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    The Great Gatsby
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    The Great Gatsby
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    The Great Gatsby
    Ebook191 pages5 hours

    The Great Gatsby

    By F. Scott Fitzgerald

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    About this ebook

    "The Great Gatsby" is a novel by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. The story takes place in 1922, during the Roaring Twenties, a time of prosperity in the United States after World War I. The book received critical acclaim and is generally considered Fitzgerald's best work. It is also widely regarded as a "Great American Novel" and a literary classic, capturing the essence of an era. The Modern Library named it the second best English language novel of the 20th century.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWildside Press
    Release dateApr 25, 2013
    ISBN9781434446527
    Author

    F. Scott Fitzgerald

    F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1896. He attended Princeton University, joined the United States Army during World War I, and published his first novel, This Side of Paradise, in 1920. That same year he married Zelda Sayre and for the next decade the couple lived in New York, Paris, and on the Riviera. Fitzgerald’s masterpieces include The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby, and Tender Is the Night. He died at the age of forty-four while working on The Last Tycoon. Fitzgerald’s fiction has secured his reputation as one of the most important American writers of the twentieth century.

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    Reviews for The Great Gatsby

    4/5

    19,090 ratings495 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Perhaps my favorite book. I love the characters, the dialog, & the absence of the narrator.
    • 5/5
      Everyone should read this book.
    • 5/5
      The classic novel of the lost American Dream. I love reading this book. I feel like each page necessary and adds to the story. Set in the 1920's with prohibition and dancing creates the perfect setting. I love reading about Daisy, and how my opinion of her has changed since first reading the novel back in high school. BTW - I now find her shallow and a gold-digger. I love that the man trying to relive his past is shown to be a fool. My favorite sections of the book are the vivid scenes that make me feel like I'm there watching. The dress shirts in Gatsby's room - getting drunk in the hotel - the car wreck, etc.
    • 1/5
      I don't like reading about selfish people. I know that's the point and it's beautifully written but I want to like the people I'm reading about, at least one character. The characters and the story line make me nauseous. Blech....
    • 5/5
      Jay Gatsby has moved to West Egg in search of his love, Daisy, who is now married to Tom Buchanan. Carraway, Gatsby's next door neithbor narrates the book.
    • 4/5
      And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.

      What's one to do in the wake of this incandescence? I disagree with Nabokov. This is brilliant (though so is Tender Is The Night). Thinking quite a bit today about Pound and Bunny (Wilson). What about Wharton and the Master - Henry James? All this re-imagining, all this space to plot a counter movement, a line of transgression. Prisms of nature are revealed. The viewer's eye is stimulated by money and possibility. The senses blurred in a haze of exhaust fumes and gin. My thinking of this novel now has been colored by Sarah Churchwell's thesis in careless people, that can't be helped. Despite our failures, there's always sex and strange lights.
    • 5/5
      I had the feeling that I had read this book years ago. Maybe I saw it as a movie and now a new version of the movie has come out. At any event, I was really moved to read it because I had started reading a book by Roy Peter Clark called The Art of X Ray Reading. It's really about literary analysis and the first example he uses is "The Great Gatsby" and it piqued my curiosity. And, I rather liked the prose extracts that Clark uses. So I bought the book. And when I found it was so short I read it quite quickly. I'm not really a great reader of fiction but thought Fitzgerald's book was a delight. A tight story line, great characterisation, and the script itself almost like poetry...."For a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as I listened - then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret, like children leaving a pleasant street at the fall of dusk". And this: "There was music from my neighbour's house through the simmer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars." New York in the twenties .....decadence and wealth on display. Casual immorality such as Tom Buchanan keeping a mistress. And Daisy's presumed infidelity......is not really judged by the narrator. He does't condemn doesn't condone...merely reports like a good reporter recording the facts. The mystery surrounding Jay Gatsby develops throughout the book. There are intricate connections such as between the green light at the start of the book and at the end...but also precisely in the middle. The mysterious phone call from Chicago after Gatsby's death about "Young Parke" being in trouble when he handed the bonds over the counter. No other explanations ..a seemingly disconnected piece of information that throws a distinct shadow over Jay Gatsby's financial dealings. The Oxford connection ....assumed by Tom Buchanan to be phony ...but shown to probably be real...and Carraway "had one of those renewals of complete faith in him".Or this: "He smiled understandingly - much more than understandingly. 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 irresistible prejudice in your favour".I really like the book. Must admit that I have never really been a great fan of some of the other American classics such as "Catcher in the Rye" and "to Kill a Mockingbird". But Gatsby I liked. Was there a moral in there somewhere.....well maybe the idea that money doesn't necessarily buy happiness. Or maybe, in hindsight, that this kind of corrupt lifestyle was setting them up for the great depression. And there is the class stratification clearly drawn between old money in East Egg and new money in West Egg. And the "unutterable truth " that it was not Gatsby that killed Myrtle ...but Daisy......Daisy and Tom ...were careless people...they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or vast carelessness....and let other people clean up the mess they had made. But overall, it was a story well-told. Happy to recommend this book.
    • 5/5
      The Great American Novel? Discuss.
    • 4/5
      Interesting rags to riches to oblivion novel.
    • 4/5
      A powerful slice of nouveau riche New York.
    • 4/5
      One of the first novels to reach out and speak to the humanity within me. This is an important work.
    • 5/5
      One of the best books ever written in the English language. It is moving and still; purposeful and lost; tragic and somehow hopeful.
    • 4/5
      Borrowed froma friend at Bracklesham Bay. A classic and I can see why. Although a little thin on character it was an excellent story. Almost a sketch for a film!
    • 4/5
      I "had" to read this in high school and loved it.
    • 4/5
      Easy read. Good read. Fun read. Who doesn't like the Great Gatsby?
    • 4/5
      (Original review, 1981-04-30)“The Great Gatsby” is essentially a love story. Daisy turns out to be as unattainable to Jay as Beatrice was to Dante but this being the US, the hero doesn't elevate his idol to muse status; instead he embarks on a ruthless pursuit that ends up destroying him.It's difficult in the present era of throwaway relationships to comprehend the extent of Gatsby's romantic obsession. The questions are: 1) would he have taken to crime had Daisy returned his love and told her wealthy family to go to hell and 2) did he love Daisy precisely because she was a romantic chimera, a glamorous woman who represented a rarefied world he wished to conquer?Fitzgerald himself never abandoned his sick wife Zelda even when advised to divorce her. He worked himself ragged to pay the high costs of her medical treatments and stays in various clinics. I think it's true to say his own health was ruined because of his devotion and sense of responsibility to his wife.But then Fitzgerald was a man born into a more chivalrous era, so it's not really surprising that he should produce works like Tender is the Night and the Great Gatsby.One interesting bit I'm surprised many have overlooked is that Nick Carraway and Jordan both appear to be gay. Not the first one to think of this-- lots written on the topic - but hard to get more obvious than the scene where, after leaving Myrtle's party, Nick winds up in the bedroom of the effete artist where they are both in their underwear. In the 1920s, Fitzgerald would not have been allowed to write a gay sex scene, but this comes pretty darn close. Many other clues - Nick's massive man crush on Gatsby, the fact that he doesn't date, doesn't seem to have any interest in women beyond Jordan, the mannish female golf pro (Nick's descriptions of her make her seem very mannish anyway), very vague about why he wasn't marrying his former fiancé despite the fact that it was expected of him and he couldn't go through with it.) Nick's homosexuality is interesting as both a side note and for what it says that we are seeing Gatsby through the gaze of someone with a massively illicit (for the time) crush on him who builds him up and then tears him down.The chattering class in Portugal have always had a different definition of the "American Dream" than actual Americans, for whom its essence is owning a home and raising children who have it a bit easier than you did. Both of those aspirations, for that is what the dream is, are in bad shape at the moment. The Portuguese and the Western world in general seem to think the American Dream is some feverish conception of mansions and millions...As for Gatsby, it's the language I enjoy. Should we at abandon wondering at Gatsby to avoid existential bewilderment. Or falter forward and be lost in the aftermath of wonder. Or remain entrenched in conservative certainty. Perhaps it's why so many of us reread this novel. It's also damn fine prose.
    • 5/5
      “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald captures the decrepit side of the American Dream, which truly erupted during the 1920s. With a darkness stirring inside Gatsby, a feeling of loneliness takes hold, and his longing for an old flame sparks into reality. Readers come to learn that life as a glamourous host is not all it’s cracked up to be; his heart, head, and identity is jumbled beyond recognition; the person he could have married is seemingly unattainable; the green light he is so set on is merely a feebly lit lantern. All in all, superficiality reigns supreme in the mansion Gatsby calls his “home”.The snazzy millionaire changed everything about himself, from his name to the uneducated dialect of his youth. While watching his story unfold, one uncovers the languished lifestyle of the rich and infamous. Looking for a taste of champagne with a dash of insanity? Pick up this book and join the party, old sport.
    • 2/5
      I read this book in print years ago. I didn't really enjoy it that much then. This time I listened to the audio version narrated by Anthony Heald. As much as I wanted to like the book better, I didn't. I just hate the characters and do not relate to them. While I recognize the writing is quite good, I simply do not like the story.
    • 2/5
      The beginning i fragmented and awkward, but it picks up speed in the middle.
      I immediately liked Owl Eyes. He ends up being one of the very few to attend Gatsby's funeral.
      I dislike Daisy and Tom. I feel sorry for Gatsby.
      his unethical business partner or the man that made him rich, told Nick Carroway, pg. 180 "Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead." (Meyer Wolfsheim)
      I also didn't like the abstract descriptions given, almost out of context.
      Most of the characters behave as victims of their lives when they made the choices. (they didn't take responsibility.)
      It's an okay book. I don't understand why it's a classic. I don't feel it surpasses time. I didn't understand a lot of the "current lingo" of the book.
    • 1/5
      I finally read this after avoiding it for so many years (am 47 now) and couldn't decide which was more amazing: that the book was so unimpressive or that so many people consider it to be their favorite. As a story, it was sorely lacking in anything that could keep my attention; I read it in one day, but had to force myself to finish, if only because I wanted to know what the big deal was. I cannot understand how this is considered to be a literary masterpiece (from the back cover).
    • 1/5
      Oh the drama!
    • 1/5
      Depressing lit.
    • 3/5
      De figuur Gatsby: eigenlijk heel negatief, maar toch sympathiek want passioneel; inhoudsloos leven in functie van obsesssie: liefde voor Daisy. Doordesemd van melancholie. Typische Scott Fitzgerald: Jazz Age, jetset. Opmerkelijk: de ik-figuur spreekt geen oordeel uit, registreert, maar geleidelijk aan toch opinievorming
    • 5/5
      A great read.
    • 5/5
      Awesome novel: 'awesome' used in every sense of the word and not as currently popular argot. What a great storyteller Fitzgerald is! What precise, evocative prose that captured the essence of a scene both as sensation and feeling! How thoroughly and lucidly American this novel is! It holds up a mirror not only to those long ago times but to essential American ethos.I've read this book for the first time later in life and was glad of it, as maturity, I think, gave me a deeper appreciation. Can't what to read it again to mark the prose parts I thought were shattering. (couldn't mark up the book the first time, it was too precious) Have to admit I read it slowly over many mornings' coffee, mostly for the prose but the story line also clipped on drawing me to the next chapter the next morning.
    • 4/5
      A portrait of the Jazz Age in all of its decadence and excess, The Great Gatsby captured the spirit of the author's generation and earned itself a permanent place in American mythology. Self-made, self-invented millionaire Jay Gatsby embodies some of Fitzgerald's--and his country's--most abiding obsessions: money, ambition, greed, and the promise of new beginnings. "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning--"Gatsby's rise to glory and eventual fall from grace becomes a kind of cautionary tale about the American Dream.

      It's also a love story, of sorts, the narrative of Gatsby's quixotic passion for Daisy Buchanan. The pair meet five years before the novel begins, when Daisy is a legendary young Louisville beauty and Gatsby an impoverished officer. They fall in love, but while Gatsby serves overseas, Daisy marries the brutal, bullying, but extremely rich Tom Buchanan. After the war, Gatsby devotes himself blindly to the pursuit of wealth by whatever means--and to the pursuit of Daisy, which amounts to the same thing. "Her voice is full of money," Gatsby says admiringly. His millions made, Gatsby buys a mansion across Long Island Sound from Daisy's patrician East Egg address, throws lavish parties, and waits for her to appear. When she does, events unfold with detached, cynical neighbor Nick Carraway acting as chorus throughout.
    • 3/5
      I just re-read this today. A great short novel. Captures the frivolity and decadence of post WW1 USA. Nick, the Buchanans and all the other fleeting characters create an engaging yet ultimately tragic picture of the jazz age.
      13/7/12
    • 4/5
      It deserves to be called the Greatest American Novel as it has many attributes. The society of the 1920's in upper class New York is showcased within the twisting romantic plot. The scenes are iconic of the Jazz Age and ring true. Reading Fitzgerald is like skiiing downhill, it is smooth but surprising. Always a good book to re-read.
    • 3/5
      I dithered between and 3 and 4 stars for this. The book starts very slowly and you need to stick with it until anything much happens. In that way it reminded me of Heart of Darkness and like that book after finishing it I feel as if I need to read it again sometime to get the full thing. And there is a lot to get. Obsession, moral decay, decadence, old money v new money, wealth and status etc. Towards the end a web has been woven between the characters that results in a climax that could not be described as wholly just. However, I cared so little for most of the characters it failed to have much impact on me. Maybe next time I read it.
    • 4/5
      Without a doubt, Fitzgerald is a terrific wordsmith. He creates incredibly vivid images that stick with me. However, his female characters are two dimensional and tend to be treated like objects rather than people, and his male characters are either repulsive or bland.