The Great Gatsby
I will confess that it wasn’t until I was enrolled as an English major that I finally read The Great Gatsby.
I was a non-traditional student which means I was old. 30. Ancient as college kids go.
I dove into my readings. All of them. I enjoyed being a student. In-class discussions revealed an obvious difference between how I and the other students would read a book: our ages dictated how we saw the story.
I’ll admit it has been some while since I’ve read it, but I did read it several times with a few years span in between. As I aged, the story changed a bit. I suspect younger readers would be attracted to Daisy or Tom, attractive and young and dashing. Almost immortal.
Fitzgerald’s writing in really quite impressive here. He had more than a few distractions including Hemingway, the war, Zelda, drinking and yet, somehow, over 5 years of labor, and not, he produced a book which rewrites itself for each read from the same reader. I read more of Fitzgerald and went to Hemingway and some Gertrude Stein. I’m a limited fan of the Lost Generation. Limited in exposure by my choice.
As with most things craft, he has his fans and dissenters. I like him. I like the book. The craft to pick the right word to say the right thing is craft. That a sentence can be so clearly one thing but still carry multiple meanings in context and for the reader is what every writer dreams to do. I don’t think that was his real goal, but I do think he did pursue some idea of immortality in his work. For my money he got it in The Great Gatsby.