About book F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby: Essays - Articles - Reviews (1999)
'They were careless people, Tom and Daisy - they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they made...'Published three years before The Great Crash, uppermost in the mind of any modern reader would be the parallel decadence of today's unaccountable overpaid bankers, hedge fund managers and chief executives with the 1920s boot-leggers of which Gatsby was one. Fitzgerald does not need to use satire or pamphleteering to hit the target - but just tells the story of one set of cheque-crossed lovers.The early fastidiousness of Gatsby reminded me of one ex-Goldman Sachs banker to whose enormous house I had been invited in Hampstead, whom I witnessed insisting that his slovenly British builders, with dirtied jeans dropping below their buttocks, remove their shoes and wear slippers in his house before attending to the brickwork or plumbing. The high gothic library described in the early pages 'probably transported from some ruin overseas',reminded me of Pierpont Morgan's Library in New York - an overpaid banker of a previous era.Some people say we have, with the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, seen our crash, but literature tells us that there is much much worse to come. Gatsby is one of the most compelling and satisfying books not because of the come-uppance of the subject but for the intricately woven construction, narrated by the ambition-less Nick, that plays out the Shakespearean tragedy of the lovers to its bitter end. Shakespearean for the important use to which minor characters, such as Wilson, Wolfshiem, Myrtle and the dog are put in service of the plot.Todays' Gatsby has yet to be written.
Do You like book F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby: Essays - Articles - Reviews (1999)?
I read this in high school and re-read it since I'm going to see the Pittsburgh Ballet version soon. This book is written from the viewpoint of Nick Carraway largely regarding his neighbor, Mr. Gatsby, and his cousin Daisy and her husband. I found this book to be more depressing than I remembered, particularly since I found it hard to feel much sympathy for the characters. I found myself identifying most with Nick, as he too appeared to have shifting loyalties along with a sense of discontent. I know this book is a classic, but I did not enjoy it much. It is a really good essay on why being shallow is a bad thing, however, and I think it captures the spirit of change in the era it was written very well.
—Susan
