- THE GREAT GATSBY
- by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- [rated by PBS viewers as #15]
- 180 pages
So how does my surprise motif come into play with the re-reading of this book? You know? It doesn’t. Unless you count the surprise every day and every page when reading an absolute masterpiece. It isn’t just surprising but actually luxurious to be an adult, sitting at the feet of an exquisite story teller.
Fitzgerald’s language was of such a descriptive depth that I had to go over paragraph after paragraph to take it all in. It was put down perfectly, though. My endlessly re-reading was completely reader error. I had to make myself be worthy of the words, deep enough for the constant imagery.
Some stories have one or two elements that you remember. Such is the fame and praise deservedly bestowed on this book that virtually every element in it is remembered. If I started to explain the memorable elements here, I would retell the entire story
Fitzgerald is a perfect writer. This was apparently his third book and the one he wrote to prove that he didn’t have to write autobiographically. And yet, its perfection, story and theme wise, ends up feeling deeply personal to all of us.
May this never be removed from shelves. People need to know that someone can write this way. That one person can write this way.
Though I could only read 20 pages at a time, in the space and time between those 20 pages, I still felt bathed in the book.
I love the balance of beautifully descriptive passages with an equal leaning towards brevity. There is nothing extra here. It’s as if he was challenging himself to say worlds in the fewest words necessary. He employs these amazing visual descriptions while storytelling with a bulls eye.
Another great thing. This is a story firmly told but in reality, it is through innuendo. Gatsby, for instance, is a character whose feelings you are called upon at times to unearth through what isn’t said. And just about everything Daisy says is ethereal, not to the point and not even her truth. But the writer is good enough to give us a firm grasp throughout.
I could go on and on, but I wouldn’t be adding one thing to this masterpiece. When the PBS contest happened, I voted for it every day. If you haven’t read it, you haven’t read. And if you have, maybe visit it again.
Of course, I have to end as the book ends, with possibly the greatest last line of a book ever written. It’s certainly the best one I’ve ever read.
“So we beat on, boats against the current,
borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
I don’t think I have read this since college, yet some wording and passages stuck with me. I agree with you wholeheartedly about his stunning turn of phrase and imagery. Just beautifully expressed.
That ending quote is fantastic, and I loved this one as well: “In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.”
But the imagery of this passage was stuck in my mind…though I had to look up the exact words, I remembered the image from reading it decades ago:
” A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding cake of the ceiling-and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.
The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room and the curtains and rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor.”