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Book Club - The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

edited January 2013 in GeekNights

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The Great Gatsby is a classic novel that, surprisingly, neither Rym nor Scott had ever read. Considering that a fantastic-looking movie is coming in the nearing future, we'll have but one chance to read the novel ahead of seeing it, so what better time than now?

Per Amazon: The Great Gatsby stands as the supreme achievement of his career. This exemplary novel of the Jazz Age has been acclaimed by generations of readers. The story of the fabulously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan, of lavish parties on Long Island at a time when The New York Times noted “gin was the national drink and sex the national obsession,” it is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s.

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  • edited January 2013
    In my opinion, The Great Gatsby does such a great job portraying the dull, shallow and vapid people in part because it is itself dull, shallow and vapid. It's message is trite and straightforward, the delivery diluted in the author's attempt to make us sympathize with characters who are both unsympathetic and, frankly, pathetic, the narrator is devoid of character or motivation and could just as easily be replaced with a camera which follows the other characters around, which is a trait this book shares with Twilight. It is well known only because somebody gave a bunch of copies away to troops and it was grasped by a generation of post-war pseudo-intellectuals desperate to give America's status of a superpower legitimacy by promoting it to a work of great literature on par with Shakespeare to shore up America's cultural legacy.

    Imagine, if you will, if somebody wrote a dramatization of Jersey Shore. Because, in it's historical context, that is what The Great Gatsby is.

    Fuck this book.
    Post edited by open_sketchbook on
  • edited January 2013
    Now all you people who complain about Ethan Frome know what you sound like.
    Post edited by Sail on
  • Fuck that book.

    Literally nothing happens in that book. It's all about people sitting around doing nothing.
  • Fuck that book.

    Literally nothing happens in that book. It's all about people sitting around doing nothing.
    At least I can be angry at Ethan Frome for sucking so hard. TGG elicits no particular response from me. It is unremarkable.

  • FUCK Y'ALL

    I KNOW DAT GATSBY FEEL
  • Fuck that book.

    Literally nothing happens in that book. It's all about people sitting around doing nothing.
    I give it a break because people at least talk about doing things. You find out the things that they have done in the past. It's more than I can say about Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, anything by Oscar Wilde (I love Wilde, but his plots are shit)...
  • I feel like TGG's satire of a culture of hard-partying idle rich is still pretty relevant to our country.
  • What can I say about The Great Gatsby? I liked the narrator. I found Tom detestable. And I remember thinking that the book was rather dull. I'm not saying it's a bad book by any stretch of the imagination. I just wanted to sleep while reading it.
  • edited January 2013
    I feel like TGG's satire of a culture of hard-partying idle rich is still pretty relevant to our country.
    Except that the satire isn't about the hard-partying idle rich. The hard partying idle rich are scenery at best, serving to illustrate Gatsby's total disconnect and his lack of authenticity. The commentary is no more sophisticated than if you illustrated the base materialism of a modern-day character by putting spinners on his car or telling us he owns two iPhones, complete with the same classiest sentiment that those who acquire wealth cannot be trusted with it.

    There is definitely a lot of messages packed into The Great Gatsby, but none of them are particularly revolutionary or stated particularly elegantly. The imagery is ham-handed and often presented so explicitly that it feels like a high school student attempting to impress his teacher by parroting the techniques they learned that day. Again, it is little more than Jersey Shore, 1922 edition.
    Post edited by open_sketchbook on
  • There is definitely a lot of messages packed into literature from the roaring 20's, but none of them are particularly revolutionary or stated particularly elegantly.
    FTFY
  • edited January 2013
    There is definitely a lot of messages packed into literature from the roaring 20's, but none of them are particularly revolutionary or stated particularly elegantly.
    FTFY
    It's like a great deal of other "great" literature; a lot of young people eagerly stating age-old messages as though they had just discovered them, which are then enshrined twenty years down the line by critics of the same generation attempting to give their youths some meaning.

    This is why I like "pulp" a hell of a lot more than most everything considered great literature. I would take E. E. Smith over Fitzgerald any day of the week, because Smith had to at least show his audience something new every issue.
    Post edited by open_sketchbook on
  • Has anybody else seen these? They're pretty good. Part 1:



    And Part 2:

  • I enjoy Fitzgerald. His flavor text is delicious, and he was half of the original dysfunctional celebrity couple (that didn't have any governing power, at least). Zelda would make Snooki gasp in shock.
  • edited January 2013
    It's like a great deal of other "great" literature; a lot of young people eagerly stating age-old messages as though they had just discovered them, which are then enshrined twenty years down the line by critics of the same generation attempting to give their youths some meaning.
    Couldn't the same be said of most media? A lot of war movies (see: Platoon, Apocalypse Now, Saving Private Ryan, Jarhead, etc) are simply restating the theme of "war sucks." Disney movies are just retellings of folktales which were retellings of older tales passed down orally through millenia. Most great scifi is cribbed from old adventure stories and discourses on political systems. Hell, I could say that any media with themes of class struggle was already done by Satyricon, and works before it.

    My point is that pieces of "great" literature have gotten that status by being culturally important in some way. They may have wholey new ideas created out of the aether, but they have shed a different light on their generation. Don't dismiss them out of hand. Some are better than others, but all bring something to the table. (I personally can't stand Dickens' writing style, but I understand why Oliver Twist is important)

    EDIT: Works that are said to "define a generation" have very similar themes: anxiety, generational struggle, etc. Howl isn't lessened because Tristram Shandy and Dante's Inferno came before it.
    Post edited by YoshoKatana on
  • Has anybody else seen these? They're pretty good
    All the things John Greene said.

    Crash Course is actually really good, the World History series especially.
  • Crash Course is actually really good, the World History series especially.
    I would rank Crash Course World History up there with Five Byzantine Rulers for awesome, accessable history shows.
  • edited January 2013
    While reading it I couldn't make much of it. I just found it very hard to empathize with any of the characters or really care about what they are doing. However, it seems like this is by design. Whether this is a good thing or not is debatable. Also debatable is whether I'm a buffoon for not getting this while reading the book.

    However, I find it kind of interesting that the novel only had limited commercial success when it first came out in 1925, though critically acclaimed it was to a good extent. But by 1950 it was hailed as A great american novel. I wonder whether the stock market crash of 1929 and the great depression follwing had something to do with that, as it fueled disillusionment of american society with wealth and the upper class, a central theme of the novel.



    Also, I love Crash Course and was planning to post those videos if Yosho hadn't already done so.
    Post edited by chaosof99 on
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    Old as balls.
  • Not in the RSS feed?
  • I feel like TGG's satire of a culture of hard-partying idle rich is still pretty relevant to our country.
    Except that the satire isn't about the hard-partying idle rich. The hard partying idle rich are scenery at best, serving to illustrate Gatsby's total disconnect and his lack of authenticity. The commentary is no more sophisticated than if you illustrated the base materialism of a modern-day character by putting spinners on his car or telling us he owns two iPhones, complete with the same classiest sentiment that those who acquire wealth cannot be trusted with it.

    There is definitely a lot of messages packed into The Great Gatsby, but none of them are particularly revolutionary or stated particularly elegantly. The imagery is ham-handed and often presented so explicitly that it feels like a high school student attempting to impress his teacher by parroting the techniques they learned that day. Again, it is little more than Jersey Shore, 1922 edition.
    It makes me sad that you feel this way.
  • edited January 2013
    Post edited by MATATAT on
  • Wow, you kids really brought the hateorade to the widely read classic novel.

    It's a good thing The Name of the Wind consisted of completely original sentiment and superb prose...
  • Wow, you kids really brought the hateorade to the widely read classic novel.

    It's a good thing The Name of the Wind consisted of completely original sentiment and superb prose...
    It does sound like a high school English class in here.
  • Wow, you kids really brought the hateorade to the widely read classic novel.

    It's a good thing The Name of the Wind consisted of completely original sentiment and superb prose...
    For a second I read the words "The Name of the Wind" and my brain pictured "Inherit the Wind." OOOPS
  • Wow, you kids really brought the hateorade to the widely read classic novel.

    It's a good thing The Name of the Wind consisted of completely original sentiment and superb prose...
    The problem is that none of the shit about The Great Gatsby which is celebrated about it is unique to it, or particularly well executed within it. That generation just needed a work that defined it and the dice happened to land on this book. And sure, it is extremely good at portraying the pointless, vapid lives of rich fools (by being a pointless and vapid book) but being an exceptional example of directionless drivel fueled by the existential angst of somebody who partied too hard does not exceptional literature make.

    Yes, it has good prose. It uses words to paint an excellent picture completely devoid of worthwhile subject matter. The best brushstrokes cannot redeem a portrait of shit.
  • but being an exceptional example of directionless drivel fueled by the existential angst of somebody who partied too hard does not exceptional literature make.
    So I guess you're not too much of a Sun Also Rises fan.
  • I actually like The Sun Also Rises quite a bit. I think it is sort of a perfect counterpoint to TGG, actually, in that it is in some ways superficially similar but has much more direction and depth and more complex themes.
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