The Great Gatsby

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A trapeze artist?

― N. (nickdastoor), Thursday, 5 June 2003 21:56 (twenty years ago) link

I think you understood more than you understand.

― RJG (RJG), Thursday, 5 June 2003 21:58 (twenty years ago) link

I think I don't understand the American Dream.

― N. (nickdastoor), Thursday, 5 June 2003 22:01 (twenty years ago) link

I'm digging on the isotopes
this metaphysics shit is dope

― gygax! (gygax!), Thursday, 5 June 2003 22:03 (twenty years ago) link

I read an american dream after I read tender is the night.

― RJG (RJG), Thursday, 5 June 2003 22:14 (twenty years ago) link

I love Gatsby - absolutely love the book. Couldn't tell you why, though. I don't like the characters or the plot line, really, but still I am drawn back into the world that Fitzgerald creates, over and over. And I do think that the closing line is one of the all-time best in American Lit.

― I'm Passing Open Windows (Ms Laura), Friday, 6 June 2003 03:34 (twenty years ago) link

two years pass...

It's lovely!

― the bellefox, Saturday, 26 November 2005 14:03 (eighteen years ago) link

best ever, maybe. i should read it again. i didn't like the part of this thread where matt dc said huckleberry finn is boring because it's clearly not boring!

― caitlin oh no (caitxa1), Saturday, 26 November 2005 14:20 (eighteen years ago) link

a great book, after all, but I remember thinking it was a lot less than they make you expect it to be (maybe that's why it's great, after all)

keep meaning to rerereread "tender is the night"

― RJG (RJG), Saturday, 26 November 2005 14:26 (eighteen years ago) link

i have one of those black books with the red, white, and blue trim with a few books by fitzgerald in it, the library of america i think is the publisher. i read one of the books but i didn't get it at the time. i can't remember which one it was, maybe the beautiful and the damned. i was too young or the book was too dull.

― caitlin oh no (caitxa1), Saturday, 26 November 2005 14:29 (eighteen years ago) link

I read two thirds of "this side of paradise", earlier this year

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

― RJG (RJG), Saturday, 26 November 2005 14:32 (eighteen years ago) link

i remember someone once said it was unfilmable because fitzgerald was daring enough to leave out the 'good' parts that hollywood would seize on right away. seems right on to me.

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Sunday, 27 November 2005 11:28 (eighteen years ago) link

I'm afraid you're wrong – they did film it.

― Alba (Alba), Sunday, 27 November 2005 11:47 (eighteen years ago) link

I think this and tender is the night are v. good. Not so much 'The Diamond as big as the ritz and other short stories'.

― jeffrey (johnson), Sunday, 27 November 2005 15:27 (eighteen years ago) link

that's crazy talk. fitzgerald's short stories are among the most perfect in the genre.

― lauren (laurenp), Sunday, 27 November 2005 16:43 (eighteen years ago) link

Wow, I still haven't read this. I half suspect I'll go to the grave in this fashion while still recalling obscure Happy Days plot complications. Strange.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 27 November 2005 17:14 (eighteen years ago) link

What's with all the Huck Finn hate?!?! You people are bananas.

― Curt1s St3ph3ns, Sunday, 27 November 2005 18:10 (eighteen years ago) link

I was aware that the last few pages were some kind of tour de force, but I wasn't sure what the force quite was.

What a great formulation, from N.!

― the bellefox, Sunday, 27 November 2005 19:04 (eighteen years ago) link

I'm afraid you're wrong – they did film it.

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

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Sunday, 27 November 2005 23:30 (eighteen years ago) link

It's a perfect novel: Its structure, its prose (poetic without being either purple or treacly), and characters. in Jay Gatsby, Fitzgerald practically invented what I call the Ronald Reagan archetype: handsome, dense, surface charm, and irredeemably vulgar.

― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Sunday, 27 November 2005 23:51 (eighteen years ago) link

What, you're saying that's not my archetype too? I'm insulted.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 27 November 2005 23:55 (eighteen years ago) link

david thomson once said that the jack nicholson of the early '70s should've played gatsby - i can see how that could have worked.

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Monday, 28 November 2005 00:36 (eighteen years ago) link

Nicholson projects too much avidity.

― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Monday, 28 November 2005 00:42 (eighteen years ago) link

What, you're saying that's not my archetype too? I'm insulted.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/holiday/thanksgiving/photoessay/images/c18535-18-398h.jpg

Is that you in the middle, Ned?

― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Monday, 28 November 2005 00:45 (eighteen years ago) link

Hell no, I'm the turkey.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 28 November 2005 00:49 (eighteen years ago) link

That's what I meant!

― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Monday, 28 November 2005 00:52 (eighteen years ago) link

Nicholson projects too much avidity

the later jack does, but i think JN c. chinatown could've pulled it off - gatsby needs to have that spark of obsessiveness, which robert redford couldn't really do.

plus now that i've mentioned it i can't imagine anyone but JN not sounding silly saying "old sport."

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Monday, 28 November 2005 01:58 (eighteen years ago) link

But Gatsby is also a blank; remember that Nick dismisses him thusly: "...an elegant young roughneck, a year or two over thirty, whose formality of speech just missed being absurd."

Nicholson could never pull this off. His penchant for injecting irony into the most commonplace of utterances would give the game away.

― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Monday, 28 November 2005 02:06 (eighteen years ago) link

Who would've been good? Steve McQueen? Early-60s Paul Newman?

― Erick Dampier is better than Shaq (miloaukerman), Monday, 28 November 2005 02:41 (eighteen years ago) link

heh, thomson also said gary cooper would've made a good captain ahab!

has anyone seen the 1949 version with alan ladd?

imdb on the 1926 silent version: "No prints of this film are known to survive. Check your attic."

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Monday, 28 November 2005 07:25 (eighteen years ago) link

Raggett's post was funny.

With respect, Alfred, 'thusly' is a 'ly' too far. I am reminded of the Amises' dentist: 'Open widely'!

For a moment I thought that J.D. was saying not that only JN could pull off Gatsby, but that ... only JtN could!

― the bellefox, Monday, 28 November 2005 15:08 (eighteen years ago) link

His penchant for injecting irony into the most commonplace of utterances would give the game away.

They'd have to have harassed him Kubrick-style, making him say the lines so many times he dropped the Nicholson affectations. Even then, I'm not sure he'd have been the best pick. Redford was reasonable, but the main problem was he looked like he belonged with the prestige and money. Gatsby was supposed to be more suspicious.

― mike h. (mike h.), Monday, 28 November 2005 15:51 (eighteen years ago) link

JtN would be good as nick carraway.

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Monday, 28 November 2005 23:47 (eighteen years ago) link

Warren B

― Baaderonixx weaves a daisy chain for... SATAN!! (baaderonixx), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 10:09 (eighteen years ago) link

http://www.3-x.nl/images/front/25873.jpg

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 10:25 (eighteen years ago) link

Warren Beatty in that snazzy but sleazy stylee

― Baaderonixx weaves a daisy chain for... SATAN!! (baaderonixx), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 10:36 (eighteen years ago) link

J.D.: yes!

With Tim Hopkins as Gatsby?

― the bellefox, Tuesday, 29 November 2005 12:23 (eighteen years ago) link

No - with TRACER HAND as Gatsby!

― the bellefox, Tuesday, 29 November 2005 12:24 (eighteen years ago) link

two weeks pass...

a great book; I started reading this again last night

I went looking for my copy of tender is the night to run through that another (a sixth? a seventh?) time but I must have given it away again (the sixth time? the seventh time?)

must pick it up again today

I read 'the last tycoon' a while back and it read as you'd expect: a touch bitty and piecemeal, not entire

a dizzylingly great writer

― cozen (Cozen), Thursday, 15 December 2005 10:15 (eighteen years ago) link

The appearance of the phrase “old sport” has me wanting to start an “A Separate Piece” thread somethin’ terrible. Ties-as-belts, Ackley, shopping in Vermont, etc.

But Gatsby: a classic, a masterwork, etc. I had to read it in high school then again for a college course, but haven’t revisited it since. Will have to correct that.

Something interesting that a college prof pointed out when we were studying Gatsby was the fact that Fitz endlessly employed the word “careless” and its variations to describe Daisy.

― Raymond Cummings (Raymond Cummings), Thursday, 15 December 2005 14:00 (eighteen years ago) link

one year passes...

fitzgerald was a shallow poseur
huck finn is grebt, fools

― gershy, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 07:49 (sixteen years ago) link

have i said how much i love [i[the great gatsby[/i]? i love it. finished a book of short stories by scott and zelda recently - amazing how scott's writing particularly can feel so luxurious and indulgent while being pretty fucking sharp and concentrated.

― lex pretend, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 07:52 (sixteen years ago) link

one year passes...

New movie version by...Baz Luhrmann. Hm.

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 18 December 2008 23:20 (fifteen years ago) link

i've really been meaning to reread this. can't imagine it making a good film, though.

― J.D., Friday, 19 December 2008 05:25 (fifteen years ago) link

oh goody it'll be a campy genre-bending epic

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Friday, 19 December 2008 06:21 (fifteen years ago) link

I reread it every couple of years and it's different each time, if you know what I mean.

― Meat ROFL (suzy), Friday, 19 December 2008 08:43 (fifteen years ago) link

two weeks pass...

obv Hugh Jackman will be Gatz, right? Musical or not?

― Dr Morbius, Tuesday, 6 January 2009 14:48 (fifteen years ago) link

one year passes...

I couldn't help but picture Robert Downey Jr. in the role when I read it.

― SongOfSam, Monday, 12 April 2010 19:56 (fourteen years ago) link

which role?

― Mr. Que, Monday, 12 April 2010 19:59 (fourteen years ago) link

Daisy Buchanan.

― Throwing Muses are reuniting for my next orgasm! (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 12 April 2010 20:00 (fourteen years ago) link

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Help.

le what pic.twitter.com/2yNgBgAr7n
— Jared Pechacek (@vandroidhelsing) January 4, 2021

― Ned Raggett, Monday, 4 January 2021 16:55 (three years ago) link

Also unperson says the author is actually previously published by an actual publisher? Which is the most surprising thing.

― Ned Raggett, Monday, 4 January 2021 16:56 (three years ago) link

it could be good if it punctures the smooth facade/babe in the woods schtick he and many other narrators use, like uncover some buried rage that he studiously evades in his narration of 'gatsby.' probably bad though.

― treeship., Monday, 4 January 2021 17:04 (three years ago) link

The summary reads like the pitch was "I've got it, I'll turn this Fitzgerald character into a Hemingway one."

― Ned Raggett, Monday, 4 January 2021 17:06 (three years ago) link

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