The Great Gatsby (Modern Classics)

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Summary: Green Eyed Monster
Review: F. Scott Fizgerald took inspiration from his wife Zelda. He wrote an essay that explains how the various colors relate both to her and to the important themes in his novels. The Great Gatsby is the perfect distallation of these themes and codes.

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Summary: The next Salinger?
Review: I am one of those "freaks" who makes sure to read this novel at least once a year. It brings me a sort of solace.
This is as close to a Salinger novel as one can get. Moral lessons spoken thru New York City in the early 1900's.
In this case we have the author and his 2nd cousin, a worldly woman who steals hearts and refuses to let go.
Gatsby accomplishes everything he can create in his mind, but he cannot compare to what Daisy demands. She is noy human it seems, and Gatsby cannot keep up, no matter how hard he tries.
This novel was required reading in high school, and thank God for that. Even after my 12th grade english teacher pounding into my head the symbolism of the eye-glasses on the billboard in the city of ashes. And also why Gatsby was a "heroic figure".
Basically, this novel ends the only way it can. Death is necessary and we all will perish. But sometimes we die a bit too soon.
No matter where I am in my life, this book always sets me straight. What will be...will be.
Gatsby could not have lived any other way. It's all good.

Rating:
Summary: A Bigger Pleasure To Read Every Time
Review: I first read The Great Gatsby in high school and I have picked it up and read it again many times since.

My first few repeat readings were for the quality of the writing -- the absolute clarity and economy of the words, and the "just right" tone.

And I still read The Great Gatsby for the writing, but now with each reading I seem to gain more sympathy for all of the characters -- even the brutish and stupid ones.

I finish the story each time feeling that I have lived among those people, smelling their perfume, riding in their cars, dancing at their parties, guessing at their secrets.

All these years and all these readings later, I still can't say precisely why Fitzgerald makes me feel this way, but each time I jump back into this wonderfully realized little book I feel as if Nick is beside me on the sofa or across from me at the table, telling me a story I have never heard before.

In this day and age when every third or fourth novel is carelessly called a "masterpiece," it is always a pleasure to read Nick's opening words, spoken especially and unambiguously to me, and know what a masterpiece truly is.

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Summary: To be fair....
Review: If I was a high school student forced to read this and have to answer test questions on it, I would not think so highly of this book. However, now thirty and coming to this on my own I found a book that has righfully earned it's place among our few American classics. At first, Fitzgerald's poetic and economic prose takes some time getting used to. I found myself rereading certain passages. It did win me over though, after the first page where the narrator defines personality as "an unbroken series of successfull gestures." He has other witty observations throughout and I was surprised to see how funny the book could be at times.
Symbolism aside the story is a decent, readable one. The premise is a young man starting out in 1920's New York after the end of Worls War I whose next door nieghbor is the self-assured but mysterious Jay Gatsby. This may seem boring to some, but I hesitate to say more at the risk of giving anything away. Trust me, there more to it. At first it meanders, seeming to string a series of almost random but interesting vignettes depicting the jazz age. For those who may want to give up on the book at that point, I say don't. Fitzgerald has been setting the reader up. The other shoe drops halfway through the novel. Also a note on the characters. Even though you may not agree what the characters are doing, at least it invokes a reaction. Which is more than I can say of the "classics" that I was forced to read in high school.
The themes in Gatsby are very poignant. Showing us how fragile dreams and perceptions, both self and outside, can be. And that sincere intentions do not always come from honest sources. Is this the "Great American Novel"? I don't know, I have a few more books to go before I make that assumption. What I can tell you is that I has a pleasant time reading this one and see why many people think so.

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Summary: Illuminating tour de force
Review: Just like the bright, yet bright, green light veering at Gatsby across the water from Daisy's West Egg abode, The Great Gatsby emits an amazingly translucent spark that galvanizes the reader from page 1 until the tumultuous end. F. Scott Fitzgerald has given us a timeless treasure to read and enjoy time and time again. The illusion of grandeur & the disillusion of marriage coupled with the search for love, happiness, The American Dream, as well as the imperceptibly foreboding desire to rekindle the past all make The Great Gatsby an incredibly entertaining, yet highly enigmatic, masterpiece of a novel.

No one can deny the greatness of F. Scott Fitzgerald. No author since has had the unique gift of such masterful and captivating use of the English language - combined with unparalleled social insight into his age and time. The excessively lavish and glitzy, yet highly impersonal, fetes of Gatsby, make one feel as if one is in attendance partaking in the debauchery - thanks to the effortless and fluid prose of Fitzgerald. The classic American tragic figure, Gatsby symbolizes all that we want to be, and not be, at the same time. Exemplary masterpiece.

"And I like large parties. They're so intimate. At small parties there isn't any privacy." - Jordan Baker

Rating:
Summary: A Masterpiece
Review: Quite simply, the best American novel of the 20th Century.

Fitzgerald was a genuis and this is his masterpiece, his gift to American literature. "The Great Gatsby" is an awesome yet deceptively simple story that explores the frustrations and passions of an entire generation through the words, deeds, and thoughts of a few complex characters. There is so much just below the surface of this book, you can easily read through it and miss the depth. But it is there, to be discovered under Nick's watchful gaze. You have Gatsby's fabricated fabulousness, a persona he's created with his own self-serving mythology. But there is so much he hides, so much he wills Nick to discover.

You have Daisy's flightiness and selfishness also hiding her true self because that's how it is for women in her world--fake, flighty, frothy, lacking in substance. She knows the rules and she plays by them. Jordan, Nick and others--their truth is more obvious to us (i.e., Jordan is a cheat). But everything is tragic here, it is a fasade built on Eliot's famed "wasteland."

I can't stres this enough--this is a book that must be read, reread, and analyzed countless times in order to understand what an extraordinary achievement it is. It is poetry.

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Summary: The Great Gatsby Review
Review: The Great Gatsby is a true classic, which you will enjoy is you are a fan of books containing love and tragedy. The book is very well written, and I loved The Great Gatsby because the story held my attention. The setting for The Great Gatsby is outside New York City, in the 1920s. The story is told by Nick Carraway, who is visiting his cousin Daisy Buchanan and her husband Tom. When you read the book, you have something in common with most of the characters. At the beginning of the story, no one knows who Gatsby even is. That is a mystery everyone is trying to find out, and once you solve the mystery of Gatsby, you uncover a new mystery. This mystery includes Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan. To solve these mysteries, you should read The Great Gatsby. F. Scott Fitzgerald did an excelent job with details. Everything that is described in the book, you can easily form a mental picture of; especially such things as Gatsby's house and Mr. Wilson's Garage. The Great Gatsby, somewhat, reminds me of Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. Both Books involve the return of a long lost love, which was slightly secretive. Wuthering Heights is a little harder to follow then the Great Gatsby, but I enjoyed both of them. I recomend reading The Great Gatsby if you enjoy books that are exciting, suspensful, amusing, and tragic. What more could you ask for in a book.