The Great Gatsby

The best ending ever, of course. no recommended for anyone pondering to become a writer him/herself, as John Irving hinted in "The New Hampshire Hotel": it is a heavy weight on your shoulders, because you finish the book with the impression you will never be able to scribble anything like that, to crystallise a feeling so perfectly with so little wording behind.

This Side of Paradise on the other hand is a very tedious read, completely lacking in the romance and depravity, just focussing on the rich-boy crap.

- the narrator not being the main character

- the fractured time sequence

- having the main action of the story take place at sea during a storm

the first 100 or so pages of 'tender is the night' were excellent, after that it went straight to shit and i couldn't even be bothered to finish it.

Which version did you read? Fitzgerald's intended version where the story begins at the beach, or the version where the parts are swapped to force the story into chronological order?

His intended version reads better - the other version gives too much away too soon.

Am I losing my mind? I don't remember anything like this happening in Gatsby.

I read it a couple of years ago on my own. For some reason I never got assigned it in school. I enjoyed it quite a bit, especially the chapter early in the book where Nick goes into the city with Tom and Myrtle and they get plastered and fight. I would recommend it on the strength of that chapter alone.

I think it's among the most perfect, polished novels ever written, and he wrote like an angel. There are very few better American novels - one of those few, Ned, is Huck Finn. And quite a bit of it really is set on the water.

This may take some convincing. ;-) Keep in mind I love Twain and all (but I'm probably more of an Ambrose Bierce lover at heart).

I'm actually with Ned on Huck Finn. I read it in high school the same year as Gatsby and thought it was okay, but haven't been able to get through it again.

The original or the seventies version?

Fear and Loathing and Great Gatsby - both have large amounts of mint juleps.

Yes, one of the best books ever. I don't really have anything to add to that.

keep meaning to rerereread "tender is the night"

I liked the first third a LOT but not the second third. maybe the last third would have been different, again

What a great formulation, from N.!

yeah, like three times. what i meant was unfilmable in the sense that it wouldn't make a very good film.

Xavier Cugat & Abbe Lane on What's My Line? (@17:20) #onethread

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1OHqjM4BS8

Cool. There was a trivia question yesterday about the name of Bennett Cerf’s publishing company.

Soeey, I meant to say that *Francis* has his own wiki!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Cugat Although the older brother, he looks younger, incl. in better shape.

Sorry to be ageist/shapeist geezer, but there it is, and true.

Xavier tried to keep up by marrying teenagers

Speaking of Fitzgerald covers, Edward Shenton's Tender Is the Night jacket is gorgeous:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/25/Tender_Is_the_Night_%281934_1st_ed_dust_jacket%29.jpg/341px-Tender_Is_the_Night_%281934_1st_ed_dust_jacket%29.jpg

Originally published: April 10, 1925

Yeah. People seem to be celebrating the centenary

The heart of the book is this passage:

It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced–or seemed to face–the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistable prejudice in your favor. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.

Gatsby takes people as they *want* others to see them, and in his narration Nick extends the same courtesy to him, imbuing him with a grace and nobility that other characters in the book don’t see. To them, he comes across as a phony and a vaguely sinister one. But Nick wants to live in a world where people are never required to face themselves as others see them, so brutally. Part of this is due to his closeted homosexuality. He empathizes with the need to keep secrets, to live behind a mask. And he had scorn for the “careless” people who have no such need.

There is another level where the book is an allegory for wwi. Modernism in many of its forms was an attempt to reckon with a world that was much uglier and crueler than many previously believed it was. To “get real” in a way that went beyond realism, which was shackled by polite conventions. Fitzgerald is saying in this book that not everyone has the stomach for it. Some are too delicate to survive in the new world — even, ironically, some gangsters.

I’ve taught this book so often and it is so short that I know it better than any other book. It’s not my favorite book, but it is a great one and its reputation is deserved. Leo was a better Gatsby than Redford because the latter was too cool. Gatsby is terrified, anxious, and traumatized and he hides it behind this pompous and inflated persona.

https://www.contrabandcamp.com/p/gatsbys-secret

I’ve heard this theory. It could be. I always thought that “Gatz,” his original surname, suggested Eastern European or even Jewish origins he wanted to conceal. He was part of the Jewish mafia in New York.

Definitely isn’t a wasp. Tom susses that in the hotel scene. But beyond that idk

I like the theory too - the book is definitely about someone passing, but whether that someone is black or Jewish, I can’t quite decide. There are references applicable to one or the other, or both.

Nick has never scanned as a homo to me, but I accept the interpretation.

The book accurately nailed how nullities like Reagan from Nowheresville become personages.

i just read that Gatsby's Secret essay, it's a compelling interpretation. I confess to not having read this book in probably 30 years though I read it at least twice (once in HS and once in college).

I find students want to ship *everyone*: Jekyll and Utterson (and Lanyon), George and Slim, Faustus and Mephistopheles, Nick and Gatsby. It's cute.

That was a great essay. I'd not heard of it and I've never considered it, honestly; I like the interpretation.

I mentioned the essay to my wife and she said her English teacher (a Black woman) shared that interpretation with the class when she was a sophomore in high school, so... 1987 or 1988?

Don't know if I need a disclaimer but ftr I meant as a reader - I've never taught it (but I am next year).

Read “Babylon revisited” for the first time last week.It’s really something. Tempted to reread Tender is the Night now. I can’t remember anything about it but I was probably too young to appreciate it.

I've read Tender six times and still don't buy Diver's collapse but Fitzgerald draws his milieu well and when the POV switches to Nicole he doesn't condescend to her.

Have people read The Crack-Up?

Yep. It has moments of inspiration.

Title essay is certainly memorable.

I teach Babylon Revisited after Gatsby. Only then do I explain how the story is almost entirely autobiographical — about his humiliating custody battle with his in laws. And only after that do I tell him that Fitzgerald met Zelda the same way Gatsby met Daisy. He was a penniless officer stationed in a southern city and fell in love with a debutante who at first rejected him. (Zelda only took him seriously as a suitor when he was a famous author.)

I have the students reflect on if and how this info influences their appreciation for the novel. They all say it makes them way more interested in the novels. Then I assign Barthes’s “death of the author.” And that is September and early October in AP Lit.

"Here, let me erect this writer so that we can kill him."

"Babylon Revisited" doesn't stop being poignant. I know every plot turn and still clench up when the protagonist's drunken friends interrupt him just as he's made peace with the in-laws.

Just noticed that I have a copy of I’d Die For You: And Other Lost Stories but I haven’t ready any of it yet.

https://scontent-man2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/490324232_10163640929844367_1554055965537797242_n.jpg?_nc_cat=102&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=127cfc&_nc_ohc=a9Vk7YB4mh0Q7kNvwHyqaNC&_nc_oc=Adkt8Rv6i0z6wfvKiNNzD38_1Uz-GidykOavcJkIUa_VEfS2UrJFcCeWAaOFlg9AGnM&_nc_zt=23&_nc_ht=scontent-man2-1.xx&_nc_gid=ddIndxPxYT4XR_zUqTdNAQ&oh=00_AfHqF12y5PptehFHNHROuhWgxTi9Dwbxt2fbVy85nC5k7w&oe=68028F12

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2025/05/29/the-connoisseur-of-desire-the-annotated-great-gatsby/

I am not a literary scholar, so maybe this is well-worn territory — but this essay just stopped me in my tracks today

This is beautiful, thanks. I had a massive crush on Fitzgerald in high school, and I return to him sometimes like meeting an old flame.