Hardcover, 240 pages
Published Nov. 16, 2021 by Penguin Classics.
Here is a novel, glamorous, ironical, compassionate – a marvelous fusion into unity of the curious incongruities of the life of the period – which reveals a hero like no other – one who could live at no other time and in no other place. But he will live as a character, we surmise, as long as the memory of any reader lasts.
"There was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life.... It was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again."
It is the story of this Jay Gatsby who came so mysteriously to West Egg, of his sumptuous entertainments, and of his love for Daisy Buchanan – a story that ranges from pure lyrical beauty to sheer brutal realism, and is infused …
Here is a novel, glamorous, ironical, compassionate – a marvelous fusion into unity of the curious incongruities of the life of the period – which reveals a hero like no other – one who could live at no other time and in no other place. But he will live as a character, we surmise, as long as the memory of any reader lasts.
"There was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life.... It was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again."
It is the story of this Jay Gatsby who came so mysteriously to West Egg, of his sumptuous entertainments, and of his love for Daisy Buchanan – a story that ranges from pure lyrical beauty to sheer brutal realism, and is infused with a sense of the strangeness of human circumstance in a heedless universe.
It is a magical, living book, blended of irony, romance, and mysticism.
--first edition jacket
Also contained in:
Gatsby is the quintessential American tragedy. Someone grasping to belong to something that is ultimately meaningless.
Gatsby is one of those stories that I basically knew because it's a constantly discussed classic, and then I saw the movie to pretend I really knew what it was about, and then I eventually remembered I had never read the book. And the book is... deceptive, I think.
Fitzgerald wrote a story that is fairly simple, centred around Carraway's interactions with Gatsby and the Buchanans, but at every turn there's more to it. Every character has layers that are slowly peeled back, but their exeunt comes before we see how thick the onion is. Every scene has the immediate happenings as Carraway recalls them, but they also have the quiet parts he doesn't know or doesn't want to know, and they have the parts that happen offscreen that seem just as important.
Even the prose feels deceptive, in that it's so simple and straightforward that it blends into the …
Nick Carraway nos cuenta de cómo conoció a Gatsby, un hombre rico y enigmático que vive junto a él y da grandes fiestas a las que todo el mundo asiste, de quien todos hablan y al parecer nadie conoce muy bien. En cambio, Nick si tendrá la oportunidad de compartir con él, de ir investigando su pasado y su presente, siendo además un poco cómplice de sus intereses amorosos y todo lo que hay detrás de esa historia.
La verdad es que esperaba algo más. La novela relata un mundo donde un hombre se propone surgir y ganar dinero con un fin muy definido, “ser digno” de su gran amor, un amor que posiblemente ha existido únicamente en su corazón y en su mente, con consecuencias bastante inesperadas.
I'm really not much of a short story person. If they all have something in common or something connecting them in some way – for instance, they all have the same author or topic – that I might really enjoy them, but for the most part, they're not really my cup of tea.
This is a bunch of classics by classic authors, and they really DON'T have anything in common. I really liked one or two of them, but for the most part, it was only okay. But I am looking forward to my NEXT book – about global warming and the devastation potentially caused by it.
Update: OK meh is my bad.
Read for HS, I think, around 1980. Meh. Sorry. There must be so many titles that cover that era in a richer and more satisfying way, but I guess these short books are easier to fit into a school curriculum.
Honestly? I don't know. I did like it, but I have no idea why. Probably mostly because of the mood and the writing (which are not necessarily what catch my attention usually, they're more "nice to have"s, as far as I'm concerned.
Man bija atzīmēts, ka esmu so grāmatu jau lasījusi un novērtējusi zemu. Neatcerejos neko. Bet noteikti “ir maiga nakts..” man patika daudz labāk. Laikam līdz galam Ficdžeraldu nesaprotu.
Ridiculously over-rated.
I'm not the greatest fan of The Great Gatsby. A good book, an interesting look at the early part of the 20th century, but somehow unsatisfying.
