not how one makes it. . . again, is Gatsby a scoundrel, or just naive?
I only wish the book could have been longer and more fleshed out, but its streamlined approach seems to be exactly what the author intended.
Book Review: A Must-Read
Summary: 5 Stars
Last night I turned to an old favorite, and another "school" classic - F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby." This short but poignant novel paints a beautiful but macabre portrait of a period dripping in character, scandal, and self-involvement. Entirely unforgiving, Fitzgerald is faithful to his ideas and opinions, and shows no fear in humanizing his subjects. This is a novel that I am sure I will return to again and again.