I remember reading The Great Gatsby two years back and having an impact on me for days. The story is brilliant and it is written brilliantly too. I also wrote a review of The Great Gatsby at the time. Fitzgerald creates characters and lays out scenes that are vivid, bright and engaging in this book.
The outstanding opening of the novel:
In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
“Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.
This substantial quote on friendship:
Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead.
Description of Daisy:
Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth, but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered “Listen,” a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour.
The Ending:
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– So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
One of my favourite book. At first I was reluctant to read this. For some strange reasons I couldn’t finish it. Then fell in love the way it is written. Thanks for sharing.
You’re welcome. You can give it go again.
I too love Gatsby! I read it first in high school but have reread it many times since. It always drags me in and consumes me, no matter how many times I’ve read it or how much of the more memorable passages I can quote. I think Fitzgerald is a very talented writer.
This is the first book that made me realise that there doesn’t have to be a villain or hero in a story. It can be just about human beings, us.
Absolutely. It was incredible in the way it portrayed the people as completely flawed and human (unlike a lot of books that put one person on a pedestal etc) but also as something ethereal and beautiful despite the flaws.
Truly said 🙂
This is a wonderful book, and although he set his story firmly in the Jazz Age, it’s timeless. It always reminds me of tales one might find in the Mabinogion–and I think Sir Thomas Malory would have loved it. If Le Morte D’Arthur had been written in the 1920s, it would have closely resembled The Great Gatsby.
It is timeless, truly said. I have to check the other titles you have mentioned. I must say Lee, that you always talk about books which are interesting. Thanks for the comment!
The Mabinogion is a collection of ancient Welsh stories compiled during the Middle Ages. Malory’s Morte D’Arthur–the first book printed in the English language–is the classical English rendition of the King Arthur legend.
I always wonder what Fitzgerald would have thought of those comparisons, but my wife says he’d love it.
Thanks for the reference. I’ll check them out. Hopefully she is right 🙂
Such a wonderful piece of literature! I think I need to re-read it soon 🙂
🙂 What a joy will it be to read it again.
Great choices as best quotes from GG!
Yeah!
This book remains one of my all-time favourites. Every time I read it, I feel as enchanted as if it were my first time reading it. It’s got that unexplainable charm in its writing…
And I definitely can never forget the part about the green light. It’s one of the most hauntingly mesmerising things I’ve read.
Fitzgerald has his charm almost on all of us. And yeah the green light part is amazing!
This book was very beautifully written very masterful and fresh even for today’s standards of writing. I think the writer was a genius in his own right. I too fell in love with his words and characters. It’s hard to find a book that can make you feel and imagine that what your reading is or can be reality.
Well said. I like to think Fitzgerald must have put all his effort in writing and how he would have felt if he had read his own work as a reader.
One of my favourite books ever. A beautiful piece of art 🙂
It’s a beautiful piece of literature, I agree.