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A review by saroz162
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
5.0
Recently, I had the experience of being told by a group of five or six people how "bored" they all were by The Great Gatsby. I'm sorry they feel that way, but I can't agree. Gatsby holds a special place in my heart, and a strange nostalgic memory of a certain time in my middle adolescence - discovering my mother's old, yellowed college paperback, with the appropriately brown-and-yellow-hued cover illustration, and taking it back with me to be read, stealthily, in the corner of my spacious bathroom.
I spent a lot of time in the bathroom, then. In the cold winter months, my bedroom and bath - the farthest rooms in the house - were always the hardest to heat, and the warmest place in my small, teenage refuge was just by the bathtub, next to the heater set in the wall near the floor. Whichever year it was - was I 15? 16? - I spent a lot of afternoons there, lulled by the warmth and the calm, sea green tiled floors. I read The Scarlet Letter there, and tried to read Moby Dick; I plowed through Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man, and finally learned that while I had no love for Huckleberry Finn, there was a lot of Twain I thought was really good. Most of all, I remember Gatsby, devoured quickly in just two or three reading sessions, and for once I don't recall my mother ever insisting I "come out and rejoin the world."
It's interesting coming back to Gatsby after all this time. I've lived a lot since those days of whenever-teen, and I come back to Gatsby as someone who has at least thought herself in love, and definitely someone who has been caught up, unhealthily and unavoidably, in an attraction to someone I couldn't have. It's appropriate that I re-experience the book just as I've made a clean break of that relationship, and while there weren't any big scenes or tragic consequences, it all makes those feelings Fitzgerald writes about - loss, betrayal, the realization that you won't be the one "chosen" - much more personal. And of course, what Gatsby proves is that we all have those feelings. We all lie to each other; we all cheat; we all play mercilessly with each others' hearts. It's true. It's not the whole picture of human relationship, but that much is true. And we always hurt others as much, if not more, than we hurt ourselves.
When I was a teenager, Jay Gatsby was a mysterious character, a figure both tragic and a bit sexy - the Beast of the famous fairy tale, waiting for Beauty to break his enchantment. I grieved for him but I didn't understand how much he had sown his own destruction. He built himself up, and in almost one fell movement, he knocked himself down. Now I see him in less mythic and far more familiar terms. Gatsby is anyone who knows they shouldn't say something, but says it anyway. Gatsby is anyone who can't stop themselves manipulating for their own advantage. Gatsby is anyone who plows ahead without stopping to think.
More specifically, Gatsby is what Americans train themselves to be. He is the exact inverse of the mythical American, raising him or herself up above meager roots to triumph supreme. He's the guy who did all that, who won't be told no, who thinks himself invincible and is never happy with his lot. And the amazing part of Fitzgerald's writing is that he manages to make Gatsby sympathetic - in fact, more than that, he makes him someone with whom you can empathize with. Gatsby, in the end, is everyone - or at least, anyone likely to read his story.
I still don't understand how anyone could be bored by The Great Gatsby. It's a beautiful and tragic novel, so simple, yet so rich. It doesn't take long to read, and it's not exactly dense, old-fashioned prose. Compared to most classic literature it's an absolute breeze. But never mind. I love it, just as I loved all those afternoons ago - huddled in my bathroom, turning the dog-eared pages of an old paperback, waiting for the winter to end.
I spent a lot of time in the bathroom, then. In the cold winter months, my bedroom and bath - the farthest rooms in the house - were always the hardest to heat, and the warmest place in my small, teenage refuge was just by the bathtub, next to the heater set in the wall near the floor. Whichever year it was - was I 15? 16? - I spent a lot of afternoons there, lulled by the warmth and the calm, sea green tiled floors. I read The Scarlet Letter there, and tried to read Moby Dick; I plowed through Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man, and finally learned that while I had no love for Huckleberry Finn, there was a lot of Twain I thought was really good. Most of all, I remember Gatsby, devoured quickly in just two or three reading sessions, and for once I don't recall my mother ever insisting I "come out and rejoin the world."
It's interesting coming back to Gatsby after all this time. I've lived a lot since those days of whenever-teen, and I come back to Gatsby as someone who has at least thought herself in love, and definitely someone who has been caught up, unhealthily and unavoidably, in an attraction to someone I couldn't have. It's appropriate that I re-experience the book just as I've made a clean break of that relationship, and while there weren't any big scenes or tragic consequences, it all makes those feelings Fitzgerald writes about - loss, betrayal, the realization that you won't be the one "chosen" - much more personal. And of course, what Gatsby proves is that we all have those feelings. We all lie to each other; we all cheat; we all play mercilessly with each others' hearts. It's true. It's not the whole picture of human relationship, but that much is true. And we always hurt others as much, if not more, than we hurt ourselves.
When I was a teenager, Jay Gatsby was a mysterious character, a figure both tragic and a bit sexy - the Beast of the famous fairy tale, waiting for Beauty to break his enchantment. I grieved for him but I didn't understand how much he had sown his own destruction. He built himself up, and in almost one fell movement, he knocked himself down. Now I see him in less mythic and far more familiar terms. Gatsby is anyone who knows they shouldn't say something, but says it anyway. Gatsby is anyone who can't stop themselves manipulating for their own advantage. Gatsby is anyone who plows ahead without stopping to think.
More specifically, Gatsby is what Americans train themselves to be. He is the exact inverse of the mythical American, raising him or herself up above meager roots to triumph supreme. He's the guy who did all that, who won't be told no, who thinks himself invincible and is never happy with his lot. And the amazing part of Fitzgerald's writing is that he manages to make Gatsby sympathetic - in fact, more than that, he makes him someone with whom you can empathize with. Gatsby, in the end, is everyone - or at least, anyone likely to read his story.
I still don't understand how anyone could be bored by The Great Gatsby. It's a beautiful and tragic novel, so simple, yet so rich. It doesn't take long to read, and it's not exactly dense, old-fashioned prose. Compared to most classic literature it's an absolute breeze. But never mind. I love it, just as I loved all those afternoons ago - huddled in my bathroom, turning the dog-eared pages of an old paperback, waiting for the winter to end.