So we beat on--

[trinityofone]

Today I am supposed to: write my Great Gatsby essay.

Today I have:

1) Managed a vague outline of my Great Gatsby essay while mostly looking over various bits of the book and sobbing, sobbing, because no book ever has or does move me like this one; it tears me apart and I am totally inadequate to the task of explaining why.

2) Eaten a sandwich.

But seriously, regarding 1)--I maintain and will continue to maintain that Gatsby is the greatest novel ever written, packing more into less than 200 pages than what others can manage in nearly 2,000 (and I have read War and Peace, so I know *g*). I cry every time I read it (and when I'm reviewing my notes to write an essay on it, apparently). Those of you who have read it: does it effect you in the same way? The class I'm writing the essay for is an American Lit class taught at an Irish university; the tutor has stressed that she thinks the novel highlights American themes--do you think that's true? I would say that the themes of Gatsby--trying to recapture the past, yearning to be known, loved--are universal. But then I am American, so I could be projecting. We do that.

What's your favorite book of all time? What book has moved you more than any other?

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_inbetween_/]

Hm. Just because I thought about this recently: maybe it's American in the way you and many other writers are in its evocation of rural childhood, as you said, recapturing the past - using the past as defining oneself, though I only remember the gas station from the book and thinking it was more important then Redford in the film.

[trinityofone.livejournal.com]

I have never seen the film, but from what I've heard, it's blasphemously, even sacrilegiously bad. Suffice to say: Redford is not my Gatsby.

it's American in...its evocation of rural childhood, as you said, recapturing the past - using the past as defining oneself

Hmm. And do you think that's a distinctly American thing? I'm honestly curious.

[dar-jeeling.livejournal.com]

no book ever has or does move me like this one; it tears me apart
It does? Lately, I've been searching for books like that because I'm missing the emotional impact certain fics have on me (e.g. In the City of Seven Walls). Or maybe that's because all the books I've read in the last weeks were crap, I don't know.

[trinityofone.livejournal.com]

It really, really does. Probably the two works that have effected and influenced me the most are Gatsby and the poetry of T.S. Eliot. You should really give Gatsby a shot. Just...not when you're feeling emotionally vulnerable or hormonal or anything. ;-)

[mandysbitch.livejournal.com]

Those of you who have read it: does it effect you in the same way?

No. I found it kind of clunky. I read it recently, actually. I liked it a *lot* but I'm not in love with it. It made me think of architecture - I'm a big fan of architecture. And it was a good era for architecture.

I like the way no one in the book "says" anything. It's always "exclaimed" or "remarked" or "cried" - all the things they tell you not to do in writing class. And yet - I kind of liked it. It gives this melodramatic appeal to everyone's actions - made them larger than life.

I was comparing it to the Brett Euston Ellis (because the Rules of Attraction is like the last fiction book I read - reading fuck all lately) whose style is so succinct and brief. No comparison, really, but I think the 'lifestyles of the young, rich and bored' idea is kind of similar. There's an essay in that somewhere...

My favourite book of all time: Lady Hackett's Household Guide. Indispensable.

[cereta.livejournal.com]

I liked it, but I can't say it moved me all that much. I do think there's something about the book that's uniquely American, more in the setting and the feel than perhaps the themes. The story might translate to other cultures, but it would be different, if only because social class is such a large part of the book.

And you know, I don't really have a favorite book. Or, perhaps, I have favorites at the moment ;). I tend towards genre reading, and Stephen King is my favorite author (shocking for an English Ph.D., I know). I think that The Dead Zone and The Shining are the kinds of "tell me something new every time I read them" novels that I adore.

For sheer emotional power, I'm going to go with a non-fiction book: Mikal Gilmore's Shot in the Heart. There's a section in that, and a final line of that section, that never fails to break my heart.

[wychwood]

I haven't read The Great Gatsby, but it sounds deeply depressing, which is usually a negative from my perspective as a reader... I may have to look for it, though. Cannot, in any case, comment on themes.

My favourite book of all time: almost certainly Good Omens.
Moved me: There's quite a few. To Kill A Mockingbird and The Sparrow are two. Hmm, inadvertent bird-theme there *g*.

[trinityofone.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm not going to lie and say that Gatsby is a cheerfest, but it's not depressing the way, say, Ethan Frome or Tess of the d'Urbervilles is depressing--it's not one of those books where the characters keep making one stupid, wrong choice after another, ultimately dooming them. I hate that kind of book. No, Gatsby is genuinely tragic--bad things happen to good people, but for reasons that make (horrible, brutal) sense; and yet, and yet...there's still hope. Somehow. Maybe.

I'm...not really selling this, am I?

And hey, did you look down the rest of this thread? You totally started a trend with Mockingbird. *g*

[siria]

Well, I think you've probably guessed from my efforts at recitation that my favourite is Pride and Prejudice. I love it with an unreasoning and possibly illegal glee.

*is capping 111 Grammercy Park* I've totally figured out who that guy was, by the way. It was a nearly unrecognisable Jonathan Brandis. We just didn't know who he was because, you know, he was past puberty.

[trinityofone.livejournal.com]

There are a lot of ways in which I think P&P is a much healthier choice. You need to read Gatsby, however.

Jesus, did you see Jonathan Brandis' page on imdb? He killed himself that very same year. That has...implications that really, really freak me out.

[smittywing.livejournal.com]

I have not read the Great Gatsby in years but I have to get a new copy before I do, because the one I have is going to go to pieces the second I turn past the first page. I agree that it's very American, not necessarily in the themes you cited, but in the way it presents them - through greed and laziness. Jay making himself rich to win Daisy's affections and the inherent ennui. (Of course I never dealt with Gatsby in a class. I read it in preparation for the AP English test and our teacher was having a difficult enough time just getting everyone to read Huck Finn.)

My favorite book of all time is To Kill a Mockingbird. Not, actually, for the Tom Robinson plot, although that's certainly very historically American, or for Boo Radley and his misunderstood existence. I have pitifully ovarian love for Atticus Finch trying to bring up his children "right" in a town that is not as educated or as idealistic as he is. It seems to be a book about what in life is worth fighting for and what can be let go.

[20thcenturyvole.livejournal.com]

Huh. I read The Great Gatsby one year in English, and it never touched me at all. I just couldn't feel anything for these people. Their dramas seemed self-made and self-involved, to me, and like Wuthering Heights I spent a majority of my time wishing to slap everyone. I'm very unforgiving, I think. *nervous look*

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, now that, that moved me. Not McMurphy so much, who seems out for himself more than anything else, but the other inmates: Billy Bibbit, paralysed and eventually killed by his insecurity; Harding, with his delicate, fluttering hands that he traps between his knees, punishing himself for his effeminancy; and Chief Broom, the narrator, actually insane but canny, in his own way, well-meaning, stuck on the memory of his Papa drinking himself to death after the white men took their land away. I love the images his hallucinations conjure (the machines in the walls, the terrible fog, sitting in a picture to get away from it all), and the end scene and final line - I been away a long time - always hit me really hard.

The book with my favourite themes, though, is The Lord of the Rings. They're not ordinary themes, either, and they tend to get overlooked by people who roll their eyes at fantasy. It's about desperation, and hope, and struggling on even when there's no hope left and all you want to do is curl up and die (the last half of Return of the King is heavy as hell); that it's better to be sensible than it is to be ambitious; that just because you're not as grand as everyone else doesn't mean you can be easily conquered, or that you get to let other people fight for you; that change comes, for better or worse, and sometimes it sweeps you along and sometimes it leaves you behind, but in the end, you just have to have faith, in whatever it takes to get you through. It's huge and incredible, and I always love reading even just random bits, because in addition to all that it has some of the most powerful, mesmerising writing I've ever come across.

There, see? Ask about books, you get gushy essays like this. Serves you right. ;P

[niennah.livejournal.com]

I read Gatsby in English class years ago. I really loved it. I found it very moving, delicately beautiful. Sad because I think in the end the beauty counted for nothing. I think that's one of the reasons we think of it as American, though that might reflect poorly on our idea of America. Beautiful and hollow. (That sounds bad. I don't mean to say I think of America that way. It's just the my reading of the book.)

There are of course recognisably universal themes as well, such as Gatsby's yearning for Daisy, but the novel is so grounded in American life that it's difficult (for me, anyway) to think of it as other than a specifically American novel.

And another thought that's just occurred to me. That kind of hollow beauty is something that in English (or Anglo-Irish) literature would be associated with the aristocracy (cf. Oscar Wilde). Fitzgerald associates it with the self-made man and shows us that in America men can enter that world of high class leisure in a manner impossible in middle-class Europe. That is a very American Dream theme.

Anyway, I'll stop going on about it.

Does Stephen Matterson teach your American Lit. class? I mean the lectures rather than the tutorials. I always think he is the spitting image of Richard Dreyfuss.

Books I love:
Provinces of Night by William Gay. The prose is so perfect. My favourite storyline in the book follows Boyd who is out to get his wife back by killing her lover. The rest of the story I can take or leave, honestly, but the quality of the prose makes it so moving.

Fateless (or Fatelessness, depending on translation) by Imre Kertesz. It's an account of a 14 year old's experience in a concentration camp. It's unbelievable in the power of its language (even in translation). It's an indescribable book.

[roaringmice.livejournal.com]

That, to me, is exactly why this book is so American. It's not that many of the themes in it aren't universal, it's that some of the themes, the strongest ones, are so American.

I do differ on one point - the superficiality, the beauty and the hollowness you describe is not uniquely American - that's one of the universal themes. But it's those ideas wrapped with the use of the very American "self-made man" that is the crux of the novel, and which makes it a novel that would have been unable to be produced in any other country, at any other time - and yet also helps it to remain timeless.

[chopchica.livejournal.com]

It's easily To Kill a Mockingbird. So much said in such a short amount of space, and Scout is so wonderfully vivid and real. She knows her heart and mind and follows them both. I don't even need to go into why I adore Atticus Finch, because I'm sure there are entire dissertations out there on the subject.

What always fascinated me about the book is that Harper Lee never wrote anything else again, and shunned all publicity. She told the story because it was a story she had to tell - which is very unlike most other writing out there.

It's beautiful and moving and it'd certainly be on my desert island list.

I also have a lot of love for Barbara Kingsolver's Animal Dreams, but it's nowhere near the amount of love I have for To Kill a Mockingbird.

[rensreality101.livejournal.com]

Apparently I am running with smittywing and wychwood in my mad love for "To Kill a Mockingbird".

"Gatsby" is just so sad. I prefer "Tender is the Night" mainly because it ends on a more positive note...sort of...there is a feeling of triumph (okay, okay, maybe just survival) at the end that is missing from "Gatsby".

As for American themes...I am confused which themes are supposed to be distinctly American.

I have always thought 'Gatsby' read more like the dark side of a Regency-style romance novel. Gatsby is never going to fit in the 'ton' and while Daisy might entertain herself with him, she is never going to toss aside her position in society for him.

(And too, we see the characters through Nick's eyes and he is both involved with events and at the same time distanced from them. Sometimes it is hard for me to tell what is really there and what Nick puts there)

But take my opinions with a grain of salt since my favorite books list contains things like 'The Maltese Falcon', 'I, the Jury' and 'The Regiment'. (grin)

[turtlespeaks.livejournal.com]

The Great Gatsby makes me incredibly angry. I seethe when I read it, mostly because of Daisy. It's one of the most excellent books I've ever read, and my love for both Gatsby and Nick is great, but I can't read it without grinding my teeth. It's hard to explain, but something about the situation, the ending, and characters makes me so angry at everything.

I hate it because I think it's one of the most amazing books ever written, and if I didn't care, I don't think it would effect me half so much.

My overall favorite book is probably THE Hobbit, because it's the kinda book that touched me so well when I was very young, and I've never stopped loving it.

The book that moved me the most was actually a play. I ended up throwing The Crucible across the room in anger and disgust over the events. It's such a great book about the faults, betrayals, and disgusting depths of the human soul. Gah.

[trinityofone.livejournal.com]

Actually, I completely know what you mean about Gatsby making you angry, because it makes me angry, too. Daisy infuriates me. I kind of want to strangle her. In the end, I think I hate her more than Tom.

I think a problem that a lot of people have with the book is that they expect it to be a more traditional romance--they want Gatsby and Daisy to "get together." And I had those instincts, too, especially when I was young, but with each successive reread, I more and more want to scream at Gatsby to run run run RUN AWAY. (Possibly with Nick--stupid slash goggles, once you put them on, you CANNOT take them off!) So as a love story, yes, the book is infuriating. As a tragedy, it's beautiful and perfect and it wrenches my heart in the best possible way.

As for the other stuff...I never had that reaction to The Hobbit, but there are other books from my childhood (E. Nesbit!) about which I definitely have similar feelings. And I really need to read The Crucible. *shame*

[soho-iced.livejournal.com]

I read Gatsby years ago and am now inspired to re-read, something I'm pretty terrible at on the whole. I remember it as powerful and haunting, describing a situation and characters that couldn't really exist outside a particular time and place, so that the book as a whole was powerfully evocative of that time. Hence "American", but not for any other reason.

The Earthsea series by Ursula le Guin has got to be one of my top few. Two equally important themes seem to be both experiencing far away lands and cultures and the (slow, painful) process of maturing as a person. Some people I spoke to hated the fourth book, Tehanu, because it was so different - not much magic and even less travel - but I thought it was an appropriate coda to the series for that reason.

Also the Long and Short Sun series by Gene Wolf, though these took a while to get into. Silk comes off as such an amiable idiot of a protagonist at the start that it takes a long time to realise what an exceptional person he is, especially because the first series is largely from his point of view.

[janne-d.livejournal.com]

Did you see that Hayao Miyazaki's son is doing an animated version of The Farthest Shore for Studio Ghibli? Could be interesting (and it has to be better than the SciFi live action *shudders*)

[inthekeyofd.livejournal.com]

I liked Gatsby, and you are right, it does pack quite the punch in such little amount of pages.

Favorite book, see, it's something about the theme, something that totally grips me, like Homer's The Odyssey, that theme of trying to get home, trying to find your home, that's why it's my favorite. But I love Steinbeck as well, and sometimes by top two books are actually tied, just depends on my mood.

[roaringmice.livejournal.com]

My favorite book of all time? Actually, it's the first few novels in "The Tales of the City" series by Armistead Maupin. Have you read it? It was originally published as a newspaper serial in San Fransico in the 1970's, and so has a very punchy, gripping feel to it - once you start reading, you can't put it down. It's a comedy, a tragedy, and a view into lifestyles that no longer exist. Really facinating.

The book that has moved me more than any other? That's hard to pick. "Brideshead Revisited" by Evelyn Waugh is one I re-read again and again. That'd have to be up there.

But perhaps "Ordinary People" by Judith Guest. I read it when I was young, and thought it was all about the son. Then I read it again when I was older, and I realised that wasn't it at all.

Other books that have resonated with me:

- The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell. Killer, killer, and deep, and unexpected.
- The Soloist, by Mark Salzman. A cellist, a former child prodigy, has to come to terms with the fact that he's no longer gifted.
- Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman. The book seems to be about this - the protagonist falls into "London Below", perhaps another dimension. But shards of "London Above" keep piercing through, and I was left wondering about what is and isn't reality.

[trinityofone.livejournal.com]

I haven't read any of the other books that you mention (although most of them have been rec'd to me many times, so I really should), but I had to jump in with a yelp because after Gatsby, Neverwhere is probably my favorite book of all time. I love it for how vivid it makes London, both Above and Below, and for its amazing combination of mystery and adventure and humor--all the wonderful Gaimanesque things. But more and more I have come to love it for Richard, who is lost and finds himself. (Something not unconnected to Gatsby, I must pause and scratch my head and add.)

two cents

[cincodemaygirl.livejournal.com]

Apparently we are literature opposites, as I loathe Gatsby and most all of T.S. Eliot [I know, I know! He's talented, but I am v annoyed by the deliberate obfuscatation; I prefer my poetry straightforward - W.H. Auden is my favorite]. If you love Heart of Darkness we'll truly be at odds.

As for books that move me, all of these turn me to a puddle:

The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien
Lord of the Flies, William Golding
Beloved, Toni Morrison [though I haven't really enjoyed her other books, no idea why]

And some of my comfort books - these really resonate with me but don't lead to tears:

Beauty, Robin McKinley
The Diary of Anne Frank
Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen
The Color Purple, Alice Walker

[claire.livejournal.com]

I am very uncultured, so my crying when attempting to read Gatsby is for a totally different reason ;)

No, seriously, I kind of liked it but that was about it. I am not American, though, so perhaps your tutor has something there.

My favourite book of all time, hmmm, would be really hard to choose. Joe Haldeman's Forever War, probably, but Heinlein's Starship Troopers and Stranger in A Strange Land would be strong contenders, too.

[stillane.livejournal.com]

I really need to revist Gatsby. I read it for a class that wasn't very open to interpretation, and wound up beating my head against the wall to express my own ideas on the text. Now that it's been a few years, I may be more able to appreciate it for its own sake. I do recall rather liking it, underneath the frustration. No tears, but the (anti-)resolution left me breathless.

Another in the same catagory is All the King's Men. I think I would be a bit in love with that one, were I to read it again.

I'll jump on the bandwagon and say my favorite 'serious' book is To Kill a Mockingbird. Aside from my unnatural adoration of Atticus, I love the balance between what a child takes in and what floats along on the surface of her observations, waiting for her to grow into them.

The three books that travel everywhere with me, however, are far less 'noble', but best-loved: Good Omens, Lamb, and Maniac Magee. The first is self-evident. The second is the way I pretend the Bible meant to be. The third is the story of my childhood, told as legend.

Thus proving once and for all I'm a dork, but possibly a fun one.

[caseymae.livejournal.com]

The Giver, for sure. I read it once as a kid, and didn't realize how much it affected me, even though I remembered a lot of the details. When I reread it recently, I cried on the very first page because I knew what was going to happen.

Also: Phantom, by Susan Kay. The life story of the Phantom of the Opera. Some call it the best fanfiction there is.

[stillane.livejournal.com]

Oh, The Giver! I haven't re-read that one in forever, and you've triggered a longing for it. Now I need to go hunt down a copy...

Thank you for reminding me.

[lordelessar.livejournal.com]

I haven't read The Great Gatsby since... I don't know, 9th grade maybe? I don't remember it affecting me very much. Maybe I should read it again. Wasn't exactly mature at 14. =p
It goes in the list behind HP 4 and 5 and the last 9 Aubrey/Maturin novels. I am determined to finish those before you get back to the states. Plus, the ending to the 11th one was awesome.

My favorite book? I know it's utterly predictable. My favorite book is the Lord of the Rings. It's not my favorite because of the characters or the writing. I love it because it isn't just a book, but a whole word. Whenever I read it, I'm left in awe that one human mind could create so much from nothing. Middle Earth is a place of Epic adventure, love, strife, and tragedy. Each reading makes me want to be a better person.
At least I didn't say it was my favorite book because Legolas as cool. :-p

[janne-d.livejournal.com]

Sadly I have never read Gatsby. But I'm on board the To Kill a Mockingbird bandwagon and I love the first three Earthsea books (I've been pimping them lately to various people and ranting about the hideous SciFi version). For the rest of the books that mean a lot to me, see part 4 of the book meme (http://janne-d.livejournal.com/8068.html) that went around a while back.

Ooh, and Guy Gavriel Kay's Fionavar Tapestry can make me sob like a baby in three different places.

[spankys.livejournal.com]

I haven't read all um...52 entries. I think it's uniquely American (especially in the '20's) for someone to be able to reinvent themselves. Especially after being involved in such as big a scandal as the Black Sox scandal (and basesball is the quintessential American sport). Plus--isn't he or one of his partners Jewish? I haven't read the book in 20 years. I think in America we only see what you've done lately--for good or ill. That also explains why the class system is so fluid. We look at someone's present behavior not his past. Of course, this is all a broad generalization of American attitudes. But I think that's how we are *seen* by outsiders.

[sonofzeal.livejournal.com]

I can't fairly say I've read Gatsby. After transfering out of AP English, it was the book the new class was reading, I was just in time to read the last chapter and write an essay on it. Joy.

You did get me thinking about books that have moved me though, and that made me remember Catcher in the Rye. One scene in particular got me. Holden bought a record for his sister, but at some point, he dropped it and it broke. That scene was really powerful for me. Here's this guy who isn't really thinking about others much, and the one time he does do something selfless for someone he cares about, it shatters before she even knew it was happening. Probably the most tragic scene I've ever read.

Should I assume we're just talking fiction though? Because One Man's Wilderness certainly speaks more to who I am now, although I'm certainly no Richard Proenneke.

[no-detective.livejournal.com]

Oh, I love Gatsby! I also feel that I love it differently every time I read it.

I read it in high school before I first came to the US, and then again in college as part of an American Studies course. It was a different experience, reading it in two languages and from two perspectives; and while there are certainly themes that I could recognize and identify with as an Eastern European woman, I do see much of it as American. The outsider struggling to achieve the life he's fantasized about, to (re)create love out of a memory that might be his alone - that's a rather broad, if not universal, theme.

But the other themes are more particular: the class mobility that isn't really as possible as one may think; the American Dream emphasizing the pursuit of happiness but never offering its guarantee; all the cars and roads, offering tremendous freedom but matching it with danger and destruction of carelessness...

It is an amazing, amazing book, and I feel it viscerally every time I read it - that poignant current of disenchantment underneath Jay's feet, his stubborn insistence on not letting it take him under, Nick's observations coloring the story he tells with the way the events change HIM as the narrator, the heartbreaking poetry in place of cynicism as he approaches the end... Oh.

I think I should read it again. It's been a while.

As for favorite books, I have a very difficult time picking just one - but if I had to, at this very moment, it would be Alessandro Baricco's City. It's about a boy genius, and - that's the most incomplete nutshell type summary EVER. Here (http://moonlash-cc.livejournal.com/74718.html) is an excerpt, if you'd like to check it out. *g*

[no-detective.livejournal.com]

PS: Erm. That excerpt is not a very good representative sample of the whole, actually. The book starts with the boy's phone call to a hotline for a poll where fans get to decide whether a character in a comic book should die. Needless to say, the fangirl in me got sucked in at page one! But there is also a very fairytale-ish mystery western, and boxing, and soccer, and imaginary friends (one of whom is a mute!), and brilliance all around, and a philosophical tract on porches and houses, and laugh-out-loud humor (trust me, I'd freaked out people on the subway many times), and heartbreaking heroism, and a yellow trailer...

One warning: if you read this novel, you will have a very hard time NOT thinking of the boy as an AU John. I mean, his father is a GENERAL. *flails*

[pyrae.livejournal.com]

I'm gonna join in with the minority that really, really hated Gatsby, and I can't entirely explain why probably in the same way you can't explain why you like it. Mostly I suppose it's that I actively disliked all of the characters, and everything that happened to them more or less caused a "serves them right" reaction from me. The world it portrayed was dreary, dull, and depressing, and I could not understand how anyone could live such a life as any of them led without desperately hopping a train for somewhere, anywhere else.