F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby (1926)
Novel – 190 pages – my copy (paperback; 1974) bought for £2.25 from the Beardie Bookshop on Plymouth Barbican, sometime in 2006
- 4 nods out of 5 -
‘You’ve read all of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s books
Yes, you’re well read it is well known…’
(Bob Dylan, Ballad of a Thin Man, 1965)
The Great Gatsby is hailed as a bona-fide all American classic. It figures in top ten lists of the twentieth century and remains F. Scott Fitzgerald’s most famous creation. But what, apart from the odd film adaptation (with a new Hollywood blockbuster-to-be in the works), does anyone know about Gatsby?
The novel follows the narrator, Nick Carraway, as he becomes involved with his intriguing, mysterious neighbour: Jay Gatsby. Nick charts a love triangle involving Gatsby, the never ending parties and the famed jazz mentality of the age. On the face of it, The Great Gatsby is a novel about nothing in particular. But it has an ace card: it is fantastically written.
It shares many similarities with the Worm’s previous review, William Faulkner’s The Sound & The Fury: both are early twentieth century creations, noting a passing age in an awkward fear of what the future will bring. But Fitzgerald’s characters mean much less to us than the likes of Faulkner’s Compson family; they are throw-aways, mere colour on the larger canvass.
And it is this lack of a striking theme that is The Great Gatsby's downfall. It will continue to strike up notches in the top ten lists, but when compared with the likes of true 5 nodders, it is noticeably dwarfed.
However, credit to Fitzgerald's fantastic control of prose. Many examples could be pulled from the book’s minimal pages. But the best is perhaps that saved for last, the final paragraph of The Great Gatsby:
‘So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.’
