The Great Gatsby is the fool's gold of literature

[Anonymous No.18790007]

How can people read the Great Gatsby and think this shit even approaches Mary Shelley or Hemingway, let alone someone like Aldous Huxley or George Orwell, LET EVEN MORE ALONE someone like A. Burgess or Shakespeare?

>In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
Here you can see the extant of this guy's literary capability. Take something BORING like "When I was younger", make it overly descriptive in a BORING way that has no bearing on anything and rely on a bland, big-word stuffy tone to carry the otherwise garbage writing. IDC who this boring MC is. There's no personality, he just sounds stuffy. There's flow I guess but that's it.

>Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,’ he told me, ‘just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.’
OK, so he is a boring, rich, stuffy old man who is thinking way too hard about a simplistic moral.

>He didn’t say any more but we’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that.
And yet we're not told at all what he could've meant. Boring. Again. No interesting word choice. Completely direct, sterile writing. No interesting characterization. Nothing.

>I’m inclined to reserve all judgments
He's non-judgmental because he know poor people exist. W0w.

>a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores.
So this boilerplate old kind rich dude has hobbies. Wow.
I'm trying to look for good writing otherwise. Curious natures? He's curious, thinks deeply, and has hobbies? Victim of veteran bores is OK, but I'm not interested.

>The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men.
I lost focus until "secret griefs of wild, unknown men". But he doesn't go far enough and the rest of the book is written in this sterile, oblique manner. Sure, he uses some writing memes I guess, but its just clean enough to trick people into thinking its good and getting itself into public education. I never even read this in school and still hate it trying to read it as an adult. I am convinced the reason people call this such a great novel is solely because they have heard someone say that, and then look at the clean, big-worded language of the novel and how he does a bunch of memes they heard about in English lit and think "I HAVE TO enjoy this".

I guess he's not THAT bad throughout. Its readable. I look over the quotes from this novel and they leave me with something, and then I look back to Shakespeare or the willow tree scene from 1984 and think how the FUCK is this a masterpiece? Anyone with half a brain could make these seasonal analogies and evoke the same fucking...

[Anonymous No.18790022]

>>18790007
filtered

[soursore !!5HEGfvI0zIR No.18790027]

Almost every book I read in Honor's English, this included, was dull. Teacher's gonna teach dull. They get off on it.

except for picrel. That was a good one, (unabridged)

[Anonymous No.18790059]

>>18790007
It's better than 5 of 7 you named

[Anonymous No.18790163]

>>18790059
I'll be fair with Mary Shelley in that she is a personal favorite because of reasons that have to do with my own life and how she inspired other people.

Hemingway is better than Fitzgerald. He doesn't have to use $5 words to produce imagery, induce feelings, and drive an actually interesting story
Alduous Huxley is better than Hemingway. I admit I haven't gotten far with BNW, but its a fascinating world that he creates and he has interesting ideas.
Orwell's 1984, basically same thing as BNW with the world and ideas and shit. I liked the part about the nudity and willows. Its a little less impressive when I read it a second time (I don't know why it had such an impression on me the first time, but there's that), but its still pretty good and if I compare it to Fitzegarald's shit about the sun there's a clear winner.

Clockwork Orange, though Burgess seems to hate it, is pretty fun to read. I would think I'd hate his fictional slang, but for some reason it works really well and I find that impressive. Much more impressive than Gatsby.

[Anonymous No.18790183]

>>18790007
There is a reason so many basic bitches who want to appear smart say this is their favorite book. It's easily digestible and the theme is transparent

[Anonymous No.18790206]

>>18790183
I don't get how its "easily digestible" at all. The language seems boring and kinda dense to me. There are much easier reads.

[Anonymous No.18790219]

>>18790007
Filtered

[Anonymous No.18790221]

>>18790163
>I'll be fair with Mary Shelley in that she is a personal favorite because of reasons that have to do with my own life and how she inspired other people.
Oh god this sentence is awful.... I like Mary Shelley because she essentially created the mad scientist and I have a strange autistic obsession with mad scientists. Basically all I meant to say.

[Anonymous No.18790222]

>>18790007
>How can people read the Great Gatsby and think this shit even approaches Mary Shelley or Hemingway, let alone someone like Aldous Huxley or George Orwell, LET EVEN MORE ALONE someone like A. Burgess or Shakespeare?
t. currently in high school

[Anonymous No.18790256]

>>18790222
>I'm in highschool because I mention a bunch of very popular authors for the purpose of comparing them to The Great Gatsby and how it doesn't deserve its spot among have-to-read lists.
>I'm in highschool because I talk at all about Great Gatsby
Okay then.

[Anonymous No.18790449]

Alright fine.
Fine

I had actually already looked up another book on Wikipedia that was considered "one of the greatest novels" and I was trying to verify if this book (les Miserables if you must know) was really "up there" or whatever... Just an unquestioned or near-unquestioned classic above almost all else. Then I realized what I was doing was a fucking meme, I didn't have good search terms, and it was just returning shit like Gatsby and got fucking mad.
The results looked like highschool English lit recommendations that I guess are just put up to encourage highschoolers/middleschoolers to study garbage like Gatsby.

So yes, I sound like a highschooler. I sound like a highschooler complaining about course work because I'm annoyed that Gatsby really is memed about this fucking hard when I never liked it. Usually, when someone says whatthefuckever is the greatest whatthefuckever, I do end up as one of the sheep who enjoy it, but not Gatsby. I hate Gatsby. I can't get through Gatsby. It literally makes me feel tired and no, its not because I can't read his writing. Its because its so, so boring to me.

So, now I'm frustrated because I realize that finding the next piece of writing to read isn't that simple, I can't verify the reputation of the book I was originally looking up (let alone... well this is off-topic), and I realized that trying to verify this sort of thing to begin with is fucking stupid. People will just say shit.

[Anonymous No.18790487]

>>18790449

[Anonymous No.18790521]

>>18790449
Yikes

[Anonymous No.18790550]

>>18790256
I'm not your boy but you literally did the greatest hits of early-mid 20c normie lit. The fact that your mind goes there for comparisons shows how shallow of a reader you are.
I prescribe manhattan transfer by john dos passos - go read and get a bit more cultured.

[Anonymous No.18790559]

>>18790007
haven't read shellley but it's better than any hemingway i've read. amazing you call it boring but then suggest it should be more like hemingway
i like hemingway btw, but there's no denying his stuff can get dull

[Anonymous No.18790563]

>>18790007
>let alone someone like Aldous Huxley or George Orwell

[Anonymous No.18790588]

>I lost focus
>I guess
>I am convinced
>I HAVE TO enjoy this
>I'll be fair with Mary Shelley in that she is a personal favorite because of reasons that have to do with my own life and how she inspired other people.
>I admit I haven't gotten far with BNW
>I realized what I was doing was a fucking meme
>I didn't have good search terms
>I got fucking mad
>I can't get through Great Gatsby
>I am frustrated
>I can't verify the reputation of the book I was trying to look up
>this is off-topic
Take your meds.

[Anonymous No.18790635]

>>18790559
It can, but Gatsby is dull in a different way.

>>18790550
Maybe. I have also been trying to work through Crime and Punishment lately. I guess that's also a meme, though. I bought Infinite Jest some years ago, but can't really get through it. To be honest, I do rarely finish books, so only the ones I've heard most consistently memed about get read by me and actually I haven't even fucking finished any of them.

Still, I was trying to deliberately list popular works. I don' t fucking know... I can write creatively, but I barely ever read and I think any semblance of deep reading ability I would've had as a child/teen is going now. I feel like I should read because I'm a writer and have a story - an entire novel even - that I want to write and that I can only write as a novel. I don't think anyone would be able to finish my story though, just like how I can't finish reading a single book. That's too lonely for me... I want to actually have people read and talk about my writing, even if its not bringing me income or getting really super popular.

>>18790487
Yeah, so, this thread is garbage and a product of my own stressed out neuroticism.

[Anonymous No.18790641]

God I really... please let this thread die. I need to stop looking at this thread. OK. I'm done. I'm gonna leave after this post.

[Anonymous No.18790702]

>>18790635
Well that's a common problem. You do need to read to be a decent writer though: would you want to pay for car repairs if the mechanic told you "well i've never really learned how the engine worked. I can put one together well, but i barely ever look under the hood and i think any semblance of deep mechanics knowledge i would have had as a trainee is going now."
No, you wouldn't. But that's a great thing. You have so many good books to read and reader's/writer's epiphanies to undergo before you write something that's truly valuable. Don't see it as "reading a book," see it as having a conversation with a person long dead. I actually like orwell. I find him to be a hilarious, smart, loving, caring and perfectly articulate person. His writing speaks to me 60-80 yrs after he died - he's a kind of friend. He can teach you things, like how to distil complex ideas into clean, clear prose. How to inject humour into a bleak, perpetually apocalyptic government nightmare. He can tell you what's valuable about politics, and suggest there are other things worth caring about. You don't have to like him, though.
Read until you find a great friend, someone you're willing to hang out with for 10-55 hours. It'll take a while, but libraries are a game changer.

Back to fitzgerald: i find him a great friend. He's endearingly corny, he understood his society, he understood people well enough to invent one sentence that turns a one dimensional character into a three dimensional one who hold a facade to the world, he tells me what's so important about the past - not the historical past, the past as a black hole that hovers around you until you're too weak to run away from it and get sucked into it - and the final chapter of gatsby is one of the saddest moments in all of literature to me, because we're friends who can talk to eachother about the past. Get a library card and make a good friendship.

I love you, lil nigga.

[Anonymous No.18790724]

>>18790641
cope

[Anonymous No.18790727]

>>18790635
Short story collections, my dude

[Anonymous No.18791009]

>>18790183
Describe to us the theme of The Great Gatsby.

[Anonymous No.18791053]

>>18790027
This was good. Had to write an essay on it. In my mind I was like "holy shit this Anglo is PUNCHING NIGGERS!"
But I meticulously wrote the dumbest niggeriest essay I could possibly write. I wrote monosyllabic MTV commericals promoting Tyler The Creator and how the power of ONE is showed in that Tyler is special because the media found him and said so just like athletes. Teacher gave me an A plus and talked to me like I had a disability from then on. Her daughter developed a crush on me. But it was too niggery for me to get past a conflicted hug with her. She had wonderful flowery prose and erudite biting hatred of niggery media but was a raging leftist. Out of some self abdication she hugged me and kissed my cheek barely missing my lips. If I had written essays and spoken as I think I would have been villified and failed.

[Meanposting for fun No.18791071]

>>18790256
Read Carrol Quigley and put down the Harry Potter. Youre not even ready for Kevin McDonald or E Michael Hussein Mubarak Mohammad Al Jones or Nicolas Suleiman Erturgul Shakbey Taleb or Schopenfloppen or Swedenborg or Rene Guenon. Dont even bother starting with the greeks. Just watch sniff the halls at Barnes and Noble

[Anonymous No.18791175]

>>18790702
Actually a good comment.
Read, OP.

[Gatsby didnt Greenlight himsel(...) No.18791194]

>>18790007
You read it quickly and easily, faggot OP. You dont read Shakespeare quickly unless youre a student cramming for test. Gatsby is enjoyable airport reading. The symbols and lively huwhite early century WASP aesthetic are the iconic hallmarks of the piece that make it a standstill and one of a kind treasure.

[Anonymous No.18791208]

>>18790007
how come this is STILL not in the public domain, what's wrong with americans

[Anonymous No.18791391]

>>18791208
Time
We lub you op

[Anonymous No.18791570]

>>18790163
She didn't even write Frankenstein and her later works are barely readable. Read Falkner or Lodore or Mathilda.

Hemingway is marginally better, but he's not very interesting.
Brave New World is significantly better, yes.
No, Orwell is easily the worst of the bunch. He's a horrific writer, if that.

Yes, Burgess is significantly better, especially his later works. I liked One Hand Clapping too.

1. Burgess
2. Huxley
3. Hemingway
4. Fitzgerald
5. Shelley
6. Orwell

[Anonymous No.18791776]

>>18790007
If this isn’t ironic than you got seriously filtered

[Anonymous No.18791795]

>>18790163
>He doesn't have to use $5 words to produce imagery
Nobody outside of AP English is impressed with this generic “insight”
Also Huxley and fucking Clockwork Orange are so wildly different than Fitzgerald and Hemingway idk why you would go there. It sounds like you just like postmodern books and/or genre fiction over realism

[Anonymous No.18791911]

>>18790007
>Gatsby
>big-worded language

[Anonymous No.18791989]

>>18790022
Yep. I felt like posting something but there's nothing much to add. fpbp

[Anonymous No.18792012]

>>18791208
It's been in the public domain for seven months.

[Anonymous No.18792014]

>>18790007
Graduate high-school before posting

[Anonymous No.18792056]

>>18790163
>use $5 words to produce imagery
The shit. Fitzgerald isn't exactly purple?

>>18790007
The first sentence shows it clearly. He's describing efficiently, without being showy about cutting his vocab like Hemmingway is. Adding his "more vulnerable years" is not empty, it's literally setting the ground for a major theme of the book, making the reader more receptive.

Of the following sentences, you write that there is no characterization, but the tone you so object to is literally the characterization of the narrator - communicating his class background, current social circle and education by implication.

That you apparently "lost focus" mid sentence when the author went above fifteen words is just embarrassing. Have you considered sticking with YA?

[Anonymous No.18793423]

>>18792056
OP btfo brilliantly

[Anonymous No.18793493]

Most people aren't autists who care about how everything is phrased and described, the strength of a book comes from its ideas and settings. The Great Gatsby is just the only famous social drama from the Roaring 20's and it has a mildly interesting plot, that's it.

[Anonymous No.18793501]

>>18790007
Seems like you're reacting strongly to the character and voice from the first few lines of the book... In other words, it's an effective opening?

[Anonymous No.18793618]

>>18792056
this

[Anonymous No.18793894]

>>18790206
Like picture books? How much easier does it get?

[Anonymous No.18794124]

>>18790007
you perfectly put into words the feelings of a frustrated brainlet who desperately wants to become well-read and has the potential to do so but refuses. you aren't alone though anon, keep learning