[.ca] F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby (ISBN 0521402301)

From Amazon.com:
In 1922, F. Scott Fitzgerald announced his decision to write "something new--something extraordinary and beautiful and simple + intricately patterned." That extraordinary, beautiful, intricately patterned, and above all, simple novel became The Great Gatsby, arguably Fitzgerald's finest work and certainly the book for which he is best known. A portrait of the Jazz Age in all of its decadence and excess, Gatsby captured the spirit of the author's generation and earned itself a permanent place in American mythology. Self-made, self-invented millionaire Jay Gatsby embodies some of Fitzgerald's--and his country's--most abiding obsessions: money, ambition, greed, and the promise of new beginnings. "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning--" Gatsby's rise to glory and eventual fall from grace becomes a kind of cautionary tale about the American Dream. It's also a love story, of sorts, the narrative of Gatsby's quixotic passion for Daisy Buchanan. The pair meet five years before the novel begins, when Daisy is a legendary young Louisville beauty and Gatsby an impoverished officer. They fall in love, but while Gatsby serves overseas, Daisy marries the brutal, bullying, but extremely rich Tom Buchanan. After the war, Gatsby devotes himself blindly to the pursuit of wealth by whatever means--and to the pursuit of Daisy, which amounts to the same thing. "Her voice is full of money," Gatsby says admiringly, in one of the novel's more famous descriptions. His millions made, Gatsby buys a mansion across Long Island Sound from Daisy's patrician East Egg address, throws lavish parties, and waits for her to appear. When she does, events unfold with all the tragic inevitability of a Greek drama, with detached, cynical neighbor Nick Carraway acting as chorus throughout. Spare, elegantly plotted, and written in crystalline prose, The Great Gatsby is as perfectly satisfying as the best kind of poem.

Small but powerful book:
By now, there's little dispute about "Gatsby" being the classic that it is. And if you're not a fan, if nothing else, you didn't have to invest a great amount of time inthe book, for it is not long. But the character of Jay Gatsby is quite unique. Jay Gatsby loves without judgment, without conquest or need. The sad irony is that the object of such noble sentiment is a shallow yet benign Daisy, a lethargic, bored, and wealthy philistine. Gatsby is not a wise hero, otherwise this novel would be pedantic and obvious. Gatsby shares the shallowness of modern society, and its belief system of material possession. Gatsby is, simply put, 'unaffected', pure, a blind unabashed dreamer. Jay and his friends, all rather crass and shallow except for our narrator and moral moderator, Nick Calloway, go back and forth between cocktail parties, driving under T.J Eckleberg's Eyes, an abandoned billboard optometry advertisement. Themes of T.S. Eliot's hauntingly prophetic Wasteland are echoed. When a drunken night of obliviousness ends in the death of Tom Buchanan's (a fierce egoist and staunch 'realist') mistress, the moral fiber of all those involved break down, and finger's begin to twitch and point.This book is jam-packed with insight about not only the 1920s, but the human condition in general. Filled with metaphors and poetic writing, Fitzgerald has given us one remarkable piece of literature for the ages. KATZENJAMMER by Jackson McCrae and CATCHER IN THE RYE by Salinger

I prefer happy endings, but I still recommend this book ...:
A good plot plus an engaging writing style make a bestseller. Sometimes, those elements are combined with a third: the story makes us think about ourselves, and life in general. It's only then that we have a classic... In my opinion, "The Great Gatsby" is just that, a classic. It was first published in 1925, an the author set the background of the story in the 1920's, the "Jazz Age". Disregarding the fact that particular period of history is already distant, this book has managed to mantain its edge. But why does that happen?. The plot is interesting, but nothing out of the ordinary. It is the story of Jay Gatsby, a poor man who fell in love with a rich young girl named Daisy, who ended up getting married to someone who had as much money as her parents. All that happened before the beginning of the story, that starts quite a few years after that marriage. Daisy is quite unhappy (in a rather superficial way), and ready for a change when Gatsby enters again into her life, as good-looking as ever but with much more money. The story is told from the point of view of Nick Carraway, who is Daisy's cousin and who happens to meet Gatsby in one of the party the later organizes. Nick is a catalyst in the story, due to the fact that he puts Daisy and Jay in contact again after many years of separation. However, and more important, Carraway makes the book remarkably more interesting for the reader, making commentaries from time to time regarding what is happening. In the book, Nick says "Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known". At the very least, Nick's role is an effective way that Fitzgerald found of involving the reader a little bit more in what's happening in the story. Most people can identify with Nick Carraway because he doesn't go to the extremes where the other characters permanently are. Gatsby, and his relentless persecution of a love that never was, that can end in nothing else that pure tragedy... And Daisy, so frivolous and vain, so thoroughly engrossed in herself that is incapable of true love... All in all, I liked the story, but I especially enjoyed the way in which F. Scott Fitzgerald writes. His style is very simple, with only some metaphores that don't obscure the meaning but help to make it clear. He is also quite concise, as evident from the fact that this book has little more that 200 pages. I think it is probably wortwhile to point out that what really makes this book a classic, instead of merely an enjoyable book (not that there is anything wrong with those!!), is the fact that it deals with many themes all of us deem important, for example love, dreams, lies, justice, social differences, hate, money and what it can (and cannot) buy... From my point of view, this book is more than worth your time and money. I only wish the ending had been different... The book would have lost some of its dramatic air, but I would have been happier. Even though I know it is rather silly, I prefer happy endings. I hope you notice that despite that, I still recommend "The Great Gatsby" to you. I really don't have other choice, because it is really a great book :) Belen Alcat

a touch boring but otherwise amazing:
This novel may have a bit of a negative association for many past and present American high schoolers, myself included (two decades ago), who were forced to read it. And it is a touch boring. But other than that it's a great book, especially considering that the author was only 29 years old when it was published. It flawlessly captures the excesses of the roaring 1920s in the Hamptons of Long Island, through a group of characters who are each distinct and not easy to forget. The description of the wasteland surrounding the shop of the mechanic, George Wilson, is a very interesting way to contrast the lavishness of the Hamptons. And there actually is a fair amount of action in the plot that intensifies the psychological aspects of the story. Author of Adjust Your Brain: A Practical Theory for Maximizing Mental Health.

Count your lucky stars:
Gadzooks! This is one fine little book. No, it's not long, but the tale is tight and well told and quite unlike anything else in American literature. Only a few books come to mind with regards to the "knock me out" kind. McCrae's "Children's Corner" is one such book, as is Steinbeck's "East of Eden." Other than that, there aren't a great deal. But "Gatsby" is at the top of the heap and probably will be for the next hundred years. There have been two movies made of this book (that I know of), and both are excellent. Don't be put off if you HAD to read this in school. Try it out again as it really IS a classic.

A rich story:
"The Great Gatsby" is one of the most exquisite books I have ever read to date that deals with most if not all aspects of love and the challenges of life. There is so much to learn especially for us in this modern world where so many people use the word "love" without really knowing what it truly means. The author is so descriptive that I sometimes felt as if I was in the story. He made it easy for readers to penetrate the souls of the characters and relate to their lives. The character development is prodigious, while prose is outstanding. I felt as much for Gatsby as I have for any other character. He had always had high aspirations, but his dreams were taken away from him by the fact the he had to fight a war, and he could never be the same again. Gatsby's ambition is to have his former love, who is now married to an unfaithful husband, a quest that saw outstanding twist and turns in the story to make it the great read we have heard so much about. This book is truly inspirational for everyone irrespective of race, gender, age or occupation.Recommended stories are DISCIPLES OF FORTUNE, THE USURPER AND OTHERS, THE SCARLET LETTER, WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS, in the sense that they go to add to this rich theme