The Great Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby
by F. Scott Fitzgerald

After reading This Side of Paradise I thought I wouldn't read more Fitzgerald. I know his works are huge and maybe it was just because Paradise was an early book but I just didn't enjoy it.  However, I did sit down and read Gatsby which is probably his best known work for it's exploration of the Jazz Age.

As always I found that I couldn't really like any of the characters; when I read This Side of Paradise there were no characters I could love; in fact I downright disliked some.  In the case of The Great Gatsby I found that I didn't hate anyone but I didn't love them either.
I thought this book was about the American Dream, but when I discussed it with others they said no, it is about the Jazz Age and having a roaring good time. 
I think it's both.

"Americans, while occasionally willing to be serfs, have always been obstinate about being peasantry."

Gatsby is the mysterious and very wealthy neighbor of the narrator, Nick Carraway. They live on Long Island, Nick commutes into New York City to sell bonds. Gatsby is famous for having wild, turbulent parties. As stated by Nick in the book, "People were not invited- they went there."
Nick has a beautiful and shallow cousin named Daisy, she is married to Tom who is an arrogant block. Nick is introduced to Daisy's friend Jordan, a pro woman golfer whom Nick starts dating. When Nick is finally invited to one of Gatsby's roaring parties, Nick actually does wait to be invited, he finally meets the mystical Gatsby about whom swarm many rumors about his past and his current business connections. As is typical of Fitzgerald the Great War is discussed, both Nick and Gatsby fought in it. 
Soon, Nick discovers one of Gatsby's great secrets: he is in love with Daisy. He first fell in love with her when he was an officer. The past history between Gatsby, Daisy, and Tom is reminiscent of Fitzgerald's own personal life. 

I know this is the Great American Novel, I also think it could be about the American Dream.  Jay Gatsby is a self-made man. He goes from being simply James Gatz from Minnesota to becoming the wealthy and influential Jay Gatsby. Gatsby is thought to be a bootlegger which is what gave him his enormous fortune and brilliant mansion.   
"His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people--his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all. The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God... and he must be about His Father's business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty. So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen year old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end."

I actually did enjoy reading this, it was definitely quicker than Paradise and the story felt more solid and real. Fitzgerald has his typical vague metaphors in describing aspects of people and ideas but maybe that is what makes him so popular. I suppose it is the Great American Novel.

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."



 

A Charming Prize

 The Late George Apley
by John P. Marquand

When I first picked this up, I had my doubts.  The title page advertises it as "A novel in the form of a memoir." I thought it would be slow, one of those books you're forced to read in school and then you'll never read it again. But I actually enjoyed this novel.  Published in 1937 it is ultimately a satire of the upper echelons of Boston society beginning with George Apley's birth in 1866 and ending with his death in 1933. It was a bestseller and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1938.
The novel's main point is that we cannot escape our place in life no matter how hard we may try. George Apley, the main character, speaks of this throughout the book; during his childhood and throughout his adult life he always mentions that he feels as though he is never really away from Boston.  Whenever he takes a trip he feels as though he takes Boston with him because he travels with a group.  As he says after taking a tour of England and France, "...I have been impressed by a similarity existing between almost every scene, the reason for which I think I chanced upon today.  It seems to me that all this time a part of Boston has been with me.  I am a raisin in a slice of pie which has been conveyed from one plate to another.  I have moved; I have seen plate after plate; but all the other raisins have been around me in the same relation to me as they were when we were all baked."
 Is it true that we can't escape our position in life? George Apley seems to realize this, but does not try to fight it.  When he has his own son, John, he tells him the same thing he has realized; you can't run away from where you come from.   
  It's amusing to read abut George Apley's struggle with changing conventions during the 1920s. He is forced to adapt to changing ways, especially with regards to young people.  "You and I know that all this idea of sex is largely 'bosh.'  I can frankly say that sex has not played a dominant part in my own life, and I trust that it has not in yours. No right-thinking man permits his mind to dwell upon such things, and the same must be true of women."
Apley also mentions Hemingway's 'The Sun Also Rises'. "This Hemingway is obviously not a gentleman nor are his characters gentlemen or ladies, yet I am broad-minded enough to admit that the man has a certain startling and crude power, although I feel he resorts to artistically unfair sensational and mechanical tricks." 
At 354 pages this novel is actually a quick read, styled through letters and with chapters lasting no longer than eighteen pages, you'll be through this in no time.  Although you may not agree with the main themes and questions the novel presents, it's still thought provoking and worth the time to sit down and enjoy.