Comments | strange_complex: 10. F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925), The Great Gatsby

strange_complex

10. F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925), The Great Gatsby

Aug 05, 2009 19:41

I picked this up rather expecting something along the lines of Saki or P.G. Wodehouse. From a purely stylistic point of view I wasn't far wrong - Fitzgerald definitely displays the same facility with language, choosing words which are surprising in their context, but at the same time highly evocative of the atmosphere he is trying to create. (There ( Read more... )

classical receptions, petronius, reviews, books read 2009, homer, books

Comments 9

ingenious76 August 5 2009, 19:23:07 UTC

Fantastic choice - have you read Tender is the Night or The Beautiful And Damned? I reckon you would enjoy them. Fitgerald had a real knack for pulling the lid off the allegedly glamourous twenties and seeing everything crawling around underneath.

strange_complex August 5 2009, 20:54:39 UTC

No, this is the first of his novels I've read. He seems to have been pretty good at living the glamorous lifestyle himself during the '20s.

ingenious76 August 6 2009, 11:52:16 UTC

Indeed, I suspect thats where a lot of the seeming disgust comes from. However, I would love to go back and live in that period for a while, just to see firsthand the glamour and decadance. Not to mention that it was a fascinating period for art and politics!

steer August 5 2009, 22:25:21 UTC

Did you think gritty? I loved the book but it's not an obvious choice of word to my mind.

I was recommended it when I asked people on LJ for melancholy books. I think it is now my concrete image for the word melancholy, the body of an otherwise successful young man floating in the pool as the leaves fall from the autumn trees.

The beautiful and damned is near the top of my reading list right now (but last time I tried I was exhausted from travel and settled for crap sci fi as more what I needed).

strange_complex August 6 2009, 09:43:29 UTC

I guess I just meant gritty by comparison with Wodehouse and Saki - so the bar wasn't particularly high! But quite a lot of the stuff which concerns Myrtle and George Wilson does seem generally pretty gritty, anyway.

steer August 6 2009, 16:20:18 UTC

I guess I just meant gritty by comparison with Wodehouse and Saki

Laugh -- that has seriously recalibrated my gritty-ometer.

ingenious76 August 6 2009, 11:51:24 UTC

The Beautiful and Damned is utterly excellent - This Side of Paradise is very worth reading too.

Sorry, you don't know me, its just its always good to find fellow Fitzgerald affecionados!

meerium August 6 2009, 08:52:46 UTC

I love The Great Gatsby. We studied it for A-Level and I couldn't have been happier (actually, I still have my A-Level copy with all the notes. A glimpse into earnest 17 year old me there!). And yes, do read more Fitzgerald now (it's generally quite easy to get second hand copies of his stuff); he's a splendid writer.

strange_complex August 6 2009, 09:46:01 UTC

Yup, I can see that would have been a great text to discover at A-level. And I actually got a brand new edition of The Great Gatsby for only £2.50, I presume because it is out of copyright now - so it shouldn't be too expensive a hobby to work through his other novels!