The Great Gatsby

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The Great Gatsby

Editorial Review

Noted Fitzgerald biographer Matthew J. Bruccoli draws upon years of research to present the Fitzgerald's Jazz Age romance exactly as he intended according to the original manuscript, revisions, and corrections--with explanatory notes. Reprint.

In 1922, F. Scott Fitzgerald announced his decision to write "something new--something extraordinary and beautiful and simple + intricately patterned." That extraordinary, beautiful, intricately patterned, and above all, simple novel became The Great Gatsby, arguably Fitzgerald's finest work and certainly the book for which he is best known. A portrait of the Jazz Age in all of its decadence and excess, 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, in one of the novel's more famous descriptions. 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 all the tragic inevitability of a Greek drama, with detached, cynical neighbor Nick Carraway acting as chorus throughout. Spare, elegantly plotted, and written in crystalline prose, The Great Gatsby is as perfectly satisfying as the best kind of poem.

Customer Reviews:

• Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0
• Makes good writing seem easy
  Another book from AP English that surprised me. Fitzgerald makes good writing seem easy. This work both critiqued and defined the American '20s.
• my review?
  I really enjoyed reading Fitzgeralds Great Gatsby in class. I'd always heard of it but never actually read it so I'm glad we had to read it in english. The thing I enjoy most in a book is it's description, I like feeling like I'm actually there in the room with a character, and in Gatsby I was able to do just that. I love how detailed he is in describing the different locations they travel to and the people they meet.
  I liked how it exposed the corruption and manipulation that comes with the power... more info
• Now I Love This Book (But I Didn't Always)
  When I was "forced" to read this book in high school, I didn't enjoy it much. I thought it was all one big soap opera, and I found the characters rather shallow and unappealing.
  Boy was I wrong! I recently re-read this book again, and I loved it. The characters are so incredibly appealing. Their emotions and interactions are vivid, intense, real and captivating. I fail to understand why, when I was younger, I wasn't swept off my feet by Fitzgerald's wonderful language, which captures his characters... more info
• Inspirational Literature
  "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald is perhaps one of the most inspiration works of poetry to ever be created in the English Language. Nothing has inspired me more than the text Fitzgerald has laid down to tell the story of Nick, a well-to-do man from the Midwest and his new-found friend Jay Gatsby. The paragraphs Fitzgerald writes, describing the sites and sounds of the roaring twenties is what made this book a classic.
  Everyone should have a copy of this book in their library.

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