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/lit/ - Literature

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3636037 No.3636037 [Reply] [Original]

Eurofag here.
Sorry for another Great Gatsby thread.
Do you have to be an American to fully appreciate this book? Apart from the prose I honestly can't see any reason why this book is considered 'classsic' for you.

And I really hope I wasn't supposed to feel ANY sympathy for Gatsby.

>> No.3636055

>>3636037
i'm not american and i thought great gatsby was ingenious

>> No.3636057

because it's shit

>> No.3636059

>>3636037
You're supposed to loathe him and realize that he's the failure of the American Dream.

>> No.3636061

I think a lot of people fail to see that Daisy and Tom essentially and accidentally kill each other's lovers and then walk away from the mess totally unfazed by it.

It's an excellently crafted plot.

>> No.3636063

>>3636059

I think that's pushing it too far.

When I finished it I thought that he was an asshole but I respected his love for Daisy and the ammount of trouble he went through just to be worthy of her.

>> No.3636074

>>3636063
>the ammount of trouble he went through just to be worthy of her.

He was an epitome of a creepy, selfish 'nice guy'. I was glad he died.

>> No.3636081

It's certainly an American book. If America was removed from the context of the story it wouldn't work nearly as well. I'm not sure you HAVE TO BE AMERICAN, but I think you have to realize that this book is an evaluation of American morals. There's more to it that other nationalities can appreciate, but at its core it's about the income and social gaps. Just because you come into money doesn't mean you are at the top of the world.

Gatsby isn't the protagonist of the book. In a way, yeah he is, but consider Nick as the character with development. He's viewing what's happening to Gatsby and it's changing him. The book got a lot better when I stopped viewing Nick as a vehicle and started viewing him as a character.

>> No.3636109

People actually read this shit outside of 7th grade Language arts? Really???

>> No.3636110

>>3636037
>apart from the prose
i feel ashamed to be european, right now.

>> No.3636116

OP, I don't think you realize how fucking good Fitzgerald's prose is. It singlehandedly kept purple prose alive for another couple decades. I think it's more than just purple prose however, PP has a negative connotation where you don't like what you read because it's so distracting. Gatsby on the other hand is a pleasure to read. My eyes love it. My mind loves it.

>> No.3636118

>>3636116
> It singlehandedly kept purple prose alive for another couple decades

I want to correct myself before people jump down my throat. This is in context of his work as a whole. Gatsby obviously wasn't a success when it came out.

>> No.3636126

>Apart from the prose

To be fair it might be the most beautiful book ever written

>> No.3636142

TGG has really good prose, but I've read better. Plus, those books had PLOTS! I know, it's silly to want a book with a plot, but that's how some people feel. Narrative, with developments.

>> No.3636144

All right we should stop sucking the giant Fitzgerald dick of prose. Damn is it good though.

The problem with the plot lies in the fact that EVERY character is a terrible person. Gatsby has a LITTLE bit of humanity in him (Nick even acknowledges this, but Nick is a pretty bad guy too). Most of the characters read like cliches or poorly thought out characters. You read something they do and you ask "who would do that in her shoes?" I suppose the extremity of what happens is meant to underlie the fact that everybody's a dick, but there's gotta be somebody to like other than Gatsby. Nick fails in that regard, I think Fitzgerald fucked up in writing Carraway because he created a hypocritical observer that refrained from judging yet judged everybody in the whole damn ordeal.

I like little snippets of the book. Scenes and dialogues are good. It's the story that's bad. It's the wikipedia/cliffnotes/ plot summary that's bad. The actions these characters do are just ridiculous and you end up liking none of them. Hell, the most likable character is Daisy's child and we barely know she existed.

>> No.3636150

>>3636109
If /lit/ were a simpson's character it would be a board full of ralphs.

>> No.3636151

>>3636150
To be fair, "I choo-choo-choose you" is a pretty cool valentine card and a smart word pun.

>> No.3636153

>>3636142

I don't know how you can argue that it doesn't have a plot. Multiple deaths and murders, lots of parties and drinking, illicit relationships, and continual exposition on background stories and such.

Also any statement that goes "X has really good X, but I've Xed better" is fairly ridiculous.

>> No.3636156

>>3636151
only if its a valentines card based on pokemon and trains?

>> No.3636157

>>3636144
>I think Fitzgerald fucked up in writing Carraway because he created a hypocritical observer that refrained from judging yet judged everybody in the whole damn ordeal.
that was clearly intentional though

>> No.3636158

>>3636151

I want to bee your friend. :D

>> No.3636164

>>3636037
The blurb on the back of my copy of "The Great Gatsby" describes it as a "literary masterpiece." Can anyone explain to me how it is a "literary masterpiece" if it indeed is one? I also don't see how it captures the Jazz Age.

>> No.3636163

>>3636144

I mean, isn't the point of the book that they are all awful and sordid? And to me, it's also about how much you can enjoy reading about them, and how much you can relate to them, while they're being awful people, that really gives it weight.

If you need virtuous characters alone to enjoy a book, there are plenty of them out there for you, but Gatsby does something special by highlighting the vanity, arrogance and sensationalism that are all invariably tied to human nature.

>> No.3636166

>>3636144
>EVERY character is a terrible person
Gatsby's father seemed like an ok bloke.

>> No.3636176

What the fuck? Gatsby is far from an asshole. He's was a self-made millionaire with great ambition, self-discipline, and all that jazz. Gatsby was just a victim in all of it, old sport.

>> No.3636192

>>3636176

Nice job trying to spark the argument, but I can't think of a planet in which Gatsby wouldn't be considered a self-serving dick. As the epicenter of the plot, he finds that having money and "discipline" won't always get him what he wants, poor victim.

But he's also vane, self-obsessed, and dangerously delusional. He will go to any lengths and use any "friends" he can to get closer to a woman who is truly rotten to the core, just because she basically represents everything he wanted but couldn't have when he was poor.

>> No.3636200

>>3636176

Also, you can't call Gatsby a victim of it all when he's the one who started it all.

>> No.3636207

>>3636144
>reading books for likeable characters
go back to ASOIAF, will ya?

>> No.3636218

>>3636144
>>3636144
>I missed the point of the book completely.

>> No.3636225

>>Do you have to be an American to fully appreciate this book?

I dunno; I'm an American and I just sort of shrugged when I finished reading this. But then I have that reaction to lots of books that are supposed to be a big deal for whatever reason.

>> No.3636232

>>3636225
Protip: that doesn't make you a unique special snowflake, it makes you a moron.

>> No.3636233

>>3636200
Call it perpetrator or call it victim, in the end it's a product of circumstance.

>> No.3636243

>>3636232
It doesn't. Masterful writing is no better than masterful tennis skill in that to appreciate it, you must simply find it enjoyable. Enjoying to draw parallels and understand metaphors doesn't make a person better or worse than anyone else. It just means you're entertained by it.

>> No.3636260

I just finished reading this in my english class and... It was just boring. Everyone loves it and it's considered a classic but it had the worst characters and no appeal. I don't care about the metaphors or how great it reflects the 20s. The book made me want to fucking die.

>> No.3636268

>>3636260
Man, everyone hates reading because your teacher tells you to. More than that, nobody wants to fucking hear about it. Your high school life is of no interest to anyone but yourself and maybe >>>/adv/

>> No.3636269

>>3636225
Relax, my dear Mr. Prolapsis- who said anything about unique special snowflakes? Just mentioning a reaction to the book under discussion. What are you feeling a need to defend (and why are you feeling threatened)?

>> No.3636279

>>3636260

an hero

>> No.3636284

>>3636074
R u a feminist?

>> No.3636285

I thought the plot was alright, but the quality of the prose and character development varied hugely
It's a good book, but it doesn't deserve the praise it gets

>> No.3636297

Well, it IS a book that puts itself solely in an American context.

>> No.3636317

That reminds me, you do have to be American to appreciate Pynchon. That's why he will never win the nobel prize.

>> No.3636382

>>3636317
No, you have to be an alien to properly appreciate Pynchon.

>> No.3636409

Do you have to be a 17th century Frenchman to fully appreciate The Three Musketeers?

>> No.3636427

>>3636192
>your second paragraph

This is why I don't get some literary discussion. Everything has to be at the extremes doesn't it?

>vane, self-obsessed, and dangerously delusional

No m8, he was just a motivated guy. Why is it bad to be vain?