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I got The Great Gatsby as a gift, and I just got around to reading it recently. I enjoy Fitzgerald's style, so I decided to pick up Tender is the Night a couple days ago. Anyway...what's your opinion on Fitzgerald? Brilliant? Overrated? Somewhere in between? And please list your favorite Fitzgerald novels as well. I'm looking into This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and the Damned.
I just started reading it for my History class, I'll tell you when I finish Tyler.
Fitzgerald is great - This Side of Paradise is probably my favorite of his books, but Great Gatsby is pretty excellent, too. If you read This Side of Paradise and like it, look for Sons and Lovers by DH Lawrence. Very different books, but a somewhat similar feel, and related themes. Sons and Lovers is unbelievably good.
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...
I read "Flappers and Philosophers" and enjoyed it. "Tender is the Night" has to be my favorite though.
As for Lawrence, I recently read "Lady Chatterly's Lover" and it was pretty hot, when one considers the time period in which it was released. He really liked to push the limits of tolerance in society at that time. Great book.
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Originally posted by sggg
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...
sggg, you're wrong. I appreciate diversity of opinion and all that, but, no, Fitzgerald is great. Maybe he's not the best American writer of the 20th century, but he's great - if you don't think so, then you just aren't capable of appreciating him yet. Come back to 'the Great Gatsby' in a couple of years, or better yet, learn how to read good books now.
'Sons and Lovers' isn't as sex heavy as 'Lady Chatterly's Lover', not at all - it's a coming-of-age type book, just exquisitely done. A lot of DH Lawrence's books promise more sex than they actually deliver, though, sadly - 'Women in Love' is nowhere near as exciting as it sounds.
Thanks for the recommendations guys. I'll have to check out some DH Lawrence novels after I've finished reading Tender is the Night and This Side of Paradise.
I get the Great Gatsby. I get the point of it. I get the parallels to 1920s America. I get the mindless pursuit of an unattainable past. It's just a shitty book, that's all.
F. Scott Fitzgerald is a Minnesota native.
Thank you.
It's not a shitty book in any way, whatsoever - you're crazy.
With books like that, their quality isn't debatable - you might not like them, but they're good books. 'The Great Gatsby' and 'This Side of Paradise' are fantastic works of literature that are up there with anything an American author has produced, they're unimpeachable. I'd ask you to say why you thought they it was shitty, but what's the point? I'd be like asking you to tell me why 2 + 2 = 5.
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Originally broadcasted by CNN
This just in - despite literary critics the world over praising The Great Gatsby as one of the greatest American novels ever written, Rick from The Next Level videogame message board has decided that, in fact, it's actually remarkably shit. This came as a shock at first, but the critics later apologized to Rick, saying that they must have missed the pure shittiness of the novel - perhaps the eloquent prose had blinded them, perhaps not. Either way, The Great Gatsby will no longer be part of literature courses in the American public school system. It's been replaced with S.D. Perry's Resident Evil: City of the Dead, per Rick's request.
:lol:
Ah, The Great Gatsby. This, along with Roll of Thunder Hear my Cry and A Man for all Seasons are books which I was required to read back in High School, but chose not to.
Good times.
the great gatsby is a good book - Gatsby had some great creative use with metaphors that I liked... and the imagery of things like that lights across the lake and what not - and the eyes of god. very cool.
anyone watch the movie with robert redford... thats a movie i never thought i'd watch but it came on late one night and I stayed up and watched the whole thing - good film representation.
:lol:Quote:
Originally posted by Stone
sggg, you're wrong. I appreciate diversity of opinion and all that, but, no, Fitzgerald is great. Maybe he's not the best American writer of the 20th century, but he's great - if you don't think so, then you just aren't capable of appreciating him yet. Come back to 'the Great Gatsby' in a couple of years, or better yet, learn how to read good books now.
... and Stone proves once again what a complete joke he is.
bah - I'd say you're the complete joke man.
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....
I like Lord of the Rings.
The Great atsby is my fvorte book from schoo... meandmy friends tried to convince everyone that Gatsb ws a magican... it was great
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.
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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.
I have Tender is the Night listed as my favorite book in my profile. I don't know if it is anymore, but it certainly is up there.
Just finished The Great Gatsby. Fabulous read, for sure.
The ending... excellent.
Dickens is worse.Quote:
Originally posted by sggg
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...