The Great Gatsby
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
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Book Summary Information
Author: F. Scott FitzgeraldEdition: Paperback
Published: 1999-09-30
ISBN: 0743273567
Number of pages: 180
Publisher: Scribner
Book Reviews of The Great Gatsby
Book Review: A Consciously Artistic Achievement
Summary: 5 Stars
At only 182 pages in the paperback edition, The Great Gatsby looms far larger in the life of American fiction than its slim dimensions. Unlike many novels with a great deal of hype latched to them, Gatsby lives up to its reputation in every blessed way. Perhaps part of the staying power and widespread appeal of this work is that it and its author were nearly forgotten. This powerful work was hardly read for more than 25 years, and now it is widely assumed to be one of the greatest works of American fiction in the 20th century. It earned its kingdom through dark years. From amnesia to aggrandizement shows that behind the swirl of its reputation is a powerfully complete artistic vision. Like all great work, Gatsby can be read on many levels: as a critique of the shifting American psyche, as a critique of the pitfalls of capitalism, as a time capsule of the roaring 20's... each reading brings new surprises. Perhaps the most refreshing reading is the uniqueness of the language. Fitzgerald here created prose masterpiece. Every sentence is finely wrought and cleverly designed, like jewels in an exquisite setting. He created, as he stated, a consciously artistic achievement.
Summary of The Great Gatsby
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.
In his introduction, Harold Bloom states that The Great Gatsby "has become part of what must be called the American mythology." This volume offers a complete critical survey of the novel, including examinations of its structure and narrative stance, redefining of the hero, and more. This series is edited by Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University; Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Professor of English, New York University Graduate School. These texts presents critical essays that reflect a variety of schools of criticism on the most important 20th-century criticism on major works from The Odyssey through modern literature. Each volume also contains an introductory essay by Harold Bloom, critical biographies, notes on the contributing critics, a chronology of the author's life, and an index.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott Books
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