Since this is open game on here I was going to write a mock book review on "Twilight" and suggest that everyone read it in light of the fact that it's a major block buster thriller movie right now, but as much as I really did enjoy it, I couldn't do it with a straight face. :)
So on a slightly deeper literary note:
I wonder if anyone was ever insulted by the word 'scally-wag'. "You scally-wag". Really?
Today I just finished the book The Great Gatsby after completing it 10 years ago as a mandatory High School reading assignment. I read it in two days which may have been a little too quick because I still don't get it. Please don't slap me my literary genius friends! It's called The Great American Masterpiece. Why? Don't get me wrong, I like it and all, it was enjoyable and great with a lower-case "g", but as far as Great goes, na-uh. I wish I was smart. I'm not trying to be self-deprecating or anything, just when it comes to literature comprehension I suck. That is probably why I never got into poetry, too speculative. I would always guess 'sex' when my teacher asked what the poem was about and usually that was the right answer. I could just get online and look up the cliff-notes version on this and appear more intelligent and then snobbily say "ohhh now The Great Gatsby is a classic piece of American literature that well captures the pre-depression area of the roaring twenties and the post Great War attitudes of the people escaping from the Victorian-era moral confines." I totally just made that up. That is how I got good grades in High School. I bs'd.
But back to The Great Gatsby, what is it about it that draws people in? Gatsby isn't a really likable character, he's a liar and a self-absorbed jerk. Daisy isn't likable either for even more reasons. Please don't say something like, "it's their flaws that make them so beautiful" because that's crap. They are so careless of what their actions do to harm everyone around them. I enjoyed reading about the culture that they were living in, the fabulously wealthy people who were probably similar to F. Scott Fitzgerald's own friends and contemporaries. The writing was great, he is amazing, and my argument isn't against him or the book itself, it's against this book being called the Great American Masterpiece. I mean really. Tell me why you think it's so great, pretty pretty please.
11 years ago
9 comments:
clarks -
i love the honesty in your post. i also feel confused and misguided in my readings of "great literature." not to mention, after i watch films or listen to records or read novels, i always feel like i have all these intimate connections and ideas until the smart people start talking and i suddenly realize that my connection was not intellectual but emotional and then i feel like a big mess.
still, i like the literature.
funny thing that you write this post today. the wife and i took a drive from bryan, texas to waco on saturday. gloomy day. no music. great drive. the entire way we discussed how to determine if a book or a film is a work of art or just artistic. so my wife says, "name three books that you consider a work of art." the first title out i blurted out was "THE GREAT GATSBY."
i love THE GREAT GATSBY. i think it's one of the most perfect novels written. however, and here's the problem with addressing your quote: i don't KNOW why. again, my connection is purely emotional and instinctual, not intellectual or classically steeped.
i took a "literature of the 1920s seminar" my senior year of college. great class. read some crap books. i had never read GATSBY before that class, and even then i could not force my way through the whole book. it was so base and offensive and shallow to me. and so i say this in class, all furrow browed and waving my hand in the air like i'm shooing flies. my teacher listened intently for few minutes and then interrupted me, saying, "wait a minute, mr. still: did you read the whole novel?" i said, "no; the book was not worth finishing." then my teacher gave me that dissapointed parental gaze and announces to the class, "forget everything that mr. still has just said. because he did not finish the book, he has no opinion about it." he then dismissed me from class to "go finish the book and form an opinion." humiliating.
fast-forward six years, to just two years ago, i had the opportunity to teach GATSBY to an eleventh grade english class in surburban kansas city, kansas. these kids lived in mansions and drove convertibles and rubbed elbows with the likes of jay gatsby. and i hated them kids as much as i hated the idea of reading this book again.
i remember sitting down in this crummy little coffeeshop and begrudgingly starting the novel. and little by little, as i returned to these pages again, the pieces began to fall in place for me. my new appreciation had nothing to do with the characters. you're right: they're despicable people who we hope will be run down by speeding cars, and then we rejoice when one of them does. the beauty of the writing bowled me over this second time around, fitzgerald's ability to connect people to their environments, to one another, to the constant image of God - as symbolized through those big glaring eyes of T.J. Eckleburg on the side of the building - watching out over the expanse of this social wasteland and the charry-black soul of that ritzy culture. i loved that! and i was enraptured with the downward spiral we get to watch these silly people descend through the course of the novel. all the little pillars of power and wealth and secrecy and sex and desire come falling down into a pitiful heap, like the junkyard beneath the gaze of T.J. Eckleburg at the beginning of the novel. because of this downfall, particularly pitched beneath the eyes of "God", the novel felt prophetic, like a warning cry to those still crafting and erecting these little towers.
i read GATSBY three times straight through while teaching it to my students, the writing and sprial becoming bigger and more convincing each time through. for all these reasons, i find GATSBY to be one of the two great american masterpieces; the other one being THE SCARLET LETTER.
i'd like to hear your thoughts about all this since you are so fresh out of the novel.
thanks, clarks, for posting here. i've been toying with the idea of writing up something about joyce carol oates. you've encouraged me to carry through with my instincts there.
- hamster
(i wrote that comment at work, in between chats and errands and coffee refills. sorry for the plethora of mistakes. i feel chagrinned.)
(i love "scally-wag")
Hamster -
Have you found that teaching a book makes you fall in love with it? That is most certainly the case for me. I think that's why so many kids think their English teachers are loopy. We kind of are.
Here's a terrible story about The Scarlet Letter. I taught it as an intern, and my supervising teacher said there wasn't enough time to teach the whole book, so I had to SKIP CHAPTERS. The tragedy!
Clarks, I sometimes wonder if The Great Gatsby isn't called a masterpiece because of the story, but because of Fitzgerald himself and how he influenced American literature.
I enjoyed the book. Am I ready to call it a masterpiece? I'm not sure. Maybe I should teach it.
mmmm, books.
now that you teacher-folk talk from your side of things, I feel like to a certain degree that I may have pre-judged the book in lieu of my APLAC teacher's enthusiasm of it. Grimsley Graham was as eccentric as his name sounds, who I genuinely liked- excepting around the quarter when I felt my standard "B" was ever unworthy of my efforts- but he was made fun of by the cooler kids and I was easily influenced. I remember (tangent warning) that he was one of those teachers that believed in me. He recommended me to write on the school's newspaper but that was sooo not the cool thing to do. Ahhh shallow teenage myself! Anyhoo, I also had to write a paper on the symbolism of the front cover relating to the book itself and so post-judged the book on it's cover as well. I don't recall ever getting the deep meaning dear Hamster got out of it. I love that. I am actually re-reading it now from that perspective which makes me enjoy it a little more. Your first paragraph, Hamster, completely captured my feeling regarding great literature, I often have a large emotional connection to a book until I start to speak to someone well educated in the matter, then I feel ignorant-ish for not seeing the obvious symbolism or getting the true point that the book had. Perhaps that's why I prefer pre-20th century literature because to a certain degree it was more simplistic in the way it was written. It just seemed more straight forward. Or perhaps by me saying that I'm revealing my REAL ignorance in the matter?! oh dear. I read at an early age and so as a child I feasted on Bronte, Twain, Jules Verne and the like (some of which border on 20th century actually) and love re-reading them, but that's because when I finish the book, I'm not left with tons of questions and loose ends my mind gets worked up over to solve. Maybe my literary comprehension never got past child-like 'what you see is what you get' that makes me miss symbolism continually. It's a shame.
Yet, in my continued ignorance, I don't really know what all Fitzy (I feel like we know each other well enough to shorten F. Scott Fitzgerald's name unless that may offend?) did to change the face of American Literature such as Nichole suggested. I think I can somewhat guess at this being that I'm well educated on all things Fitzy being that I read both the preface, publisher's afterwords AND Explanatory notes all provided conveniently in my manuscript. -is that too fancy-pants? I should have just called it my 'book' and not descended into "delusions of grandeur", which I tend to do when I'm nervous. (quoting star wars is my new low point) All in all, I really appreciate both of your comments! I'm delving back into my book, skimming rather, to try and get a great meaning, I (obsessively?) must understand to a certain extent why this is called the Great American Masterpiece. That is too big of a recommendation for a book not to understand it. I shall tell Summit when he tries to tear a page out of my book in his toddler-like ways of his that he's destroying our history as a people and to Snickerdoodle when he tries to sleep on it while I'm trying to read, the same.
PS. I actually just commented back here to get any follow up comments there may be.
Well, I didn't mean to imply he changed literature, and in fact, I meant to say he influenced culture - not literature. My typing error. (Although, I do think Hemingway also gives a lot of credit to Fitzgerald...but don't quote me.)
I think that culture resonated (and still does) with the story. We read about the pursuit of happiness, the American dream, and it's romanticized. I think you could argue that Gatsby = America.
And since the last time I read the book was 6 years ago, I'm afraid anything else I say will merely be talk from my ass.
One final thought: I think the best kind of readers are the emotional ones. What's the fun in reading otherwise?? :)
i agree with nicole on two things:
a) it's been a while since i GATSBYed it myself. there could be some ass-talking here as well.
b) emotional reading is the best reading. if it don't move me, i don't need it. i stick to the books and writers that make me sweat a little.
clarks - i love this venture you've set yourself out on here, trying to figure out the place this one book holds in the american canon, as well as america's biography. i'm anxious for what you find. i have no idea what fitzgerald did for literature; i only know what he did to me in the spring of 2006. he made me sweat, and i mean that in a literary, non-sexual way. please keep us posted.
(for all you parents and fun seekers out there in reading land - i just put this up for you:
http://www.wheresmyhockeymask.blogspot.com/
the hamster stands tall this day)
first of all, I have to say I really like how both of you say how it's the emotional entwinement with a book rather that the intellectual knowledge about it. I have to say though, being on the all-emotional-and-no-knowledge side of things, that its humbling to realize after I finished a book that it was an allegory! :) thats not the complete case with Gatsby, it's just happened with other books I've read and to read something only on the most shallowest of levels and not get what the author was trying to communicate completely is, well, just frustrating.
..........
since I have the 'convenience' of not having ventured far from my parents and in-laws after getting married I see them all the time and thus on the day of Thanksgiving I decided I could read a little without being rude. (that being in between the photo sessions my 8 and 10 year old nieces insisted on I take of them jumping on the trampoline and trying to look like Americas Next Top Model- slightly creepy.)
I went back through the first couple of chapters and decided that I hate Nick the most now. not judging people and calling them out is his downfall, he just lets everyone get away with their crap. and I was surprised at all the seeming foreshadowing on Tom, how strong he is, how he hurt Daisy's hand and broke Myrtle's nose- and then he cowardly tells Wilson about the car. I was expecting him to kill Gatsby himself, I guess that may be the point though...
Heidi, I have to admit, it's been 12 years ago that I read the book, but I remember loving it at the time. I think it had something to do with the last page or two that talked about America before it was developed and how Gatsby kept trying to get back to the Daisy and the past, but really the longer time passed, the further he really was from her. But you know me and my memory (don't remember much past yesterday), so that's all I can tell you about what I liked about it. Oh and ol' TJ's eyes on the sign freaked me out completely.
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