/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.13636033]

Does it get better than "shy girl falling in love for the first time"? I've read Gatsby and This Side of Paradise, and even considering I've read them when I was very young I liked them both very much. This one is looking like a mediocre soap opera at best. Of course, I'm still at its beginning, and that's exactly the reason I'm making this thread, to know if there's something of value to be found. For all I know, Fitzgerald is all about the praise of that rich entitled lifestyle from the 20's, so I don't really expect the book to go further from some lighthearted tragedy at the ending. And this - maybe prejudiced - lack of deeper meaning kinda makes me feel like dropping the book in order to read The Sun Also Rises, cause when put side by side, Hemingway seems to write for men, while Fitzgerald does so for boys.
Bonus question:
>Does Fitzgerald have any underrated work worth reading?

[Anonymous No.13636055]

>>13636033
Yeah. It gets much better. Rosemary is a minor character. The book is actually about Dick and Nicole. Fitzgerald's masterpiece.

[Anonymous No.13636059]

>>13636055
>Rosemary is a minor character
Thanks God

[Anonymous No.13636124]

>>13636033
>Hemingway seems to write for men, while Fitzgerald does so for boys.
it's the opposite

[Anonymous No.13636154]

>>13636124
Why do you say that?

[Anonymous No.13636227]

>>13636154
Both are for men, but Hemingway is skin deep. Sure, people talk about his knowledge of war, depression, his brooding characters... But at the end of the day there is no philosophy, no real take apart from nihilistic endurance.

Fitzgerald doesn't disregard the manliness of stoicism, but transcends it. Hemingway sentiments are intense but simple. Fitzgerald's are simply intense.

You become a man understanding Hemingway, but you become yourself reading Scott. Knowing about the minutiae of life, and how truly important that is, no matter how small, frail, or faggy.

[Anonymous No.13636238]

>>13636033
>Hemingway seems to write for men, while Fitzgerald does so for boys.

More like the other way around

[Anonymous No.13636241]

>>13636227
>Knowing about the minutiae of life, and how truly important that is, no matter how small, frail, or faggy.
is this a theme in Fitzgerald? I've only read Gatsby which did not seem to emphasize that, though I could easily have missed it, I read it in highschool years ago.

[Anonymous No.13636338]

>>13636241
Gatsby moving earth and sea in order to woo a woman to much into her own comfy life doesn't strike you as a "what's important?" theme? His analysis about money, culture, business, hobbies... His sadness...

On the other hand you have farewell to arms where a guy realizes about his love for a broad during war and escapes away. I love Hemingway and that book in particular, but he's certainly skin deep, at least when you compare it to Scott's Gatsby

[Anonymous No.13636352]

>>13636338
I like The Great Gatsby better than anything ive read by Hemingway, mostly for its prose and romantic aspects. I was just asking about the minutiae of life thing, are you saying that Gatsby's desire for the woman is the importance of the minutiae of life?

[Anonymous No.13636389]

>>13636352
I'm saying that Fitzgerald made Gatsby a very flawed and confused character. In some ways Carraway is the real hero of the story, forever hopeful and virtuous. Gatsby was fixated and yet distracted. All that wealth that he accumulated for one purpose that he couldn't reach, and yet didn't change strategies because wealth itself was valuable. When nick sees it, understands Gatsby's business, values, life, he's sad for him.

Read tender. There is more like this there. He never explicitly talks about the importance of enjoying life as is, but the characters that don't do that, like Gatsby, tend to pay a harsh price.

[Anonymous No.13636405]

>>13636389
>He never explicitly talks about the importance of enjoying life as is, but the characters that don't do that, like Gatsby, tend to pay a harsh price.
Ok i get you now, interesting analysis. I always just focused on the obvious shit like the american dream, and the hopelessness of that kind of fervent striving towards some ideal, symbolized even more clearly in Daisy of course, but I was literally in highschool. I should really reread the book, and his other stuff, don't know why I never did since it made such an impression on me. I guess maybe because I saw it as pessimistic even if beautiful, but what you have just said offers a different way to look at it, and thinking about it for 5 seconds is clearly related to the themes about the impossibility of these idealisms that I did see. ty anon.

[Anonymous No.13636410]

>>13636389
Addendum, in risk of sounding like a complete faggot, much of Scott's philosophy (and you can corroborate this with his bio and his letters) only appears by not being there, like jazz.
And i believe that's the key difference with Hemingway. One tells you to man up and feel great feelings. The other one, more subtle, tells you about the woes and confusions of characters that don't appreciate themselves or their lives, the little things.
Fuck Gatsby, be more like nick

[Anonymous No.13636422]

>>13636405
My English is shitty, sorry if i was hard to explain my point.
Reread. Read tender. Read his letters.
All in all, he's very similar to Hemingway I think. One is a complete chad albeit depressed, one is a little faggot that sounded depressed and pessimistic... But we're talking about a man so in love with a woman that he staid with her in the looney bin for decades, that wrote extensively about the problems of obsessive love whilst enduring it. That's not depression... The guy was enlightened.

[Anonymous No.13636462]

>>13636410
No you sound correct to me. I was never big into Jazz but I know a lot about it because one of my best friends was autistically obsessed with it and exposed me to a lot of it, and I did see something interesting in it, even if it wasn't quite my thing. I liked Eric Dolphy, Duke Ellington, Sun ra, and some others ive forgotten now the most. I like other types of music, classical, some indie rock stuff, a lot of pop, whatever. I can get what you mean about what is not said though, and that concept applies to many things. I have entire philosophical 'theories' written about that actually, trying to understand that subject, but philosophy is obviously always a shitshow.
>>13636422
Your english is good bro, I think we just didn't understand quite what the other person was saying, probably because of that exact quality of the 'thing not being said', it wouldn't be immediately obvious until you elaborated. I will definitely check out Tender.

Hemingway is kind of a kid himself, he was very likely bipolar, and Im bipolar and I can relate to that part of him, even though my temperament is very different than his. Bipolar people don't really grow up, even when they seem immensely mature and functional to other people, the child always emerges in mania, and lingers in the depression, it's complicated as fuck. He was a powerful man though in his way, his life was pretty intense.

Fitzgerald I dont know much about at all, but the way you describe him is intriguing and poetic. I know his wife was crazy as shit. I will definitely look into him again, idk why i never associated the intensely beautiful and ambiguously profound experience that the GG is with an actual interest in him, I usually obsess over authors I like, I guess i misunderstood him.

[Anonymous No.13636494]

>>13636462
Thank you for this reply, made me very happy. Reading is instrumental, but rereading is where pleasure and ideas foment.
If you end up liking Tender, there is this new bundle of (almost) lost stories. "I'd die for you". Same themes that we've talked about. I vouch for it, whatever that's worth

[Anonymous No.13636495]

>>13636033
The Beautiful and Damned is his best work. It's his most truthful work.

[Anonymous No.13636511]

>>13636494
I put both Tender and the short story collection in my list on my docs, ty. And likewise your posts have been very informative. Also I agree about rereading, the first time is like this revelatory flush, then you start to immerse yourself in it and relate it to all the other things in a nice way, and it becomes a thing set deeper within you and more fully integrated.

[Anonymous No.13636526]

>>13636410
>>13636389
>>13636338
everything you said is 100% true

[Anonymous No.13636542]

>>13636526
Thank you anon, feels great sharing this views with my /lit/ friends and being appreciated for it. You know, the little things

[Anonymous No.13636590]

>>13636542
>, feels great sharing this views with my /lit/ friends and being appreciated for it
sounds weird but you guys mean as much to me as my irl friends and gfs in a lot of ways. it's a different kind of interaction, not so immediate and close and we know each other's pasts and contexts for what everything that happens is, but there is this kind of pure immediacy, and connections between people from all over the world, with a very lessened ego, that lets ideas and emotions kind of cleanly transmit sometimes, and the bringing together of a population of people who would never be in the same place in real life, or have the opportunity to talk clearly about these things even if they were, it is honestly kind of beautiful. 4chan is in general fucked which we all know and contribute to, and the entire internet is like that in different ways, and to different degrees, but there is something absolutely magical about it sometimes.

the weirdest thing is that we are not people on 4chan, we are just posts, and then specific posters in threads when we strike up a dicusssion. We become some small fragment of the creation of our mind in conjunction with the world through a post, and then an ephemeral interconnected, disparate, 'thing' is made for a while as you talk to someone, and it is semi-performative, you acting out a role almost like theatre, and also half just the deepest things inside you leaking out, because they have received a context that removes any inhibition, but still creates an incentive for constructive interaction. You become like 5 people an hour, and you realize the malleability of your selfhood, and you create these bizarre, never before existing, types of social interaction, that exist in pure isolation from interpersonality except what comes through implicitly through the continuity of your character in the posts other anons can assign as being yours.

This focus on the moment, on the individual thing, to the exclusion of the general identity of the person, the context in whcih they exist in the world and related to other people, it makes a corollary to the kind of transcendence that exists in mystic states, where the self as construct is eliminated, and you become but a single thing, interrelated with all else, thereby eliminating the artificial distinction between single and multiple, self and world. We become not people, but just things being created in union and in conflict. This is true of irl interaction just as much, but it becomes kind of blaring and hard to ignore on here, even while it mostly degrades into shitposting, just like the universe is largely chaos, and very small parts create the order of stars, planets, molecules, life, mind, language, technologywhich i think is why so many of us are so attracted to it.

not the guy you were replying to though, the other anon we were talking about Fitzgerald and Hemingway, and i am crazy so possibly this post is just the crazy, but it made sense while i was writing it.

[Anonymous No.13636627]

>>13636590
What a homosexual thing to say. Thank you, I loved it.

And i generally agree. Read "the republic of silence" by sartre. I'm sure there are better essays that I've never read, but that one starts with something like "we were never as free as under nazi occupation" with the idea of actions and thoughts with inherent and complete meaning.

Sure, kike there sells it only during absolute distress, every action it's own revolution, every thought worth a whole life. But, like your post, I'd argue that anonymity and ephemeral communication had the same effect. Makes sense, crazy and all.

[Anonymous No.13636631]

I know this is an f. Scott thread, but I’m gonna defend my boy Hemingway a bit. I know he’s memed as being the lit chad and all his work is just about being a man by killing shit or chasing women who will never truly love you, but he does fit other things in as well if you look.
For example, in the Snows of Kilamanjaro, the main character is ostensibly doing the usual Hemingway thing, hunting animals in Africa, dealing with his whore wife. What you’d expect. But we also get a character who is periodically lamenting a life spent chasing money and fame, realizing that he has dulled his own talents by killing that hunger that drove him to create (a theme familiar to you if you like Fitzgerald). I’m simplifying it quite a bit cuz this is already a wall of text, but I wouldn’t write Hemingway off as being one-note too quickly.

[Anonymous No.13636683]

>>13636631
Slight correction, his wife isn’t a ho in that story, it’s another story in that collection that has a ho wife, lul

[Anonymous No.13636693]

>>13636033
Didn't really like this book. Too melodramatic. But his writing style is at its best, so definitely worth completing.

[Anonymous No.13636902]

Honestly, "The Sun Also Rises" felt like highschool teen drama to me. I felt like I was reading a network sitcom. Highly predictable, zero philosophical or moral debate, enjoyable for the petty drama.

[Anonymous No.13637145]

What a comfy thread

[Anonymous No.13637612]

>>13637145
Why do you say that friend?

[Anonymous No.13637641]

>>13636033
>Petite Hollywood star
>Not abused by her producers
This book is so naive

[Anonymous No.13637770]

>>13637612
People are discussing books and literary concepts in a sincere way, something rare in this board. Even more comfier when you read above those anons' social experience in an anonymous frog breeding forum, which sadly is one of the last places on the internet where you can be true with yourself and others. Kinda makes it feel like a Gondola thread.

[Anonymous No.13638615]

>>13637770
Thank you friend, I thought it was comfy too (I'm the Argentinian Fitzgerald loving anon), but i needed more words to understand why. I love /lit/ in times like these