This was a book I bought on a recommendation of sorts and it sat (with many others) by my bedside for a few months, unread. I tried to start it but never got anywhere with it - the first couple of pages somehow just didn't draw me in.
I can't remember how it happened but at some stage I was drawn, slowly at first and then without any reserve. There are many layers to why I enjoyed the book so much: an enthralling story of deep human tragedy; the Jazz-age context; the New York setting. It has a lot going for it.
But it's the quality of the writing that really did it for me. Fitzgerald's writing by turn dazzles, intrigues and astonishes. He had a rare gift for conjoining words and images that seem at first sight thoroughly incompatible but which, on further reading, disclose a deep awareness of the possibilities of language.
Surely one of the greatest shorter novels of all time.
4 comments:
A book which I only know by its fame. And I think the "Great" part made me think of some huge, Henry James type thing.
Looks like I will have to put it on the list!
Is this the bloke who did that book about the diamond at the Ritz?
Err...might be; sounds like a distinct possibility. I think his most famous longer novel is Tender is the Night.
So Gatsby isn't some introverted naval-gazing Henry James thing then? Stuff actually happens?
Well, I've never read any Henry James so I can't comment in terms of informed comparison. But I think it's fair to say that stuff happens - thing is, it's one of the oddest books I've read in some ways, whilst being at tghe same time hugely engrossing. It delights and it disturbs, but in unequal measures. I found it to be quite a study of its days and also of ongoing human frailty.
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