F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby III

"I fail to share Scott Fitzgerald's enthusiasm for the rich."


"I'm sure that with a patient reader, this book would be a success.
I'm sure that with a reader better at memorizing names, this book would be a success.
I'm sure that with a reader who knows some background on the time that this book is set, this book would be a success.
Unfortunately, I am none of those."


"I didn't like the way the narrative took the reader through the story."


"The entire story could have been told in about 20 pages. I felt like the majority of the book was spent developing - over developing actually - the characters and using a lot of unneccessary adjectives, phrases, etc."


"this book seemed like a soup like... the young and the restless... lol. It did have a surprize ending but I didn't feel compled by the story over all."


"Fitzgerald took out his bitter, hateful feelings towards not having been rich when this book was written by casting the rich in a light that shows them as having little to no moral compass. He comforts himself in his lack of success by convincing himself it's better not to be rich anyways. If his intention was to come across as a bitter old man, and had written the book as such, I think it might have been much better written. But as is, this book is a poorly written excuse for Fitzgerald to comfort himself in his lack of success."


"I felt like there were dangling story lines, i.e., whatever happened to the girl back west?"


"Since then, we have learned a great deal about that era (possibly, yes, thanks to Fitzgerald, but I believe other sources were also largely to thank), so I think holding on to the notion that this book is some great window into the era is hard to uphold"


"'that's all a girl can hope to be, is a beautiful fool'. what a misogynist prick."


"The Great Gatsby is a book about scenery. There isn't much more to say about it. I'm neither better nor worse off after reading it, it had no central theme apart from the scenery"


"What makes this a classic?
It didn't seem to have a single revolutionary idea. It didn't have an idea stated in some revolutionary way. It wasn't extreme in one way or another."


"I hear the novel is supposed to be a criticism of the extravagant lifestyle of the 1920s, and I guess it could be taken as such at some level. But the way Fitzgerald describes much of what he is supposedly criticizing, I felt much more that he was glorifying the era and the people and practices of the time. It was like hero-worshiping the anti-hero - almost like Spiderman, with some part of the narrative against it and a large part of the narrative for it. The comparison makes sense in my head"


"There's a message, deep down in there, but you have to dig through a cesspool of bad writing and jarringly bland dialogue to get to it. As my esteemed friend Claire has said, 'If I see another Myspace or Facebook profile that lists this as their favorite book, I will be epicly latered.'"


"How did this book become a classic? It's not that well written and Gatsby is simple and uninteresting... any Wes Anderson movie has more nuance than this book does."


"The only reason this book is taught is because some school board back in the day thought it might teach their chilluns to be good people. Instead, it bores them and inspires them to leave school and go into lives of crime."


"Meh. I didn't care about anyone, not Jay, not Daisy, not Nick. I really liked Fitzgerald's Frankie and Zooey, so it's not an author issue. Read it once in 11th grade, and once again as an adult. Meh."


"Although not one of my favorites, I do think this book leaves a great message, 'Never give up.'"


WELL THAT ABOUT WRAPS IT UP FOR THE GREAT GATSBY (THOUGH YOU MAY ALSO BE INTERESTED IN THIS PRETTY FUNNY GATSBY THING). BACK ON WEDNESDAY