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50 greatest books

The Great Gatsby

WILLIAM KOWALSKI

From Saturday's Globe and Mail

Latest comment posted at 10:32 AM EDT 10/05/08

It really is great ...Read the full article

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  1. John Deriso from Canada writes: "It was its placement in history, just as the last, pathetic layers of the United States' facade were collapsing, that determined the book's fate, for it resonated with those who had finally caught up to Fitzgerald's desire to expose the myth of U.S. greatness."

    You must wonder at a book that only became a success when it's truths were finally in line with everyone else's truths. I wonder what books are ignored now which will, once some change happens, speak to the everyman, and O, how could people ignore a masterpiece in their midst?

    It's just very silly, is all.

    I happen to think that "The Great Gatsby" is a fantastic book. I just think that this observation is a particularly telling one about what we would consider "great art". Maybe we only think it's a great book because we agree with it? Is that all that defines greatness?
  2. J Birch from Hamilton, Canada writes:

    I agree, Gatsby is a masterpiece. And Carroway, the man "who in all things reserves judgement" ultimately becomes Gatsby's staunchest supporter "you're better than the lot of them J Gatsby."

    It is a brilliant piece of writing and a favourite of mine.

    And yes indeed FSF - "the rich are not like you and me ...."

    I'll wait for someone to fill in Ernest's retort ; )

    .
  3. crime of the century from This is not America, Canada writes: The great gatsby is a profound reflection on quintessential capitalism and the corruption of america then, as it is today.
  4. lotusland maritimer from ?, Canada writes: Yawn its about the most cliched theme in literature of minor writers the business about how the rich or the aristocracy or the bourgeoisie are degenerate decrepit ready to go extinct. Bla bla bla. We read hundreds of such novels ad nauseam. Another horrid example is Marai s Embers. Even among American writers there are at least fifty who are vastly superior and hundreds of books as well. Twain was an inevitable legitimate choice but this?
    It might make say the list of top thousand American novels say but one of the best of fifty or hundred of all time? You gotta be kidding.
    One meaure of a novels weakness is that after a few decades you simply remember exactly nothing about it. A Dreiser Hemingway James Hawthorne Steinbeck Emerson Thoreau Melville Poe Dos Passos Faulkner Wolfe Williams Warren resonate after decades sometimes whole passages at times scenes or plots or characters indeed but Fitzgeralds book left behind nothing but vacuous gas. You gotta be kidding. Then one could list fifty from each of Spanish Italian French English Russian novels and the smaller literatures of Europe before one could consider this work.
    Doesnt even belong among the top hundred American nor the top thousand European works.
  5. x t from United States writes: bah.

    this is the first choice that I completely disagree with. I take it that the list isn't in order from #1 to #50, in which case I suppose that you could make an argument for Gatsby at 50...but it wouldn't be a very strong one.
  6. W. Owen from Sudbury, Canada writes: Well said, lotusland maritimer. I have always thought of The Great Gatsby as the most over-rated of novels. Could someone explain the appeal? Heavy-handed and dull -- like the title. But perfect for inflicting on high school students, of course.
  7. Al B from Toronto, Canada writes: The Great Gatsby... Bad high school memories. The writer should do a better job explaining why it is so great because I don't have a clue.
  8. lotusland maritimer from Sault Ste Marie, Canada writes: I just reread ivanhoe which was inflicted on us in High School. An absolutely fabulous read but then now i know a lot more about say burning of witches not true at least not at that period, Robin Hood indeed a real character but legendised, Templar probably falsely maligned but what rich resonances now that we heard about the Grail the French Revolution illuminati all hokum of course but entertaining and incidentally you get a course in the Middle Ages, finally courtly love chivalry in Richard Coeur de Lion and the Crusades as well as emancipation of the Jews in Walter Scotts time and the subsidiary topics in the Merchant of Venice and Joan of Arc by either Shakespeare in KHi or Shaw. You could tie these topics together and thrill your students about history and literature and geography and even current events Islam Judaism the West etc. That is not how we were taught but what did Rebecca say to ivanhoes horse? and what colour was the Black Knights horse? Duh. I taught once the MoV to kids and the other teachers complained that I was teaching them symbolism. I said its not my fault it was Shakespeare who put it in there blame him. The coffins the rings etc. As true of history when did king so and so reign and who won the battle of and math I dont want any problems Ive got enough of my own or English parse this sentence. What is a copula or copulating verb? all these most important subjects were taught in the most asinine manner turning everyone off forever. Yet without reading we cannot even comprehend tonights newscast. Scientific illiteracy if thats possible is worse than literary and historical and thats among professors and research scientists. They dont understand the concept of clone nor do they distinguish between real objective pure science and applied science and technology. Their verifiability and applicability... It would be like failing to distinguish a historical romance from history and both from the events as they actually took place.
  9. lotusland maritimer from Sault Ste Marie, Canada writes: I just reread ivanhoe which was inflicted on us in High School. An absolutely fabulous read but then now i know a lot more about say burning of witches not true at least not at that period, Robin Hood indeed a real character but legendised, Templar probably falsely maligned but what rich resonances now that we heard about the Grail the French Revolution illuminati all hokum of course but entertaining and incidentally you get a course in the Middle Ages, finally courtly love chivalry in Richard Coeur de Lion and the Crusades as well as emancipation of the Jews in Walter Scotts time and the subsidiary topics in the Merchant of Venice and Joan of Arc by either Shakespeare in KHi or Shaw. You could tie these topics together and thrill your students about history and literature and geography and even current events Islam Judaism the West etc. That is not how we were taught but what did Rebecca say to ivanhoes horse? and what colour was the Black Knights horse? Duh. I taught once the MoV to kids and the other teachers complained that I was teaching them symbolism. I said its not my fault it was Shakespeare who put it in there blame him. The coffins the rings etc. As true of history when did king so and so reign and who won the battle of and math I dont want any problems Ive got enough of my own or English parse this sentence. What is a copula or copulating verb? all these most important subjects were taught in the most asinine manner turning everyone off forever. Yet without reading we cannot even comprehend tonights newscast. Scientific illiteracy if thats possible is worse than literary and historical and thats among professors and research scientists. They dont understand the concept of clone nor do they distinguish between real objective pure science and applied science and technology. Their verifiability and applicability... It would be like failing to distinguish a historical romance from history and both from the events as they actually took place.
  10. aniphylactic shock troops from Victoria, Canada writes: I hope for lotusland maritimer's sake (or maybe for my sake, as a reader) that one of the books on this list is Elements of Style by Strunk and White, because I can't take another one of his punctuation-free book reviews.
  11. Dave T from midwest, Canada writes: If it is depth of insight we are looking for out among the ostentatious of West and East Egg, then we likely made a wrong turn somewhere, perhaps at the sanitorium in Davos, or in smoke filled cafes of Paris. And therein, perhaps, lies one essential paradox of the Great Gatsby: how to write a profound novel about superficial people. To his credit, Fitzgerald gave it a decent shot, exposing the wealthy in their one dimensional lives, and we are reminded of Somerset Maugham’s quip that “the great man is too often all of a piece; it is the little man that is a bundle of contradictory elements.” That piece, the utter triumph of self absorption over critical reflection, in all of its self-conscious, aggrandizing splendor, is in part what gives the novel its bite, but also in part because Fitzgerald drives home the point that that is superfluous as well. None of the well crafted characters in the novel would likely say, as the poet Pessoa did, “When I tried to remove my mask, it was stuck to my face:” it’s a stretch to consider someone other than Gatsby might even try. For this too was the 1920s, a decade whose essential quality, as the critic Cyril Connelly wrote, was its “release from strain.” Fitzgerald captured that release with a vengeance: the vanities of the opulent, the pursuit of an illusory dream, the characters roaming free from the “bondage of the appropriate,” even when the appropriate meant attending Gatsby’s funeral. What other novel of the decade captured that spirit of excess, the Jazz Age, the Roaring Twenties so effectively and yet exposed it for its weaknesses and its limitations? Because in the end, we are not consumed with envy of the sublime, but rather reminded of the character in Ignazio Silone’s novel Bread and Wine who in turn reminds us that “no one really exists until they are fighting against their own limits.”
  12. lotusland maritimer from Sault Ste Marie, Canada writes: Much better than the review and it almost sells me on it. But it is all style and no substance contrary to today's entry George Eliot.
    BTW Strunk etc is one of my favourite reads but the GM format doesnt let one even gather ones thoughts let alone write Ciceronian periods. Brevity is the soul of wit but compression is very difficiult. So to express... ah never mind . 2OOO characters- takes me longer just to warm and wind up.
    BTW ever heard of stream of consciousness ....
    or am I writing prose or conversational dialogue. Even English profs from England dont speak these days in well rounded subsidiary complex sentences and parallel constructions and rhetorical structures.
    Here we be modem modern the massage is the medium madam.
  13. Paul Branscombe from Wellington, New Zealand writes: It's nice to have a newspaper that gives readers an opportunity to comment about such things as the fifty best books . The Great Gatsby is one of many books which really does have its avid enthusiasts and sceptics. I have read it several times, and at seventy five,have to confess I'm still perplexed by the Gatsby story. On one hand I feel the time spent reading about Jay Gatsby was wasted time . On the other hand, there is something intriguing about this beautifully written work.about the characters and the plot of ambition, success and riches Maybe it's relevant to what is taking place now within America's financial nightmare. The lives of Scott and his wife Zelda were in some ways larger than life and as many commentators have said, their own lives exemplified the wild years of the roaring twenties.That era ended in the big crash of '29. The crazy aspects of the present prime mortgage lending rate banking fiasco on Wall Street, with thousands of Americans losing homes and now bankrupt, is,something like the Gatsby tale itself, a phenomenom which perhaps could have originated , "only in America.". I don't know.I think this is why, for me, the curiosity,, pleasure, sadness and attraction of the story cannot finally be put to rest. Jay Gatsby was the creation of an American writer whose own life's story gave his Gatsby novel a character with both a lliving presence and at the same time a person just slightly removed from rational understanding.
  14. lotusland maritimer from Sault Ste Marie, Canada writes: As usual the more intelligent comments trump the article. This way it makes sense the hero is the wizard of Oz a buffoon of no interest. But behind him lies the real story. These last two comments make me want to read it just to see if I was wrong. But I am scared that it will be like Under the Volcano which I have started a dozen times unable to get beyond twenty pages, like Buddenbrooks or the Koran. Or the OT for that matter. There more like the first hundred. I always get bogged down somewhere in Kings Judges and wars and wars and regulations. Tribulations are OK I can get into that but... BTW I am expecting a hilarious non sequitur when any of the great books of religion get included. Worse if any get excluded. Bhagavad Gita was a lark but all the others....well tastes differ. Zen was a cult in the sixties and it was good it stayed there. We'll see if Northrop Frye will be amused. His The Bush Garden was shelved among the gardening books which ought to raise a howl or two. Great Code must be a computer book and Blooms Canon fits among Theology if there is such a section. Serves them right for crawing such titles. i curre per Alpes ut declamatio fias. Go run through the Alps so that you might become a childs grammar lesson, said of Hannibal by the Romans. Such is the climb to the peaks of great literature. Then when you get to the top all you see is more barren snow covered peaks. The juice is all at the bottom.
  15. A Smith from toronto, Canada writes: The Great Gatzby is a beautiful and melacholy ode to disillusionment. Jay Gatzby is, in some ways, a true innocent. He believes that by acquiring the trappings of wealth he can acheive acceptance, but class distinctions are a part of our identity, and, in seeking to slough off his previous self, Gatzby becomes an enigma, a nowhere man, leading a sort of half-life and clinging to ideals that have let him down. Daisy, for all her beauty and privilege, is a sparkly bauble, shallow, vapid, unreal.

    The book unfolds in a late summer nappish haze, like a dream that leaves you sad but unsure why. Makes me think of mild heat stroke damped down by gin and tonics, or the feeling of being slightly drunk, detached and lonely in a room full of desperate partiers. Captures the essence of the Jazz Age.
  16. fred garvin from Toronto, Canada writes: I agree that the plot is a little lacking, just as - I hope - the novel's detractors would agree that some of the imagery is spectacular, if a little self-indulgent...but isn't that, in many ways, carried out in the service of the novel's thematic concerns? At their cores, Gatsby and the Buchanans have constructed elaborate facades of humanity over cores that are at best hollow, and I've always found the novel structually and aesthetically to imitate this practice. It's always fascinated me that Hemingway and Fitzgerald could have been intimates, when stylistically they are such diametric opposites; but while Hemingway points to a certain emptiness by taking aim the moral absences symptomatic of it, Fitzgerald describes in beautifully empty flourishes the elaborate constructions undertaken on a personal and a societal level to mask and compensate for that emptiness.

    I've been responsible for "inflicting" this novel on several years of high school English students, and they seem to like it fine- a darned sight more, I venture to suggest, than they would appreciate a lot of the other tomes on this list. I'm not sure that that is a measure of anything relevant, but since someone brought it up, I mention it in the interest of keeping this balanced...
  17. AL Bell from Cow Bay, Canada writes: "The rich are different from you and me," said FSF.
    "Yes..." Hemingway retorted, "they have more money."

    The Great Gatsby is a love story. I found it a more compelling read than "Love in the Time of Cholera" which is better known for its character pining away throughout the length of the story for his one 'true' love.

    It doesn't matter if the object of Gatsby's affection is a self-absorbed airhead. He is in love with the thought of her.

    It's also a tragedy because Gatsby believes he can relive the past. Hence the significance of "so we beat on, boats against the current... borne back ceaselessly into the past." Generations later, we all share in his folly in our inability to make the most of the present moment.

    I first read this novel when I was 17...'when life and love were new...' but it makes even more sense to me now decades later. Good novels are like that.
  18. Chad Lucas from Halifax, Canada writes: I too first read this book in high school, and couldn't stand it. All the main characters are so vapid and self-absorbed, I couldn't bring myself to care about any of them. It's one of those so-called classics that every now and then I half-heartedly feel like I should revisit. There's no denying the beauty of Fitzgerald's prose, and maybe I missed that as a 17-year-old. Maybe I'd appreciate it now that I'm a decade older. Then again, why re-read the Great Gatsby in 2008? It will only tell me the same things I already know from the inescapable glut of reality TV, supermarket magazine aisles and "entertainment news" shows devoted to celebrity gossip: yup, the problems of the rich and the shallow are just as boring (and divorced from my own life) as ever.

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