Best book I've read from HS so far would have to be Catcher in the Rye, followed by Oliver Twist. Yah.
Thomas Hardy's novels are poo...but his poems are superb.
Printable View
Best book I've read from HS so far would have to be Catcher in the Rye, followed by Oliver Twist. Yah.
Thomas Hardy's novels are poo...but his poems are superb.
Quote:
Originally posted by sggg
Yeh, that's right. I am joke simply because some pea-brain does not know what an "opinion" is yet. Maybe he'll figure it out in a few years. :wtf:
How pathetic....
Well, maybe I've got ahead of myself. If you went to some sort of Magical Super-Literature High School where the only things you've read is in class are 'the Bible', 'Shakespeare's Collected Works', 'Ulysses', 'Tom Jones', 'Crime and Punishment', 'The Divine Comedy', 'Paradise Lost', and so on, then maybe I could imagine Fitzgerald being "the worst author [you've] had the displeasure of having had to read a complete book by."Quote:
I hate hate hate Fitzgerald. Probably the worst author I've had the displeasure of having had to read a complete book by. Stupid High School.... Ah well...
However, if you've read almost anything in High School that doesn't count as the best piece of literature written by humans in that particular century, than you have read something worse than 'The Great Gatsby'.
Look, your 'opinion' that "The Great Gatsby" is bad means as much as if you had the opinion that "the sky is purple!" or "Babies parachute out of where God lives".
Why? Because "The Great Gatsby"s goodness, its strength as a literary work, is a FACT, or as close to a fact as you or anyone else can expect. Too many brilliant people have read, ingested, studied, discussed "the Great Gatsby".
You need to understand that when you say the Great Gatsby is bad, you're not expressing an opinion - because you don't know how to evaluate literature. Until you do, making a statement like that is as stupid as saying something like "Einstein was wrong, it's E=MC^3!
"'The Great Gatsby is better than "This Side of Paradise"" is an opinion.
"'The Great Gatsby' is bad" is NOT an opinion.
(deleted a couple of lines where I was just being an ass)
I agree with Stone on this one.
I love the Great Gatsby. That is all.
Yes it is.Quote:
"'The Great Gatsby' is bad" is NOT an opinion.
I'm reading The Great Gatsby for English right now, as I said in the other thread. It is the first book I have read by Fitzgerald and it is ok...don't really like how he jumps around so much but overall a good book
I personally think the Great Gatsby is a great book, probably one of the greatest American novels ever written (and when you break it down, there aren't that many). But I disagree with Stone's stubborn insistence that Gatsby's greatness is irrefutable fact. Fitzgerald has a very breezy, intuitive style that not all readers can appreciate, and Gatsby represents the apogee of that style. While the style is above reproach, the book as a whole is somewhat hollow. It's a languid, luxurious sketch of American life and values in the 1920s, and it does so more beautifully than any novel I've ever read. But others see the book as slow-paced and shallow, or the overly poetic language puts them off. Gatsby is a very pretty novel, sure, but it's not much beyond that; it's not what I would call a profound novel.
I think Fitzgerald's a lot like Hemingway; love him or hate him, you have to respect his style.
I thought I'd bump this for people who might have missed it. Also:
- Stone is right, and sggg is horribly wrong.
- I'm reading This Side of Paradise right now.
Sleeveboy- Interesting point, but I think Gatsby's greatness is pretty cemented at this point. It's been praised for generations, it's not like someone's going to wake up tommorow and decide it's crap. Sure, it's not a fact, but it's pretty damn close. And why do you think The Great Gatsby is hollow? Gatsby may be, but the novel certainly isn't.
It's hard to put into words, exactly, but the book feels a bit callow - you know, it feels as if it was written by a younger guy, closer to our age, less wise, more passionate. I dunno if it's hollow, or if it just doesn't sort of exhibit the depth of observation that you would see from, I dunno, Joyce when he wrote "Ulysses".
Still, that's part of what makes the book so good - the passion, the willingness to make mistakes, overlook things.
Stone- Sure, it isn't on the same level as "Ulysses", but I think Gatsby is a lot deeper most novels. There's that theme of chasing after the American dream, and all that. It's not why I enjoyed the book, but those deeper meanings are there if you want to find them.