/lit/ - Literature

Also would you recommend any of Fitzgerald's other works?

>>6891594
PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFTT

Americans tend to hate whatever they read at school for some reason. I don't know if they just have really shit teachers, or were just shitty rebellious pupils who disliked being taught stuff in general, or if it's a way of trying to feel like you've grown up and put your childhood things behind you.

>>6891608
I don't know how true this is. /lit/'s the only place I've ever seen someone hate on Huckleberry Finn for example, and even then, I'm pretty sure they were just trolling/being a contrarian.

It's a good book, but 10/10 seems a bit generous. Whether it's required reading in high school or not is irrelevant - To Kill a Mockingbird is 10/10.

We don't like it? It's the Great American Novel. I've never seen it not on a reading list here.

>>6891594
>Why doesn't /lit/ like it more
Because it's fun.

>>6891642
This. I can even suspect maybe even a slight insecurity of liking a book you read in high school.
>muh literary progression

Did anyone else identify a lot with Jay Gatsby? He's intelligent, nihilistic and with a wicked sense of humour, just like me.

>>6891594
Agreed, it's great. It suffers from the /lit/ backlash toward all popular books.
>>6891603
So far I've also read This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and Damned, and sad to say but so far The Great Gatsby is an outlier in terms of quality.

>he cares about plots and characters

>>6891608

Well, Americans aren't interested in classic literature. All they want to do is stuff their faces with cheeseburgers and play with their mobile devices.

>>6891603
I've read all his completed novels, and rank them as follows:
1) This Side of Paradise
2) Tender is the Night
3) The Great Gatsby
4) The Beautiful and Damned

>>6891664

>>6891608
I liked all the books I read in school except for the historically black books (I know why the caged bird sings etc) and JD salinger.
Everything else was fine

>>6891594

The prose is absolutely breathtaking. My favorite is the love scene at the end of chapter 6

. . . One autumn night, five years before, they had been walking down the street when the leaves were falling, and they came to a place where there were no trees and the sidewalk was white with moonlight. They stopped here and turned toward each other. Now it was a cool night with that mysterious excitement in it which comes at the two changes of the year. The quiet lights in the houses were humming out into the darkness and there was a stir and bustle among the stars. Out of the corner of his eye Gatsby saw that the blocks of the sidewalks really formed a ladder and mounted to a secret place above the trees — he could climb to it, if he climbed alone, and once there he could suck on the pap of life, gulp down the incomparable milk of wonder.

His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy’s white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.

Through all he said, even through his appalling sentimentality, I was reminded of something — an elusive rhythm, a fragment of lost words, that I had heard somewhere a long time ago. For a moment a phrase tried to take shape in my mouth and my lips parted like a dumb man’s, as though there was more struggling upon them than a wisp of startled air. But they made no sound, and what I had almost remembered was uncommunicable forever.

>>6891594
One of my English teachers at school said she hated the book as none of the characters were at all likable. Made me angry that she could just miss the point entirely and be teaching the book.

>>6892286
OP here, that was my favourite part of the book too.

>>6892286
>yfw you'll never write anything even coming close to this

>>6892278
>historically black books

Seconding this. One of the biggest factors turning me away from English in HS was the fact that class was essentially 'let's talk about the oppression of blacks and jews, then read some other stuff inbetween'

>>6892433
Nick was okr.

>>6891594
i find it boring.

>>6892286
I don't care if it's cliche as fuck, thelast page is stunning.

>>6891608
>Americans tend to hate whatever they read at school for some reason.
But Shakespeare, Melville, the romantics, etc, all get lots of love from /lit/.

>>6891697
Here you go, you can stop refreshing

>>6894427
kek

Nice bait. Got me to read your whole post, I'll give a reply.

>>6891715
If you are a grill

marry me

if you are a whore

just fuck me and don't tell me your name

if you are a guy

stop being gay

good taste though

>>6892286
>there are plebs who think Nabakov is better than this
>there are plebs who think Fitzgerald is overrated

/lit/ is so, so very sad.

>>6893816
>>6892278
>high school has a tradition of having the last book you read before you graduate be The Godfather
>brothers did it, be senior, everyone I knew was reading it, look forward to it
>have a black muhoppression sjw teacher for literature
>she has us read a book about a black family raping each other instead
>tfw we were the only class to not read The Godfather

Teachers need to stop forcing their crap on students. I had a cool black teacher of literature who was really into Beowulf and the Canterbury Tales, though. She was much less of a cunt.

>>6892278
No matter how long I live I will never have a care in the world for niggers or their problems.

>mfw you will never be a British colonist in Africa waving away a dirty native after he has polished your silverware

>>6892286
>Now it was a cool night with that mysterious excitement in it which comes at the two changes of the year.

I always loved that line. I assume it's referring to the fall/spring times and it really does feel like there is a kind of excitement in the air, of things changing.

I also love how the last paragraph makes it such a sad statement of something being lost.

>I began to like New York, the racy, adventurous feel of it at night, and the satisfaction that the constant flicker of men and women and machines gives to the restless eye. I liked to walk up Fifth Avenue and pick out romantic women from the crowd and imagine that in a few minutes I was going to enter into their lives, and no one would ever know or disapprove. Sometimes, in my mind, I followed them to their apartments on the corners of hidden streets, and they turned and smiled back at me before they faded through a door into warm darkness. At the enchanted metropolitan twilight I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others — poor young clerks who loitered in front of windows waiting until it was time for a solitary restaurant dinner — young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life.

>>6891594

Gatsby is one of the most overrated novels in history.

It's stylistically good but other than that it's shit. It's hundreds of pages describing a fucking party and a car crash,

"Gatsby is the most beautiful novel ever". Fuck me. Next you'll be telling me society is literally 1984.

>>6894566

To add: Americunts bum it so much because it's their artistic and cultural pinnacle of excellence because they're such a young country.

There's seriously no other reason why Amerifags bum Gatsby so much.

>>6894566

Fitzgerald was barely a writer. People who tout him reveal themselves for dunces.

>>6894585
Haha totally

>>6891608

No, the reason for this is because there are a hell of a lot of people who list favorite books on social media profiles and its seven pleb-tier titles and three incongruously superior things they must have read in school.

"Let's see here... Tolkien, Martin, Pratchett, ISABEL ALLENDE?!"

>>6894566
>>6894585
>>6894612
>>6894615

These are the people who have that retarded literature professor in community college who students with no taste and no talent can look up to because he has radical and shit opinions.

>>6894374
It's only a cliche because he wrote it

>>6894445
>>6894427
>>6891697

that edge is /pol/ worthy

I've never read Fitzgerald but I did get a genuine laugh from the Gore Vidal essay on him where he's quoted as referring to African-Americans as 'gibbering dinges'. I'd never heard 'dinge' used to mean that before.

>>6894632

No, Fitzgerald is not a good writer.

>>6894632

You're so inaccurate it's hilarious.

You're the type of person who blindly loves a classic because it's a classic, and literally everyone else is wrong.

I'm sorry you lack the intellectual capacity to understand that just because something is a "great classic", it doesn't mean everyone has to love it lest they be retarded or edgy.

>>6894632
Agreed, agreed.

Do you wanna skype?

>>6894632

This is the person who thinks the point of education is to learn how to parrot Teach's opinion.

>>6894663

Holy fuck. You and anon should fuck off back to /r/books on leddit.

>>6894638

Also from that piece:

> "Although very little of what Fitzgerald wrote has any great value as literature, his sad life continues to provide not only English Departments but the movies with a Cautionary Tale of the first magnitude. Needless to say, Scott Fitzgerald is now a major academic industry."

>>6894672
Damn, I guess I'm skyping myself again

>>6894690

Varnished nails on one numb hand not pictured.

>>6894672

You're the pleb here mate. I bet bukowski is your favorite.

>>6891683
nice anime image dude

>>6891697

I like classic lit and boigahs

>>6891608
Its America. Its of course all three. But maibly shitty teachers and curriculums. Its a good book, but its not meaty enough to spend more than 2 weeks on it. I spent around 2 months analyzing the simplest shit in this novel.

>>6891594
Too steeped in the flapper era. Reminds me of why I hate jazz and Juden.

>>6895103

See:
>>6894627

>>6891608
Being forced to read books when you're in school really killed my love of reading for a while.

I didn't go back to reading those and appreciating them until later in life.

That isn't to say I hated all the books I had to read, but a majority of them were a pain to get through especially when you had a lot of homework from other courses and extracurriculars.

>>6891608
Alot of it has to do with the environment and your teacher. I had one teacher who would actually read to us and he was a great orator and the class really got into it. Another teacher had us read and the person reading generally butchered it.

>>6891608
>Americans tend to hate whatever they read at school for some reason. I don't know if they just have really shit teachers

>Ok class, everyone has to read a page out loud.

>Uhh teacher what page are we on?

> umm The lionest moment in someone’s life ........ is when they are umm w..wat.. wat.. oh yea watch the whole world .... I lost my place one second ... fall apat... and all they can do is stare b.. bl..lanchly?

>Test time: What color were the drapes in Gatsbys manor?

>What was the last name of that side character who was only
mentioned once in a flashback?

>Write a 5 paragraph essay about what you think it would be like to be alive during Gatsby time.
>You won't be graded on the content of the essay, only on how strictly you followed the 5 paragraph essay format we taught you.

High school English class made me have reading for a very long time.

>>6891594
I'd say its a 10/10

>>6895639
>You would be graded only on how strictly you followed the 5 paragraph essay format

>>6895658
It's flowery, it gets cheaply sentimental, and it's a great novel. Even masterpieces are imperfect. It's a half-dozen character portraits that happened to encapsulate an era. If you don't see the technical merit in the book, you are an embarrassment.

>>6895639

If you have any literary promise whatsoever, you laughed at the plebs and got the homework done on your phone while smoking weed. It's good that you feel bad. I hope you look exactly like that penguin every second you're self-mythologizing on your Mongolian fetish board

>>6894690
>>6894690
>>6894663
I'm not gay, sorry dude.

>>6894651
>>6894652
>>6894664

Thank you for proving me right.

You're like a little gaggle of professor slaves rehashing hivemind community college arguments

it's so adorable

>>6894672
I've got a thread going over at /r/books too

I'm on both, at the same time.

How does it feel that you can't stop me? I'm from reddit. How does it feel?

>>6895741
>got the homework done on your phone
Anon, phones were the size of bricks and could only be used for making calls when I was in highschool. The penguin is a representation of the regret I have for letting a few bad school experiences deter me from enjoying some great books.

>>6895762
oh
sorry bro, got a little jazzed by the fitzgerald hate
didn't mean to get all harsh on you

>>6895762
>>6895767

u 2 shud fuk

>>6891594
I ended up reading it my last year of college, oddly enough. I loved it though. I loved the peripheral narrator and the lovely aesthetic.

>>6895741
>had a smartphone in high school

>>6891594
It is the very definition of a 7/10. It's overrated by literary novices because it's an easy read and you don't have to analyze much to get something from the novel.As you said, it's "accesible done right," but plenty of literature is accessible if not more so than Gatsby that has much more depth. At the same time, it's underrated by literary experts who mock the book for being simplistic and raw, without really understanding the book. Being highschool has nothing to do with it, Shakespeare and the Greeks are highschool-core as hell yet are pretty popular on /lit/.

>>6891594
As an American I really liked how this book was presented. I read this in my freshman year of high school and I was impressed that Fitzgerald managed to make a plot with consists of literally nothing but partying and alcoholism into a criticism of the upper-class of New York at that time. And throw simple easy to read paragraphs that have many layers of meaning behind them. I'd like it much more if it weren't for my shit teacher at the time who was one of those, "i never gave A's unless the student truly deserve it," elitists who fucked up the teaching of this book by overindulging in the symbolism of the book and overanalyzing every single god damn detail. I hate teachers...

I just found the plot sickeningly boring and the characters to be shitty. The book was made to fit the criteria of "life" and social structure in that time period, which it did quite well, but as for the story, I failed to find it interesting. I've never been one for symbolism and couldn't get attached to the characters, nor relate to them in their endeavors that were so selfish. I also don't care for love stories, even if the ending isn't "happy ever after". Gatsby's monetary journey was hard to care for as well. However, I heavily enjoyed Fitzgerald's diction.

Daisy was a cunt, even though Jay was a beta

>>6895916
>Jay was a beta
>war vet
>educated
>bootlegger
>rich af tbh
>fucks a dudes wife
>protects his woman
>dies

nigga...beta is calling alpha's betas. Which is you, coon.