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.

[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.

[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*.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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

[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.

[siria]

P&P is wonderful because the language is fabulous, the humour is sly and witty and wonderful, and because I harbour a deep ambition to be Elizabeth Bennet when I grow up.

Well, either her, or Dame Judi Dench.

(And also, of course, because it lends itself well to crazy, crazy crossovers of which we shall not speak, because. Well. Crazy. Also bad and wrong)

Apparently, he committed suicide very shortly after the studio declined to pick it up. It's very creepy.

[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. ;-)

[trinityofone.livejournal.com]

P&P: a novel in which people move past their initial misconceptions to truly know one another and find love. Elizabeth Bennet is awesome, and a role model.

Gatsby: a novel in which people never move beyond their preconceived notions and no one knows anyone, truly, and everyone ends up miserable or disenchanted or dead. Gatsby is a tragic hero, if he can even be considered a hero at all.

1. It is fucked up that I prefer the latter.
2. You should still totally read the latter.
3. The latter needs to stop lending itself to crazed crossovers, because John should not be Gatsby, oh God, oh God, no.

Apparently, he committed suicide very shortly after the studio declined to pick it up. It's very creepy.

Extremely. For so many reasons, not the least of which is how relieved and grateful all us SGA people are that the direct result of this is that we get JF, and not...some really not very good soap. But yikes, that is creepy and depressing and sad.

[siria]

I really have to, if not only because I am so tragically under-read. And if Gatsby features a protagonist who ends up miserable and disenchanted, can you think of a good reason why John shouldn't be him?

Although I think I will always prefer P&P because it sparkles so brilliantly.

*eyes Word file dubiously*

[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.

[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.

[trinityofone.livejournal.com]

Oh God, it's horrible. I'm reading pieces of Nick Carraway's narration and picturing Rodney saying them. Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known. Ahhhh! And then I have Rodney narrating John's tragic, fucked-up life, and it's too late to do any good, but Rodney was clearly the only person who ever understood him. *sniff*

So basically, I am going insane. But I did use the word "efflorescence" in my essay, so points there.

As soon as I'm done with this stupid paper, I will lend you my copy of the book, and then you, too, can KNOW MY PAIN.

But seriously, keep preferring P&P. Especially if... *pushes you in direction of Word file*

[jetspeaks.livejournal.com]

I think the historical rural childhood perspective of any pioneer nation (which includes us, of course, although again the Australian perspective is different in some ways because of ties to Britain and the population makeup) is distinctive from the British historical rural childhood. Now, I haven't read Gatsby (but I intend to, really), and I'm reasonably aware that there's no "pioneer" aspect to it, but in terms of historical background there is a distinctive American perspective. Interestingly, the Amazon review refers to a "cautionary tale of the American dream", which might lend itself to interpretation as an American theme.
Does any of that add to the debate, or am I just waffling? I'll go find a copy as soon as I'm done re-reading the extraordinary angst that is Wuthering Heights (never fails to make one feel better about one's lot).

[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)

[siria]

*blinks* That is actually kind of scarily appropriate for Rodney. I do want to check this out now.

(Though first, paper! *cheerleads with small pom-poms*)

That thing would be very weird if I were ever to finish it. Also, because I have this image of them getting snowed in in Rodney's house (early 18th century, Neoclassical manor; Rodney completely fails to appreciate it) with no other company. And there's a drawing room, and light only from open fires and candles, and John sitting in a wing chair in the corner of the room where the shadows are deepest, and watches Rodney (jacket removed, cravat loosened) play idly with the piano-forte in the corner.

*hums*

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

In fanfic, I wonder - but since even that is lead by American/Australian writers, it might just have spread. In what is considered literature, I think it is predominantly American (and again, OZ) to have a childhood in a rural setting and then move to a city, if that makes sense. Flashbacks seem to be even more "historical" that way, lifespans are demarcated more clearly, and I feel a bit lost as if I missed a time AND a place. European past tends to be WWII, but if I think of eg UK fiction, not such a move between country and city. And this is not perfectly explained, I know :S

[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.

[roaringmice.livejournal.com]

Your interpretation is so interesting, because it's the exact opposite of my twist on it. See, I'd thought of Rodney as Gatsby, and John as Nick. Rodney as the one destined for tragedy, John as the observer, and the one who tells the story.

[niennah.livejournal.com]

the superficiality, the beauty and the hollowness you describe is not uniquely American

That's true, when I look back over what I wrote. It's when that is wrapped up with everything else that it becomes an American theme, as you say.

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.

That's such a good way of putting it, and so true.

[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.