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The Great Gatsby (1925)

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Other authors: See the other authors section.

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingConversations / Mentions
70,305113713 (3.85)4 / 1301
Classic Literature. Fiction. HTML:

Nick Carraway meets Jay Gatsby, a young millionaire with shady business connections and who is love with Daisy Buchanan, Nick's cousin.

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  1. 176
    The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (themephi, sturlington)
    sturlington: Great novels of the Jazz Age.
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    Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (chwiggy)
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    Flappers, Flasks and Foul Play by Ellen Mansoor Collier (TomWaitsTables)
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    Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood (LottaBerling)
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    Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier (mountebank)
  6. 31
    The Green Hat by Michael Arlen (Rebeki)
    Rebeki: Also narrated by a shadowy "outsider" figure and set in the glamorous 1920s.
  7. 31
    The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton (kara.shamy)
  8. 32
    The Red and the Black by Stendhal (CGlanovsky)
    CGlanovsky: Shady social upstarts rising to prominence in societies dealing with fundamental class upheaval and entertaining romantic aspirations outside their traditional spheres.
  9. 10
    Look at Me by Anita Brookner (KayCliff)
  10. 43
    Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller (FFortuna)
  11. 21
    Linden Hills by Gloria Naylor (lottpoet)
    lottpoet: This book features a well-off family, pillars of the community, taking things to quite tragic lengths. It follows an African-American family and so adds colorism and racism to the mix.
  12. 10
    Garden by the Sea by Mercè Rodoreda (bluepiano)
    bluepiano: Garden by the Sea is set in same period & similar milieu & leaves behind a deeper impression.
  13. 10
    The Spoils of Poynton by Henry James (lottpoet)
    lottpoet: similarly has a peripheral narrator showing rich people behaving badly about some of the strangest things
  14. 21
    Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos (acceptance)
    acceptance: Two short novels of the Jazz age, published in the same year. Fun to compare the two.
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  17. 33
    Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh (Sylak)
  18. 22
    An Unfinished Season by Ward Just (elenchus)
    elenchus: Unfinished Season is set in the 1950s in and around Chicago, but elsewise an interesting parallel to The Great Gatsby in terms of setting and basic plot: class and manners among the society elite, and a young man wrestling with changes in family, caste, and personal relations.… (more)
  19. 11
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(see all 30 recommendations)

1920s (1)
AP Lit (46)
100 (18)
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» See also 1301 mentions

English (1,070)  Spanish (19)  Italian (13)  French (7)  Swedish (6)  Dutch (4)  Catalan (3)  Portuguese (Brazil) (2)  Hungarian (2)  German (2)  Icelandic (1)  Norwegian (1)  Hebrew (1)  Danish (1)  All languages (1,132)
Showing 1-5 of 1070 (next | show all)
I don't think it was particularly good, neither particularly bad. I might not have liked the book if it hadn't been preceded by a very long introduction by Tony Tanner. The introduction was actually very long (56 pages) and described some pretty esoteric assumptions about the book. But still it gave me the idea that there was a little bit more to it. ( )
  edwinbcn | Oct 25, 2023 |
Scott Fitzgerald is not a literary writer. He's the king of what I call faux-literature: fill your bowl with plot, add a dash of panache, a cup of nostalgia, three whiffs of yearning, and a drop of insight, and ice it with some fruity prose. Bang, you're done.

But people love him. And who am I to stop the people from having their fun? Like many young people, I adored Gatsby on first reading it during my 17th year. Its exquisite art deco finishing, its sublime sense of pathos, its richness without being threatening like all those disturbing Modernists... Of course, with each passing year, my appreciation of its values lessens, but my appreciation of that feeling remains strong. And perhaps that's the real secret of Gatsby? Like so many folk tales, we can never disassociate the book from the way it drew out our youthful sense of envy, of pain, of ambition, and ultimately of loss. This novel lives within me, and within so many, even though it no longer forms a conscious part of how I view the world. (And say what you will about him; few people have written a closing paragraph as perfect as what Fitzgerald does here.)

A towering piece of 20th century American fiction, nevertheless. ( )
  therebelprince | Oct 24, 2023 |
Another classic book that suffers from cultural osmosis having rendered its themes worn out by later imitation. Sort of the anti-Breakfast at Tiffany's. ( )
  A.Godhelm | Oct 20, 2023 |
You know, I didn't particularly enjoy Gatsby in high school. I don't know what was wrong with me, it's brilliant ( )
  emmby | Oct 4, 2023 |
As good as they say. I doubt I had really re-read this since high school -- is that possible? I had forgotten what a nullity Daisy was, how lacking all of the women are, in fact. I suppose I would have to go with the cheating golf pro, if forced to choose...
  ben_a | Sep 30, 2023 |
Showing 1-5 of 1070 (next | show all)
The Great Gatsby is a romance novel that written by American Author F.Scott Fitzgerald.This novel is talk about the New Yorker in 1900s.The Great Gatsby is a classic piece of American fiction. It is a novel full of triumph and tragedy.Nick Carraway is the narrator, or storyteller, of The Great Gatsby, but he is not the story's protagonist, or main character. Instead, Jay Gatsby is the protagonist of the novel that bears his name. Tom Buchanan is the book's antagonist, opposing Gatsby's attempts to get what he wants: Tom's wife Daisy.

The weakness of this book is they using the classic languange and a little difficult to understand.The weakness also about Gatsby affection to Daisy,He spends that money on lavish parties in the hopes that she will show up.When she finally spends time with him, for the first time in many years, he naively believes that she will leave Tom for him but,unfortunately she is not.

However,the strength of this book is the writer are using the unique title so the reader are feel sympathy and curious about it, also the characteristic about Jay Gatsby that teach the reader many lesson.

To conclude,this book is the very recommended book,especially High School students because Fitzgerald’s novel is a portal to the savage heart of the human spirit, and wonders at our enormous capacity to dream, to imagine, to hope and to persevere.
added by Billy_Kululu | editMedia Indonesia, Billy Kululu (Dec 2, 2016)
 
The great Gatsby is truly a romance book like no other.F.SCOTT.Switzgerald describing about the life of New Yorker in 1900s.This novel is very popular many students if high school are required by their teachers to read this book.The narrator of The Great Gatsby is a young man from Minnesota named Nick Carraway. He not only narrates the story but casts himself as the book’s author.As ive read about this book,Gatsby’s personality was nothing short of “gorgeous.”

moreover,the weakness about this book is hard to understand if u are not really pay attention on it.this novel is about a contradiction,Gatsby's idealism makes him blind.He doesn't see that Daisy can't have love and money, just money. Gatsby can't turn back time.He even doesn't see death coming toward him.

However,the strength of this book something quite different from others,it is the charm and beauty of writing,has many important meanings that should be learned early on in life.

To conclude,what i can say is don't be too obsessed just because you have so much money,money ain't last forever.but overall its a magnificent,fantastically, entertaining and enthralling story.
added by Nadilla-Syawie | editThe New York Times, Nadilla Syawie (Dec 1, 2016)
 
"The Great Gatsby" is in form no more than a glorified anecdote, and not too probable at that

What gives the story distinction is something quite different from the management of the action or the handling of the characters; it is the charm and beauty of the writing.
added by danielx | editChicago Tribune, HL Mencken (Jan 23, 2015)
 
I find Gatsby aesthetically overrated, psychologically vacant, and morally complacent; I think we kid ourselves about the lessons it contains. None of this would matter much to me if Gatsby were not also sacrosanct.

There is the convoluted moral logic, simultaneously Romantic and Machiavellian, by which the most epically crooked character in the book is the one we are commanded to admire. There’s the command itself: the controlling need to tell us what to think, both in and about the book. There’s the blanket embrace of that great American delusion by which wealth, poverty, and class itself stem from private virtue and vice. There’s Fitzgerald’s unthinking commitment to a gender order so archaic as to be Premodern: corrupt woman occasioning the fall of man. There is, relatedly, the travesty of his female characters—single parenthesis every one, thoughtless and thin. (Don’t talk to me about the standards of his time; the man hell-bent on being the voice of his generation was a contemporary of Dorothy Parker, Gertrude Stein, and Virginia Woolf, not to mention the great groundswell of activists who achieved the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. Yet here he is in A Short Autobiography: “Women learn best not from books or from their own dreams but from reality and from contact with first-class men.”)
added by danielx | editVulture, Kathryn Schultz (Jul 4, 2013)
 


It is an impressive accomplishment. And yet, apart from the restrained, intelligent, beautifully constructed opening pages and a few stray passages thereafter—a melancholy twilight walk in Manhattan; some billowing curtains settling into place at the closing of a drawing-room door—Gatsby as a literary creation leaves me cold. Like one of those manicured European parks patrolled on all sides by officious gendarmes, it is pleasant to look at, but you will not find any people inside.

Indeed, The Great Gatsby is less involved with human emotion than any book of comparable fame I can think of. None of its characters are likable. None of them are even dislikable, though nearly all of them are despicable. They function here only as types, walking through the pages of the book like kids in a school play who wear sashes telling the audience what they represent: OLD MONEY, THE AMERICAN DREAM, ORGANIZED CRIME.
 

» Add other authors (55 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Fitzgerald, F. Scottprimary authorall editionsconfirmed
Abarbanell, BettinaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Amberg, BillCover designersecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Bickford-Smith, CoralieCover artistsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Bradbury, MalcolmIntroductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Bruccoli, Matthew JosephPrefacesecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Burns, TomIllustratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Bush, KenEditorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Cavagnoli, FrancaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Cirlin, EdgardCover artistsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Colomb, StephanieEditorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Cornils, L.Translatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Cugat, FrancisCover artistsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Dean, BruceIllustratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Demkowska, Ariadnasecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Ekvall, ChristianTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Ellsworth, JohannaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Folch i Camarasa, RamonTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Gyllenhaal, JakeNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Heald, AnthonyNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Hope, WilliamNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Janssen, SusanTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Li, CherlynneCover designersecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Liona, VictorTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Meyer, FredIllustratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Meyers, JeffreyEditorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Muller, FrankNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Murakami, HarukiTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Niiniluoto, MarjaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Nippoldt, RobertIllustratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Olzon, GöstaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Pauley, JaneNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Piñas, E.Translatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Pivano, FernandaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Prigozy, RuthEditorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Reynolds, GuyIntroductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Robbins, TimNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Schürenberg, Waltersecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Schürenberg, WalterTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Scourby, AlexanderNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Siegel, HalIllustratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Sloan, SamForewordsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Soosaar, EnnTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Stephens, ChelseaNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Tait, KyleNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Tanner, TonyIntroductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Tournier, JacquesTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Tredell, NicolasEditorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Tsaneva, MariaIllustratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Wolff, Lutz-W.Translatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed

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Epigraph
Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her;
      If you can bounce high, bounce for her too,
Till she cry "Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover,
      I must have you!"
—Thomas Parke D'Invilliers
Dedication
ONCE AGAIN
TO
ZELDA
First words
In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.
Quotations
Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead.
All right ... I'm glad it's a girl. And I hope she'll be a fool—that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.
This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens, where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of gray cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud which screens their obscure operations from your sight.
"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me. "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."
I rented a house ... on that slender riotous island which extends itself due east of new york -- where there are, among other natural curiosities, two unusual formations of land. Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous eggs, identical in contour and seprated only by a courtesy bay, jut out into the most domesticated body of salt water in the Western hemisphere, the great wet barnyard of Long Island Sound. They are not perfect ovals ... but their physical resembalnce must be a source of perpetual wonder to the gullsthat fly overhead.
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(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
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This work is the book.
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Classic Literature. Fiction. HTML:

Nick Carraway meets Jay Gatsby, a young millionaire with shady business connections and who is love with Daisy Buchanan, Nick's cousin.

.

No library descriptions found.

Book description
[R.L. 7.3, 8 pts]
Set in the 1920s, this is the tragic love story of Jay Gatsby, a dashing, enigmatic millionaire, obsessed with an elusive, spoiled young woman, Daisy Buchanan.
Haiku summary
New neighbor is rich
and throws wild parties for friends.
The American dream.

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Penguin Australia

7 editions of this book were published by Penguin Australia.

Editions: 0141182636, 0140007466, 0141023430, 0141037636, 024195147X, 1922079553, 0734306865

Urban Romantics

2 editions of this book were published by Urban Romantics.

Editions: 1907832564, 1907832572

 

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