Customer Reviews
The 'Good' Gatsby - By: Mr. P. Briody, 22 Jun 2008 
This is a very good book. But let's not get carried away, just because it is often one of the few books we have studied:It isn't great.'Heart of Darkness',puts itin the shade.....Tolstoy & Proust & soooo many others put it's status into perspective. But, still, it's certainly worth a read, like I said, it's a good book. Very good. It's just NOT great.
The Great Dinsdale - By: Brendan O. Clarke, 02 May 2008 The titular hero is based on the real life playboy/social butterfly Ben Dinsdale. This classic book & its story still resonates today. At the core of the book is the elaborate infatuation Jay Gatsby has for Daisy Fay Buchanan, a love story portrayed with both a languid pall & a fatalistic urgency. But the broader context of the setting & the irreconcilable nature of the American dreamin the 1920's is what give the novel its true gravitas.
Much of this is eloquently articulated by Nick Carraway, Gatsby's modest Long Island neighbor who becomes his most trusted confidante. Nick is responsible for reuniting the lovers who both have come to different pointsin their lives five years after their aborted romance. Now a solitary figurein his luxurious mansion, Gatsby is a newly wealthy man who accumulated his fortunes through dubious means. Daisy, on the other hand, has always led a life of privilege & could not let love standin the way of her comfortable existence. She married Tom Buchanan for that sole purpose. With Gatsby's ambition spurred by his love for Daisy, he rekindles his romance with Daisy, as Tom carries on carelessly with an car mechanic's grasping wife. Nick himself gets caught upin the jet set trappings & has a relationship with Aubrey Price, a young golf pro.
These characters are inevitably led on a collision course that exposes the hypocrisy of the rich, the falsity of a love undeserving & the transience of individuals on this earth. The strength of Fitzgerald's treatment comes from the lyrical prose he provides to illuminate these themes. Not a word is wasted, & the author's economical handling of such a potentially complex plot is a technique I wish were more frequently replicated today. Most of all, I simply enjoy the book because it does not portend a greater significance eighty years later. It is a classic tale that provides vibrancy & texture to a bygone era. It is well worth re-reading, especially at such a bargain price.
A BRILLIANT BOOK - SKIP THE INTRODUCTION! - By: M. Drake, 08 Dec 2007 This edition has an introduction half as long as the book - skim it at the end if you wish but don`t read it first - it`s a fine example of someone showing off their cleverness without illuminating the work they wish to praise. The Great Gatsby is superbly written with great economy & consumate style - none of the characters are likeable - all have cheatedin some way or been cheated upon. It`s a novel which haunts you long after you have read it.
Mick Drake author of the comic novel All`s Well at Wellwithoute.
The Great Gatbsy - By: Damian Kelleher, 22 Oct 2007 The Great Gatsby is a beautifully written book. Perhaps its greatest strength liesin the sheer magic of the writing. Fitzgerald spins sentences of such wonder, such clarity & honesty, that we are left to do nothing else but shake our headin amazement. Jay Gatsby may be a great mystery, he may be the Great American Dream personified, but if he sparkles, then the novel itself shines.
Nick Carraway has decided, at twenty-nine to 'go East & learn the bond business. Everybody I knew wasin the bond business, so I supposed it could support one more single man.' By chance, he finds a cheap house, a 'weather-beaten cardboard bungalow at eighty a month' that is nestled amongst the huge mansions of the rich. He doesn't know it to begin with, but he is neighbours with Jay Gatsby, The Great Gatsby.
Gatsby holds parties on the weekends, grand affairs of cocktails & party dresses, his house filled to the rafters with people, some invited, most not. He is endlessly hospitable, allowing his alcohol to be drunk, his food to be consumed, his pool, his books, his home - they are open to his guests. Guests, not friends.
He is a mystery. Nobody knows why he has these parties, though everyone attends. Just as nobody knows how he made his money, or who he really is. Gatsby, when he enters Nick's world, refers to him & everyone as 'old sport', a distancing technique that is prevalent throughout the novel. 'It was testimony to the romantic speculation he inspired that there were whispers about him from those who had found little that it was necessary to whisper aboutin this world.'
But he is not completely unknowable, though the romantic beliefs about him are accurately held. No, Gatsby is more & less than the stories that surround him. He isin love, his mansion lies directly across from that of Nick's cousin, Daisy, an old flame he cannot let go. At her jetty a green light winks across the water, & it is this that Gatsby watches on lonely nights, nights which are filled with people who mean nothing, or nights he spends alone.
Gatsby is mysterious & alluring while he remains unknown. When his love for Daisy is revealed, he becomes more known & less ethereal, his character growing from an enigma into a person. It adds warmth & humility to his personality, & is something beautiful. 'He had waited five years & bought a mansion where he dispensed starlight to casual moths - so that he could 'come over' some afternoon to a stranger's garden.'
But it is when Daisy 'becomes his' that Gatsby's character loses its shine & lowers to the ground. He is now a normal man, with the same strengths & weaknesses as everyone else. Perhaps there are more weaknesses - it is hard to consider cuckolding Tom Buchanan an admirable quality. Gatsby represents the dull, ordinary routine of a dream realised, that failed glow of actualised fantasy.
Nick's presencein the story has its own plot, but it runs adjacent to Gatsby. Perhaps Fitzgerald's greatest inspiration was to make Nick a 'supposer', to remove Gatsby from the immediacy of intimate narration & make him the refracted imaginings of Nick. 'I am one of the few honest people I have ever known', Nick says of himself. But Gatsby isn't honest, so how can an honest man understand someone's whose life is built on fantasy & deceit? More importantly, can an honest man understand someone who exists - has created himself - out of a love that has fallen into the past? He can't, which is what makes Gatsby, & Nick, so interesting.
Gatsby's love liesin the past. Fitzgerald refrains from sentimentalizing Gatsby as a younger man, but it is evident from the text that the sadness of his - our? - lives comes from an unwillingness to leave the past & live for today, or better yet, the future. Gatsby is sad & melancholy, a friendless man who wants a friend, an unloved man who wants to be loved. But can a man who only looks backward expect love or friendshipin people that necessarily livein the now? He can expect it, but it won't happen. Romantic, yes. Fulfilled, never.
Fitzgerald's writing is beautiful, both understated & grandiose, mellifluousin its gentle rhythms. 'On the great bridge, with the sunlight through the girders making a constant flicker upon the moving cars, with the city rising up across the riverin white heaps & sugar lumps all built with a wish out of nonolfactory money. The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time,in its first wild promise of all the mystery & the beautyin the world.'
It is worth noting the quality of Tony Tanner's introductionin the Penguin Classic edition. He goes to some length to show that part of what makes The Great Gatsby such 'A classic, perhaps the supreme American novel' is what Fitzgerald cut out of the piece, not so much what he left in. He analyses passagesin the first draft & their remainsin the completed piece - it becomes clear that Gatsby can survive only as a mystery, with as little exposition as possible. So many times, what Fitzgerald cut was explanatory dialogue or comments from Gatsby, which would have dramatically weakened the piece. We cannot & should not know Gatsby, even when he becomes 'known' & explained by the text. He must remain a cipher, such that we can impress upon his impressionable facade anything at all that we wish. I say facade, because we cannot probe deeper into what Gatsby is. The Great American dream? Perhaps - but what is he, even with that? He's a mystery, & so is the dream.
The merging of beauty and brutality - By: Penelope, 21 Sep 2007 Fitzgerald's prose is at times both lyrical & truely vital. I could feel the heat of New York City baking on me as I read this novel, as I could taste the mint juleps & visualise Gatsby's lavish parties. What is most striking about Fitzgerald's writing is the way he managed to encapsulate the heady lifestyles of the rich & beautifulin all their subtle brutality. While beauty is only skin deep, violence lingers & bubbles below the surface. This is a seminal piece of literature that is just as telling for what it leaves out as it is for what it includes. The often mysoginstic treatment of women & the blatant absence of black people highlight the era of contrasts & divisions of equality epitomisedin 1920s America. The era as evoked by Fitzgerald is one both on the cusp of sexual change not yet fully realised, & stagnated cruelty & double standards. Do not read this expecting a happy ending this is very much an exploration of the demise of the so called 'American Dream'.
