svnh's Reviews > The Great Gatsby

Regarding svnh's review of Jul 31, 07:

Ah, the very young. How well I recall when I too so loved to adopt a "kill your idols" style of criticism or of spouting off, in general.

How well I recall when my blood raced so hot that I didn't take the time to really think about the words that I used.

How I can look back to that time when I practically throbbed with such confidence that I too used the English language--limited as it can sometimes be to do justice to certain dimensions of the human experience--in such a way as to belie my native tongue's capacity for precision in connecting to the imaginations of those who speak it. I'm so glad that now, as an older person full of doubts and bemusements, I have troubled myself to learn a little bit more about the language than what can be derived from glorifying in and self-fellating some of the more obvious and onerous prongs of my ego and watching episodes of "Friends." For years now, I've cut way back on the former and I have never done the latter. If the repeated pattern of time's arrow is any guide, I suspect we can look forward to a time time when Svnh will do less of both (if, in fact, she has ever done either; I, too, am the victim of my own supposition, you see).

I think it's noble to learn to love your primary language enough that you begin to avoid carelessly wielding it while prancing and pouting behind the imagined shield of a diploma you've been granted, after hard work and tuition bills paid on time, by some American institution of indoctrination and sanctified pretension.

But, as William Seward Burroughs, so often and so accurately often stated, "who am I to be critical?"

A couple of things, here. Garnering even hundreds of comments in response to a Goodreads review does not really qualify as an "internet stir." The internet, even if you have finished reading most of it yourself by now my darling, is a pretty big pond and you'll have to get a bigger stick than your review to actually create a stir within it.

Secondly, "pithy" is defined, in more than one fairly reputable lexicon, as "concise and forcefully expressive." Your initial review and your return to that subject three years later reveals nothing "concise" that I can detect. "Direct" at best, I'd say but the most ignorant and egocentric people are capable of being direct ... in fact, I would argue they might be better at it than those of us who are more informed, more thoughtful and given more often to imagining a world larger and more mysterious than the one that stops at the end of your own perky nose.

Thirdly, if you feel that your initial review was "unwarranted," why in god's name did you return three years later to stand by what you said? You are aware, I hope, that "unwarranted" is roughly synonymous with "unjustified," yes? I'm a little sad that in your pursuit of a degree in English you did not master the skill of using a dictionary. Perhaps they didn't have a class in that. It's a pity.

But it gets even more interesting. A few sentences later you write, "If my claims were unwarranted, give me the defense in better terms. Re-iterating to me that it is aesthetically pleasing to you or that it is a beautiful love story holds no weight for me, and thus makes no case for the novel itself."

Do you think your "claims were unwarranted" or not? You seem to both admit that they are and challenge us to prove that they are not all within a very compact space. I'm sure the college or university from which you theoretically earned your degree would prefer to be anonymous in this instance.

Fear not, though, brave Svnh! First of all, you are not alone. Just above the box in which I'm furiously typing, my eyes just strayed to the passage "as his notes in his copy of Butch Cassidy reveal." After I straightened myself up from being doubled over with laughter, I wondered what mix of brain chemicals was responsible for this person confusing "Hopalong Cassidy" with "Butch Cassidy," the latter being a character not well known, I'd wager, in the 1920s. So the same internet which you've imagined yourself so prodigiously stirring is nearly everyone's license to write sloppily, without care or caution and, ultimately, if not foolishly, at least revealing themselves to have a flair* for at times being a fool. And, I too, was as you've demonstrated yourself to be in this review when I was your age,

I think you have to ask yourself what you've really done, if anything, to tell us why you so despise the novel before you insist that anyone defend it against a prosecution that consists mainly of "I didn't like it."

After all, there are more things in heaven and earth, Svnhio, than are dreamed of in your limited philosophy of "I didn't like this."

If you are still having that affair with modernism, I suspect that modernism is merely stringing you along for some sense of cheap and quick gratification. I really can't imagine what more modernism would be getting out of the arrangement.

*"flare" corrected to "flair" on 02/03/2014. Was called on this stupid, careless mistake by a subsequent post somewhere below this one in t he thread.

I had to read this in High School. I did not like it at all. I found it tedious and boring. I found the characters unlikable and not the type of people to which one can relate. To this day, I remember more about Of Mice and Men that I can about The Great Gatsby. The characters were more approachable and real. The emotions seems more relevant and less forced. Even thought I'm not fond of that book, I find it much better than this one.

Someone said that your disconnect from the characters is offensive and that it is bad that readers today cannot appreciate great literature if they cannot relate to the characters. Being able to connect to the characters is the most vital piece of the literary puzzle. One must connect to SOMETHING in the story. If the writer cannot create that connection, then it is not good literature. I have never understood why people insist that such a shallow book about shallow people should be seen as a great literary work.

Kristy wrote: "I had to read this in High School. I did not like it at all. I found it tedious and boring. I found the characters unlikable and not the type of people to which one can relate. To this day, I r..."

Are you still in High School? Just curious.

Kristy wrote: "I had to read this in High School. I did not like it at all. I found it tedious and boring. I found the characters unlikable and not the type of people to which one can relate. To this day, I r..."

I think high school has a way of shoving ideology down one's throat and therefore students end up hating prescribed literature. I read this when I was 20- so I found it bearable, because I didn't read it in high school. That being said, I indeed felt disconnected from the characters and plot. I think its mainly due to poor character development and the book being too short and paying attention to unimportant details.

I think everyone has the right to decide if you like a book or not, even if some experts decided you HAVE to like it. We have to be true to ourselves and our thoughs are valid too, otherwise we will be just like cows, following someone elses path. What keeps life interesting are the diversity of opinions, so don't worry so much about comments made by people that don't see life this way ;)

Bravo to everyone! This is exactly what I'd want after writing a book.

It was not "Butch" Cassidy, it was HOPALONG Cassidy. No one knew who Butch Cassidy was in the 1920s!

I've read the book and find it adequate. Certainly not amazing and lifechanging, but not awfull or unreadable. The "big themes" are handled competently enough, but somewhat superficially in my opinion. I am a bit at a loss as to why the book is so widely well-regarded, but it certainly isn't unbearable (perhaps its small lengh helps in that regard). What confuses me is why you would feel so obligated to like it. It's quite allright that you haven't thought it to be an amazing classic. Rest assured you are not alone in the world and that other human beings are as unimpressed with it as you are. You have nothing to be ashamed of. Chin up! I would suggest however that you stop obsessing about it. It's just not healthy... lol

I have no idea if you're even following these comments anymore, but just in case you are, thank you! I had the urge to go back and read this again (for the 3rd time) after reading in HS and college because I just keep meeting people who swear it is the greatest book ever. Your review is keeping me from wasting my time. I felt the exact same way you did and I feel very happy in my decision to never bore myself with this work of fiction again. Thank you!!!!

I'm rereading GG after a few years, also not particularly liking it first time through. But I am also curious why it it was so admired by others. And I wanted to reread it BEFORE the film convinced me I was wrong.

A few chapters in and I admit I am enjoying it quite a bit. This is a 1926 novel but it seems very modern (modernist in language and structure). A few paragraphs have grabbed me, for instance early in chapter 2, the description of the ash piles. And the description of advert of Dr TJ Eckleburg's eyeglasses.
"Evident some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the Borough of Queens, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness, or forgot them and moved away. But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days, under sun and rain, brood on over the solemn dumping ground."

That is mighty fine writing.

Robin wrote: "I'm rereading GG after a few years, also not particularly liking it first time through. But I am also curious why it it was so admired by others. And I wanted to reread it BEFORE the film convinced..."
According to what I've read here and there about "modernism" as a cultural and artistic era or phase (I'm avoiding the term "movement" because I don't think many people went around saying, "yes I am a modernist."), Fitzgerald is solidly a modernist writer. Writing that is considered fully "modernist in language and structure" was in full bloom by 1926 and had antecedents at the end of the 19th century.

Well said. I agree.

Mark wrote:

I think you have to ask yourself what you've really done, if anything, to tell us why you so despise the novel before you insist that anyone defend it against a prosecution that consists mainly of "I didn't like it."

After all, there are more things in heaven and earth, Svnhio, than are dreamed of in your limited philosophy of "I didn't like this."

If you are still having that affair with modernism, I suspect that modernism is merely stringing you along for some sense of cheap and quick gratification. I really can't imagine what more modernism would be getting out of the arrangement.

What did you accomplish in this response other than yet another attack on my character/capabilities?

From what I can glean (granted I haven't done much research here, I've only read your participation on page 4), your presence in this thread attempts only to humiliate or antagonize me, to poke fun at this "limited philosophy" for which you surely have an antidote (please, mister, cure my naivete!), and to assure me of my very ineffectual place in the Internet or even perhaps the cosmos by extension. I pray (nay, am sure) that you will correct me, but I do not understand how anyone's critical engagement with The Great Gatsby (or literature in general) is enhanced by your response any more than it was by my "reviews." (I'll take this time to thank the people in this thread who have offered very insightful readings.)

At the risk of congratulating my twenty-four year old self with too much gusto for your liking, I did admit that I had been too haughty. Then, I genuinely and hopefully requested a new reading of the novel that might compel me. I am curious to know what about this stance offended you. I wanted to be informed by the elaborations of strangers, and to facilitate an ongoing consideration and discussion of the novel. I will concede that I did not offer any critical explanation for dismissing the novel, but I do not think that precludes the request for a reading that differs from my own. Even if my reading is as bare as "I don't like it," its follow-up question ("but why do you?") expresses a latent desire to learn to enjoy facets of the book that heretofore were overlooked. Now that I am older, I envy that position of vulnerability and receptivity, precisely because it is no longer easily accessible. For me, it seems to be one of the more inspiring elements of youth and folly, which you were so quick to chastise.

While my participation in these debates has been minimal and admittedly uninspired, I have gained quite a bit by reading, however infrequently, a lot of these comments. My decision to leave these reviews public does not implicitly contend that I forever subscribe to these same ideas; rather, the decision hinges on this continued conversation between strangers, so long as that conversation veers in the way of literary exploration and seeks to do more than defame my character or accomplishments. (What can you possibly know about me from these "reviews," other than that I took responsibility for my ignorance and arrogance, and that I sought to be challenged by other opinions? You did well to foreground your susceptibility to suppositions in the third paragraph, before you started to present yourself as a dismissive ass.)

While it was very cute and cocksure of you to question the academic rigor of my university and even the legitimacy of my degree, I believe that my educators would have supported my fledgling attempt to simultaneously admit error and still issue the challenge of further critical inquiry, no matter how unsure my rhetorical footing. In the Derridean vein, I would "not choose": I am still comfortable in the liminal space between believing my review to be unjustified and still seeking proof that it is in fact. Moreover, I still believe that those were valid moves to make, despite age or inconsistencies.

I will however grant that your sharp condescension has surely shamed me to realize that I should've exhibited much greater linguistic dexterity. Thank you for so valiantly taking up the sword, for combating my childishness and poor word choices. But since I have thus demonstrated myself to be quite inept at respectfully wielding my language, I'll return now to my comfortable vulgarities.

What does your own response feed, you big bad wolf, apart from the smug self-aggrandizement that is manifest in your condescending and generally shitty tone in the last paragraphs. What prompted you to speak so caustically toward another human being who is involved in a pursuit of knowledge that is (presumably) similar to your own? "It's a pity" that, in lieu of offering much substantial insight, you chose to focus so thoroughly on my missteps (and those of other contributors as well) and to treat me not as a potential peer, but as an inadequate child.

Lastly, and my insufficient language skills prevent me from being more eloquent here, fuck you very much for implying in your closing paragraph that whatever way I choose to engage with either the world or my passions (modernism, specifically referenced) is somehow barren or bereft of value, and congratulations on exciting in me this obnoxious distaste. We could have had a much different and productive dialogue.

Since you took the liberty of addressing me so colloquially, I'll do the same, and I will try very hard to satisfy you by being concise. Mark, "my darling," what is it, exactly, that you are contributing here? I think you have to ask yourself what you've really done, if anything, to broaden or bolster this discussion, before you continue to prosecute me or pretend to know what I have "dreamed of."

I feel like i need a drink...

svnh wrote: "Alright, so the end was a little ill-tempered. Just... c'mon, dude. A lot of that was really unproductive, irrelevant, and uncalled for. That's all."
None of any of this discourse is in any way called for. Not your original review, not your defense of same a couple of years later, not all the comments that sprouted from either ... including my over the top (but I naturally like to think well-written) diatribe.

I was cruel. I was intentionally cruel. And I criticized you for the arrogance of youth! I am not young but I'm no better, perhaps far worse as I don't have youth as an excuse.

I apologize. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. One thing that might have riled me up so is thinking about F. Scott Fitzgerald himself. I picture him as a person who in life was vulnerable, perhaps so much so that he was never much better than doomed--as a writer and a person--by his early success. He wanted the novel to be good, to be taken seriously as a work of literary art and now people can just shit on it with alacrity. To me there's something terribly sad about that. Maybe I was trying to defend him in some weird way

Is this real life?

1v1 me IRL

Bravo, Seth, bravo. couldn't agree more.

I read this book again, first in high school and now many years later, I don't get it. It seems like they go from point a to point b and back again. That is all I understand.

No one cares

Shawn wrote: "No one cares"
I do.

Mark wrote: "Shawn wrote: "No one cares"
I do."

Ok Mark, thank you for that interesting comment.

Shawn wrote: "Mark wrote: "Shawn wrote: "No one cares"
I do."

Ok Mark, thank you for that interesting comment."
Shawn why are you being sarcastic?

Ollie wrote: "Shawn wrote: "Mark wrote: "Shawn wrote: "No one cares"
I do."

Ok Mark, thank you for that interesting comment."
Shawn why are you being sarcastic?"
Sorry. I didn't realize this was the kiddy pool.

You don't have to like the novel, but if you can't appreciate the fact that it is a classic and Fitzgerald is a genius, then you are ignorant and biased.

? Okay... but you stating an opinion. My teacher says so BRAAAH.

Mark writes: So the same internet which you've imagined yourself so prodigiously stirring is nearly everyone's license to write sloppily, without care or caution and, ultimately, if not foolishly, at least revealing themselves to have a flare [sic] for at times being a fool.

To which I paste from a comment Mark appended to a two-star review someone else dared to leave this badly overrated book:

Correct spelling of very common words will add a bit more credibility to what you write and post in Goodreads.

For the rest, there is perhaps a good deal more truth than Mark realizes in that first statement of his.

Now I really wanna read the review :(

Seingalt wrote: "Mark writes: So the same internet which you've imagined yourself so prodigiously stirring is nearly everyone's license to write sloppily, without care or caution and, ultimately, if not foolishly, ..."

I don't quite understand what you're trying to say here. But I wish I did.

I may be late to the party, but it is nice to know I am not alone in my, shall we say, non-love of this story.

Mark wrote: I don't quite understand what you're trying to say here. But I wish I did.

You chastised me for my egregious spelling and grammatical errors, and then you used the incongruous spelling "flare," should be "flair," while calling me a fool and stripping me of my imagined authority on the Internet:

"So the same internet which you've imagined yourself so prodigiously stirring is nearly everyone's license to write sloppily, without care or caution and, ultimately, if not foolishly, at least revealing themselves to have a flare [sic] for at times being a fool."

Seingalt pointed out your mistake and named you a prime example of your very own adage, while very casually highlighting the fact that you've attached so much importance and offense to "a two-star review that someone dared to leave this badly overrated book." I wouldn't have bothered to explain, except that I thought it was very clever and I wished that I had noticed it myself. ;)

Aside, I can't believe this is still getting comments/likes. The fact that you all are commenting on an absent review is fascinating me. Small pleasures, I guess.

svnh wrote: "You chastised me for my egregious spelling and grammatical errors, and then you used the incongruous spelli..."

"flare" versus "flair"

I see. Egg on my face! So many ways I happen upon to be an asshole--some found while trying, others not.

Big score for Seingalt there.

don't delete your review! I got many personal attacks for giving "The Notebook" one-star... I wish I could see what you had written.

I can see why you gave Fitzgerald's story one star. In any case, it is a poorly written masterpiece.... His prose is awful, imagery less than par, but the one thing he really did well was personalize the story to portray the decadent life of the 20's. I am accustomed with the historical background, quite substantially, and must say Fitzgerald did an outstanding job of putting his own life into the book.

"Poorly written" "prose is awful". These are strong words and in my opinion should not be bandied about without examples to support your argument. Can you provide examples of the poor writing and the awful prose which you say is a feature of his writing?

hmmmhmmm!

Esdaile wrote: ""Poorly written" "prose is awful". These are strong words and in my opinion should not be bandied about without examples to support your argument. Can you provide examples of the poor writing and t..."

No, I will leave you to make your own decision on the matter. Truth be told it's been a heck of a long time since reading Fitzgerald's novel, but from what I remember it was, at times, rather clunky, paradoxical, and driven heavily by idealism. I enjoyed the story,rated it four stars, and if you read my comment closer you would see that I said,"I see why YOU rated it one star." Though, Idealism, and challenging ones perception makes the Great Gatsby not for everyone... That is something you may need to get used to. Perhaps I was a bit harsh, and should have chose my words more carefully. Let me guess you are also a HUGE fan of Kafka? hah.. :)

N.W. wrote: "No, I will leave you to make your own decisions on the matter ..."

What a bunch of bullshit and a bag of donuts that is! Because you (and/or Svnh ... I've lost track) assert that the prose is "awful," "poorly written," and "clunky" while failing to give any examples to back up the assertion, this equates in your mind to Esdaile not having made a decision! But in your munificence you've permitted her to do so.

What'ch'ya smoking there, homeboy, got any left?

Geesh.

Mark wrote: "N.W. wrote: "No, I will leave you to make your own decisions on the matter ..."

What a bunch of bullshit and a bag of donuts that is! Because you (and/or Svnh ... I've lost track) assert that the ..."

That is a case and point example of "selective evidence," or manipulating what someone said. Get over yourself "boy." His descriptive writing is sub-par. Example: "Why they came east I don't know. They had spent a year in France, for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together." What a way to describe Rosy and Tom... Supposedly Nick's somewhat good friends. But nay, he isn't really describing them so much as he is describing what he notices about them--their decadence. So many hints against materialism its ridiculous and yet Fitzgerald was a materialist... Its Paradoxical. Partly because he (Fitzgerald) relies so much on idealism rather than monism it slows his writing down, he could describe what he does with much less effort. However I thought he captured the sensitivities of the modernist movement (and to answer your statement from an earlier comment, individuals did refer to themselves as modernists in the 20's). Hence is why I enjoyed his story, it's almost as if he intended it to be a historical satire that could be interpreted as a primary source. Yet its all fictional.

Now it is your turn, why is his prose so majestic?

At a Super Bowl party right now, "Hence is why" I'll get back to you tomorrow if not later. But spirited response! Nice!

N.W. wrote: "Now it is your turn, why is his prose so majestic?"

I don't think it is "majestic." At least, I'm not exactly sure what that means. It's a word you've chosen to describe what, I suppose, you assume my regard of Fitzgerald's prose to be. Seems to me "majestic" prose, if pushed too far, would become over inflated, pompous. I think that "elegant" and "graceful" might be adjectives I'd find better suited to use as modifiers for Fitzgerald's prose. His prose seems to me, particularly in The Great Gatsby, to possess a natural grace (that we know was achieved through the hard work of revision upon revision) ... In fact, I know I'm thinking about something I've read somewhere else and that was said much better than I have so far or than I'll ever be able to. Hang on a minute.

Here it is! It's a passage from Matthew Bruccoli's preface to The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald: A New Collection wherein Bruccoli bulwarks his own thoughts with quotes from other writers' opinions of Fitzgerald's prose:

Raymond Chandler commented on the indefinable quality of charm: "He had one of the rarest qualities in all literature ... the word is charm--charm as Keats would have used it. Who has it today? It's not a matter of pretty writing or clear style. It's a kind of subdued magic, controlled and exquisite, the sort of thing you get from good string quartets." One should be able to feel great writing. There is something extraordinary--even miraculous--in Fitzgerald's prose word by word. James Gould Cozzens came as close to anyone has to explicating this aspect of Fitzgerald's genius:

'a talent for saying not merely the right, the apt, the vivid, or moving thing, but the thing which, having all those qualities, so far transcends your reasonable expectations that you see that it couldn't have been done merely by intelligence, or training, or hard trying, and must simply have been born in a sort of triumphant flash outside the ordinary process of thought.'

As is often said of the music of great musicians who have built their reputation on mostly focusing on a single instrument--such as Miles Davis on his trumpet or Frank Zappa shutting up to just play his guitar--something about Fitzgerald's prose makes it seem like it was easy. No, more than "easy," he made what he created seem--and I think this is some of what Cozzens was trying to get at--inevitable, as if he had somehow simply revealed what was always there rather than labored long in stressful artifice to bring it into being.

And I'm not quite sure if we're on the same page with the term "descriptive prose." The passage you cited seems, to my mind, to be more along the lines of prose depicting (one of) Nick's opinions about Daisy (which is who I think you meant when you instead typed "Rosy") and Tom. It's interior monologue more than descriptive prose, no?

I suppose all prose is descriptive of something in some way, but isn't the phrase generally used to distinguish prose passages that use sensory details to paint a picture in the readers' mind or--to be explicit beyond that cliched metaphor--to create an impression in the readers' mind that allows them to see, hear, feel (in a tactile rather than affective sense), smell and/or taste something that can evoke their memories of a similar experience or--if it's something they've never before experienced at all--stir their imaginations?

So, to get down to it:

Their house was even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red-and-white Georgian Colonial mansion, overlooking the bay. The lawn started at the beach and ran toward the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sun-dials and brick walls and burning gardens--finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run. The front was broken by a line of French windows, glowing now with reflected gold and wide open to the warm windy afternoon, and Tom Buchanan in riding clothes was standing with his legs apart on the front porch.

That describes a scene I can see in my mind's eye. And the physical starting point of the description, it's continued momentum (which is the momentum of the seemingly living, moving lawn) and it's eventual ending point at the front of Daisy and Tom's house where Tom himself is poised in an athletic ready position not only puts vivid imagery in my mind's eye but also gives me a palpable sense of the vantage from which all of what is being described is seen. I don't merely see this as some sort of disembodied reader, but with the notion that I'm seeing it as Nick saw it.

That doesn't seem clunky or substandard to me.

It's prose that does a solid job of description upon first, even cursory, read. Yet upon closer examination, it can be mulled over as something that operates on more than one level--why, for example, are the gardens described as "burning?" That could mean the suggestion that there is red, orange and yellow flora aplenty in them and it also evocatively fits with the sense created, at least in my mind, that the lawn that "started at the beach," "ran ... for a quarter of a mile," and finally extended up the house as "bright vines" seems to almost have the properties of fire. And the former interpretation doesn't necessarily cancel the latter one out. That's prose with the depth of poetry.

A page later in the two paragraphs were Fitzgerald describes Nick seeing Daisy and, for the first time, Jordan sitting on the couch ("the only completely stationary object in the room") in the wind billowed room before Tom closes the window ... I find that to be gorgeous descriptive prose.

Materialism decried by a materialist and the inherent paradox thereof. Idealism versus monism (something I'm not quite clear on, but you seem to be more focused on showing people that you know tenants of philosophy that they don't versus explaining these terms to those who don't have the good fortune to be as evidently intelligent as you are). "The sensitivities of the modernist movement." These are observations, criticisms and quibbles with what you've decided are the larger messages of the novel and not the prose descriptive or otherwise.

The prose is the nuts and bolts and boards, the building materials that conspire with the novelist to create an overall architecture, of the novel. It stands somewhat separate from most of the things you're going on and on about.

"Something is happening here, but you don't know that it is ... do you, Mr. Jones?"

This is so sad, you were basically bullied to delete your review, your own opinion. Shame.

I wonder why people equate not enjoying something to being immature...

To me the boom is brillant i love every example of sybloism. To me the imagery makes reality appear like a book and the appears like reality. I can't find another word other than sublime I agree with A-ron in regards that people simply don't want to read this genre. It appears that people have shifted to other genres. Their appears to be a reverse metamorphosis. The ending may be well, to the best. Their was zero prohabitions placed on my eyes at the end of this book.

The thing about Gatsby is you've either got a taste for it or you don't, and everyone's entitled to their own opinion. However, to say it is a bad book it's absurd, and to say Fitzgerald is a bad writer shows a lack of appreciation towards his style, which again, you may or may not like, but you must admit it's unique and captivating. (This is aimed at some people's comments.)

Yes, he had a highly advanced vocabulary and poetic sense of style, but that does not make one a good writer. The Great Gatsby has no redeeming qualities, it's all about rich people and their "problems." It over exaggerates life in the 1920's, and even though it's been a while since I've read it, I'll never forget having to bear through his on-the-surface story with the least compelling plot of the century

After hearing the glowing reviews , I tried reading the book. The whole book I had been thinking "maybe now it will get better", but just couldn't understand what was so good in it.

one of the best books i've ever read,,,can't rate it anything below 5.Its not a surprise that some find it BORING just as they all love Justin Beiber

Darn it I haven't read it yet! I'm curious what your reasons are, there are plenty I can think of...

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