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Why Do We Keep Reading the Great Gatsby?

53 points by samclemens 6y ago

maskedoffender 6y ago
Because it's a crappy version of the count of monte cristo.
- Evil_Saint 6y ago
  I don't think we'll ever see the Count of Monte Cristo assigned in US high schools. It's too long.
- Thibi2000 6y ago
  Aren't you taking a stretch here? Plotwise, both protagonists have different reasons to attain their goals. And besides the plot, don't they handle different topics?
  - maskedoffender 6y ago
    They're both about wealthy enigmatic characters (albeit the count of monte cristo book doesn't keep the count's purposes a mystery) who throw extravagant parties. Both characters seem emotionally distant and turn out to be excessively obsessed with the past. They both feature a lot of tragedy and revenge and the titular character meets their love from long ago who is now married to someone else. They both have connections to the criminal underground, they both anger the husband of their love causing death. Not exact duplicates by any means, but the similarities are there.
    - Thibi2000 6y ago
      Having similarities doesn't mean something is a crappy version. What's behind the similarities is different as well, for example the reason for their obsession with the past. I'm sure you can find similarities between many stories when you do it in such a vague way. Besides that, there's more to those books than the main plot. I always assumed that TGG is this well regarded because of themes it handles and how they're presented by the story of Gatsby. The same goes for The Count of Monte Cristo. I find them to be too different to call on even a version of the other, let alone a crappy one.
      - maskedoffender 6y ago
        I think that revenge and intricate interpersonal plots should just be avoided unless someone intends on outdoing the count of monte cristo. Maybe it's unreasonable but that's how I see it. I guess really the only things I appreciate in the great gatsby are the things in it that remind me of the count.
Antoninus 6y ago
After not reading for a few years I felt both within and without.
artemisyna 6y ago
There's a meandering article here but not much of a thesis. Even when the author addresses the title of the article itself ("So again: Why this book—for ninety-six years, over and over?") he goes back to meandering. It seems like the author is trying to say something between "we read it because it's like watching celebrity drama and awful people are fun to watch" or "we read it because it's the American Dream" or "something along those lines, but again, it meanders so badly between unrelated (probably true, or at least opinion) statement to other (probably true, or at least opinion) statement where it ultimately ends up going nowhere.
- klodolph 6y ago
  The thesis is that we read the book because it’s about performativity, and Americans have a different relationship with performativity than Europeans do. Every paragraph in the article from “so again” onwards is about performativity. An example of performativity, from the book but not mentioned in the article—Gatsby’s house has bookshelves filled with books, presumably never read, only there for decoration. Gatsby is performing the part of being rich. Since Americans do not have nobility, we take our performance cues (how to act upper class) by imitating Europeans. It’s a hundred years later and we still imitate Europeans and ape European culture when we want to pretend to be rich and upper-class.
  - graycat 6y ago
    My wife got a high end Ph.D. in sociology: E.g., two of her profs were President, American Sociological Society. Well, high end sociology tries to be a science of groups of people. Well, the theory of that field can start with a statement, observation, claim such as "It’s a hundred years later and we still imitate Europeans and ape European culture when we want to pretend to be rich and upper-class." I can believe that some or much of that is true! E.g., way back there when I wanted to learn to cook so I could serve something good to guests, I went for European cooking, sure, especially French cooking. Much of that cooking is still like the first class dinner scene from the movie Titanic! Even now, I'd like to serve guests something from Vienna coffee house cakes -- some of which look spectacular, even if actually they don't taste better than good American apple pie, warm, with good vanilla ice cream! So, the statement seems clear enough, might seem like good insight, maybe it's obviously true, etc. Still, it turns out, it is usually not easy actually to validate such a statement just from data, e.g., survey data, and associated statistics. More generally, literature, i.e., belle lettre, is awash in statements that maybe one would like to validate with data and statistics as sociology science but which in practice is tough to do. But for belle lettre, there is a way out! First, f'get about asking if the statement is true in some scientific or statistical sense. Second, instead, call the statement art as in the definition "the communication, interpretation of human experience, emotion". Then look at the statement as an example of such "communication, interpretation", that is, just see if the statement does communicate some emotions, impressions, feelings, beliefs, behaviors, suspicions, etc. of some people, maybe even some strange people with no attempt to consider average, most, or all people. First, then with a lot of such examples of belle lettre, can accumulate a catalog of possibilities for people, call it a collection of Bayesian statistics priors, as first cut guesses when meet a new person. Second, if some of those claims, etc., from literature seem to describe ones self, then can start to believe that are not alone, not the Lone Ranger, not a total anomaly different from everyone else. Uh, I wish my various literature teachers, at least one of them, would have made those points to me!
klodolph 6y ago
It can be hard to appreciate The Great Gatsby if, like many Americans, you were forced to read it in high school. The book is stained with your own memories of high school. Even if you like reading, the experience of being forced to read some particular book can make it feel like the book itself has wronged you.
- soperj 6y ago
  I love reading. I didn't read it until my early 30s, other than the last lines, there's nothing memorable at all about it, and honestly they're so out of character of the rest of the book, they feel like they were taken from something else. I kept waiting for it to get good. I'm still waiting.
  - klodolph 6y ago
    The book can’t possibly live up to its reputation. I still think it’s a good book.
    - pen2l 6y ago
      To each his own, but I’ll add that my experiences are much like grandparent post’s. I “read” it in high school (I.e. usually just read cliffnotes on the internet) and it was just another boring book. I read it again in my mid 20s and it hit me like nothing else, particularly the last chapter. I still remember smiling at the beauty and eloquence of that end, it resonated especially to me for its description of a person’s aspirations and authenticity in the dimension of our human relationships and our professional goals, as that was something I was myself struggling with at that time. I recommend giving it a read. And if you can’t, I guess watch the movie: https://youtu.be/rARN6agiW7o https://youtu.be/rARN6agiW7o of course the movie gets a lot of it wrong, with its choice of music and all, but at least it’s got interesting Baz Luhrmann choreography.
    - Ma8ee 6y ago
      As someone else who read it for the first time as an adult, it’s a perfectly fine book. But it certainly doesn’t deserve the iconic status it seems to have in the US.
jimbob45 6y ago
Probably because English teachers have all read it and can teach it if they need to switch into teaching that class. It’s a trash book but material to teach books takes a lot of time and effort to conjure up and honestly not worth it unless there’s a clearly better successor to replace the book with.
readflaggedcomm 6y ago
Apparently we read it because of "forty-five" and capitalism as emotion. For certain definitions of "we," of "America." This performance of an analysis strikes me as trying to be too meta-cute to take seriously. Maybe the author was practicing writing from the viewpoint of Holden Caulfield.
- gonzus 6y ago
  This is the second reference to The Catcher in the Rye I see in this thread... If Great Gatsby is anything like that book, I don't want it any closer to me than orbital distances.
  - readflaggedcomm 6y ago
    The article reminds me more of Catcher in the Rye than The Great Gatsby does.
chmod600 6y ago
"The tragedy here is the death of the heart, capitalism as an emotion." The piece seems to equate capitalism with materialism. But the former is an economic system; the latter a universal human flaw. Winning material wealth doesn't win love or happiness. Living in a country with a few socialist policies doesn't magically make you immune from falling into that trap.
- fabianhjr 6y ago
  > Materialism is a form of philosophical monism that holds that matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and that all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions. https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Materialism https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Materialism How is materialism a universal human flaw? From context I would assume you mean greed.
  - chmod600 6y ago
    Hmm, I guess I was using an informal term, but I don't think greed quite fits, either. I think of greed as self-defeating. Letting your bet ride on the blackjack table, or believing a conman in hopes of a get-rich-quick scheme. What I was trying to express when I said "materialism" is the idea that money is the solution to any problem, and that everyone else values money as much as you do.
  - BrianOnHN 6y ago
    > ma·te·ri·al·is·tic excessively concerned with material possessions; money-oriented.
  - thundergolfer 6y ago
    Their use of materialism is correct. Materialism has multiple meanings.
- hguant 6y ago
  >The piece seems to equate capitalism with materialism. You assume the piece seeks to make an argument, or even a statement, as opposed to making vague references to popular/twitter sentiment.
chmod600 6y ago
"It would have been an age in which self-cultivation construes as a delusion of the American dream. You could build a fortune, then afford to build an identity" I had always thought the American Dream was rising from a lower class to have a humble house, a few children, a stable Mon-Fri job, and some basic comforts. Where did the idea that the American Dream is about riches come from? Note that I'm not saying the American Dream is unique. I just never heard that it somehow was tied to getting rich.
- NineStarPoint 6y ago
  Getting rich has been a part of the American dream since at least the gold rush, the idea of striking out west to make your fortune. More generally I’d argue that the American dream is that we made a country with greater social mobility than any other. That from any start, through hard work and intelligence you could become either middle class or rich according to your will. That the only thing holding you back would be your ability to capitalize on opportunities. It is of course, a dream that was either never true or has ended. It is demonstrably false that the US has greater social mobility than many of our contemporary first world countries. While there is still opportunity here, and social mobility is far from impossible, the rich get richer and the poor stay poor is probably closer to the truth of modern America than the American dream of a fully socially mobile society.
  - scsilver 6y ago
    What are the countries with higher mobility. Including those for the mobility of immigrants. Just wondering if you still have some sources around to research.
  - mechEpleb 6y ago
    >fully socially mobile society. Such a thing has never existed and never will. There's not much space at the top. >demonstrably false Then demonstrate it. And don't use spurious derived measures like some abstract social mobility index, argue an actual case. The US is still the place where you move to if you want to truly make it big in life, even if you've got lottery odds of success. I say this as a resident of a fairly well off European country.
paulcarroty 6y ago
'Cause people often acting like Gatsby: live in a mirage, unrealistic dreams, high expectations, not always (so) romantic as described in the book. So there are natural reasons to be sympathetic. Have doubts if you can understand it all in high school, but for 20-30+ people it's great book and shows perfectly what happened if you are obsessed with your dreams.
- mjevans 6y ago
  Can we agree it's not-the-best but has a good moral message about the danger of living in an illusionary bubble?
  - thundergolfer 6y ago
    The book’s message about fantasy is much richer than you’re giving it credit for. Gatsby isn’t simply a wild dreamer, he has a very specific dream, a dream that is wrapped up in the individualistic American dream and its tension with class. He’s also not living in an illusion, it’s repeatedly noted that he’s chasing the past (which he had with Daisy), but fatally cannot catch it because he needs something he had to have owned before he was even born. Nobility. Gatsby is an enormously capable and wonderful person. He is both ridiculously resourceful, and interpersonally treasured. He falls in love with a rich young woman, Daisy, who herself is interpersonally treasured but also whose wealth is an inevitable draw on the dirt poor Gatsby. Against all odds, Gatsby rises through American life to be possibly even richer than Tom Buchanan, the old-money rich man Daisy marries. Despite Gatsby’s accomplishments and abilities, he is still unable to wrest back Daisy from her old money life, highlighting the distance between them that was always class-based and foundational, a distance that would had wrecked their relationship even if Gatsby had never gone to war and left Daisy. The old-money Daisy and Tom “were careless people”, notes Nick the narrator. Gatsby’s fatal flaw was how much he cared about and believed in the American Dream and those who supposedly occupied it. He cared and did everything right, but they didn’t care that he did, because the American Dream means nothing to the upper-class. Climb it, against all odds, and they’ll still sneer, or in Daisy’s case be too weak to abandon the security of class. I don’t think you should read The Great Gatsby for it’s moral message about living in an illusion. It’s a story about the American Dream and it’s conflict with class. Having written that out stream of consciousness style, I’ve gone to check the Wikipedia and under Analysis the top two subheadings are “The American Dream” and “Class Permanence” so I think I have picked up what Fitzgerald was putting down, more or less. I initially loved The Great Gatsby because Fitzgerald writes beautiful sentences, and because Gatsby had a Randian hero quality to him. But after a while the political and gender commentary has become equally as valued.
janvdberg 6y ago
I read it over the weekend and was pleasantly surprised. The story is thin, the underlying themes are a bit richer, but it is the style that is extraordinary. I have highlighted many, many sentences just for their delightful form, rich descriptiveness and poignant observational value. Other than that, the place in time and bottled up description of the roaring 20s are other reasons people keep referring to it.
- thundergolfer 6y ago
  I’ve just read Tender is the Night, and while I didn’t love it like I loved The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald knocks it out of the park with “poignant observational value”. “Intermittently she caught the gist of his sentences and supplied the rest from her subconscious, as one picks up the striking of a clock in the middle with only the rhythm of the first uncounted strokes lingering in the mind.” That was a favourite sentence.
  - hycaria 6y ago
    I'm not native and also am blown away by Fitzgerald writing, reading the great gatsby and tender is the night afterwards. They are rather different books, but I loved the characters in tender is the night a lot more, so my preference would go to this one I guess.
  - teorema 6y ago
    What's funny to me — and I mean this sincerely, not as a troll — almost all the examples of good writing in Gatsby in this thread and the target article seem overwrought to me. If you'd present them to me out of context, I'd think they were examples of comically bad writing. I'm sort of neutral about The Great Gatsby. It's not my favorite but I think it's become a popular testament to its era. Because that era in many ways is the dawning of our own, it has special relevance.
    - mcphage 6y ago
      > almost all the examples of good writing in Gatsby in this thread and the target article seem overwrought to me. If you'd present them to me out of context, I'd think they were examples of comically bad writing Evocative, overwrought, comically bad in hindsight—in a book about the 1920s.
Hamuko 6y ago
Somewhat related: the staff at NPR's Planet Money recently released a 4.5-hour reading of the Great Gatsby. https://www.npr.org/2021/01/14/956800308/the-great-gatsby https://www.npr.org/2021/01/14/956800308/the-great-gatsby
- mercer 6y ago
  BBC's In Our Time (pretty good podcast) also did an episode on The Great Gatsby: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000r4tq https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000r4tq
projectileboy 6y ago
Strange coincidence - I just read it for the first time, and I’m pushing 50. I thought it was incredible. So much packed into so few words.
- deleted 6y ago
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gadders 6y ago
Coincidentally, this novel was recently discussed on BBC Radio 4's In Our Time: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000r4tq https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000r4tq
- mercer 6y ago
  Hah, much as the host occasionally annoys me with his interrupts, I can't recommend this podcast enough! Honestly, my only real complaint is the audio levels of the various guests. It seems like they're not normalized(?) enough so the audio goes from loud to very quiet. But I can definitely recommend going through the backlog of this podcast. Great stuff.
  - gadders 6y ago
    It used to be better when they were in the same room, but I think now it is remote due to COVID.
WaffleIronMaker 6y ago
This is a really funny article for me to see, because I am currently sitting in high school, ignoring my teacher who is teaching this book. Great timing.
- BitwiseFool 6y ago
  English is fundamentally a culture class. The goal is to instill certain values through required literature. From what I recall the Great Gatsby is mainly about the ills of great wealth and gilded age capitalism. If you talk about the themes of the book in a supportive way you're certain to get better grades. Don't just recap what you've read, endorse what they are trying to teach you and you'll be a much more successful English student.
  - travisporter 6y ago
    In the US (at least several decades ago when I was in school... I'm old) this was sadly not true for AP English. It's very much about understanding the themes not just recapping what you read. But there was no propagandization involved. Mein Kampf was a summer reading choice although I think I ended up reading Grapes of Wrath.
    - BitwiseFool 6y ago
      Sure, I didn't mean to come at this with a view that it's propaganda. Rather, they're trying to instill values that make you a good citizen. Looking back on my comment it does come off as rather cynical. Probably because I had a rough time in English class and I spent most of my time making summaries rather than making insights.
yuriko_boyko 6y ago
I didn't like it. I don't get what is so good about its style. The prose is too purple and it meanders a lot. Even for its time the style feels choppy.
- deleted 6y ago
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- CADBOT 6y ago
  Purple? How is prose purple? Genuinely curious if this is an alternate usage for the word or a typo.
  - machello13 6y ago
    Google says "prose that is too elaborate or ornate".
ryanmercer 6y ago
I've never read it, it wasn't part of school (Yes, I'm in the U.S.), and I'm not sure anyone I know has read it (at last we've never discussed it).
jeegsy 6y ago
I suppose I have picked the wrong time to start reading more of the "serious" stuff on the Internet and offline. This article would have been ok except for the totally random mention of blackface which read like a fulfillment of the current editorial house rules than an organic part. Of course the kicker is the mention of "forty-five" because you haven't written something of substance until you make some sort of oblique reference to him.
trgn 6y ago
The ending conclusion is so bizarre to me. From the article: > That’s a question to think about as you start to read this thing, whether for the first or fifty-first time. Daisy is this man’s objective, but she’s the wrong fantasy. It was never her he wanted. Not really. It was America. One that’s never existed. Just a movie of it. America. My reading is the exact opposite. He falls deeply in love as a young man, cannot correctly frame this infatuation with Daisy, and spend his entire life in trying to win her back. The wealth was a means to an end. Rather than being purposeful about his love for her, he goes about it in an almost timeless fashion. Gatzby makes himself visible in the largest way he can, stretching out into the world, without actually directly aiming for her. Hence all the parties, so eventually Daisy must get caught up in his orbit, just by the sheer enormity of his presence. It was _exactly_ her he wanted, and the mansion across the water, the sports cars, were the elaborate mechanisms to get her. Not "america" or whatever. The ambiguity is if she truly loved him, or if Daisy just got caught up by the sheer gravitational pull of it all. It's happened to be set in the roaring 20s because that's when the book was written, the self-made man was already a trope in american literature, as was the excess of the nouveau riche. It's a book - quite simply - about (mostly) unrequited love, and the length men equate achievement with desirability.

53 points by samclemens 6y ago

maskedoffender 6y ago

Because it's a crappy version of the count of monte cristo.

Evil_Saint 6y ago
I don't think we'll ever see the Count of Monte Cristo assigned in US high schools. It's too long.
Thibi2000 6y ago
Aren't you taking a stretch here? Plotwise, both protagonists have different reasons to attain their goals. And besides the plot, don't they handle different topics?
- maskedoffender 6y ago
  They're both about wealthy enigmatic characters (albeit the count of monte cristo book doesn't keep the count's purposes a mystery) who throw extravagant parties. Both characters seem emotionally distant and turn out to be excessively obsessed with the past. They both feature a lot of tragedy and revenge and the titular character meets their love from long ago who is now married to someone else. They both have connections to the criminal underground, they both anger the husband of their love causing death. Not exact duplicates by any means, but the similarities are there.
  - Thibi2000 6y ago
    Having similarities doesn't mean something is a crappy version. What's behind the similarities is different as well, for example the reason for their obsession with the past. I'm sure you can find similarities between many stories when you do it in such a vague way. Besides that, there's more to those books than the main plot. I always assumed that TGG is this well regarded because of themes it handles and how they're presented by the story of Gatsby. The same goes for The Count of Monte Cristo. I find them to be too different to call on even a version of the other, let alone a crappy one.
    - maskedoffender 6y ago
      I think that revenge and intricate interpersonal plots should just be avoided unless someone intends on outdoing the count of monte cristo. Maybe it's unreasonable but that's how I see it. I guess really the only things I appreciate in the great gatsby are the things in it that remind me of the count.

Antoninus 6y ago

After not reading for a few years I felt both within and without.

artemisyna 6y ago

There's a meandering article here but not much of a thesis. Even when the author addresses the title of the article itself ("So again: Why this book—for ninety-six years, over and over?") he goes back to meandering. It seems like the author is trying to say something between "we read it because it's like watching celebrity drama and awful people are fun to watch" or "we read it because it's the American Dream" or "something along those lines, but again, it meanders so badly between unrelated (probably true, or at least opinion) statement to other (probably true, or at least opinion) statement where it ultimately ends up going nowhere.

klodolph 6y ago
The thesis is that we read the book because it’s about performativity, and Americans have a different relationship with performativity than Europeans do. Every paragraph in the article from “so again” onwards is about performativity. An example of performativity, from the book but not mentioned in the article—Gatsby’s house has bookshelves filled with books, presumably never read, only there for decoration. Gatsby is performing the part of being rich. Since Americans do not have nobility, we take our performance cues (how to act upper class) by imitating Europeans. It’s a hundred years later and we still imitate Europeans and ape European culture when we want to pretend to be rich and upper-class.
- graycat 6y ago
  My wife got a high end Ph.D. in sociology: E.g., two of her profs were President, American Sociological Society. Well, high end sociology tries to be a science of groups of people. Well, the theory of that field can start with a statement, observation, claim such as "It’s a hundred years later and we still imitate Europeans and ape European culture when we want to pretend to be rich and upper-class." I can believe that some or much of that is true! E.g., way back there when I wanted to learn to cook so I could serve something good to guests, I went for European cooking, sure, especially French cooking. Much of that cooking is still like the first class dinner scene from the movie Titanic! Even now, I'd like to serve guests something from Vienna coffee house cakes -- some of which look spectacular, even if actually they don't taste better than good American apple pie, warm, with good vanilla ice cream! So, the statement seems clear enough, might seem like good insight, maybe it's obviously true, etc. Still, it turns out, it is usually not easy actually to validate such a statement just from data, e.g., survey data, and associated statistics. More generally, literature, i.e., belle lettre, is awash in statements that maybe one would like to validate with data and statistics as sociology science but which in practice is tough to do. But for belle lettre, there is a way out! First, f'get about asking if the statement is true in some scientific or statistical sense. Second, instead, call the statement art as in the definition "the communication, interpretation of human experience, emotion". Then look at the statement as an example of such "communication, interpretation", that is, just see if the statement does communicate some emotions, impressions, feelings, beliefs, behaviors, suspicions, etc. of some people, maybe even some strange people with no attempt to consider average, most, or all people. First, then with a lot of such examples of belle lettre, can accumulate a catalog of possibilities for people, call it a collection of Bayesian statistics priors, as first cut guesses when meet a new person. Second, if some of those claims, etc., from literature seem to describe ones self, then can start to believe that are not alone, not the Lone Ranger, not a total anomaly different from everyone else. Uh, I wish my various literature teachers, at least one of them, would have made those points to me!

klodolph 6y ago

It can be hard to appreciate The Great Gatsby if, like many Americans, you were forced to read it in high school. The book is stained with your own memories of high school. Even if you like reading, the experience of being forced to read some particular book can make it feel like the book itself has wronged you.

soperj 6y ago
I love reading. I didn't read it until my early 30s, other than the last lines, there's nothing memorable at all about it, and honestly they're so out of character of the rest of the book, they feel like they were taken from something else. I kept waiting for it to get good. I'm still waiting.
- klodolph 6y ago
  The book can’t possibly live up to its reputation. I still think it’s a good book.
  - pen2l 6y ago
    To each his own, but I’ll add that my experiences are much like grandparent post’s. I “read” it in high school (I.e. usually just read cliffnotes on the internet) and it was just another boring book. I read it again in my mid 20s and it hit me like nothing else, particularly the last chapter. I still remember smiling at the beauty and eloquence of that end, it resonated especially to me for its description of a person’s aspirations and authenticity in the dimension of our human relationships and our professional goals, as that was something I was myself struggling with at that time. I recommend giving it a read. And if you can’t, I guess watch the movie: https://youtu.be/rARN6agiW7o https://youtu.be/rARN6agiW7o of course the movie gets a lot of it wrong, with its choice of music and all, but at least it’s got interesting Baz Luhrmann choreography.
  - Ma8ee 6y ago
    As someone else who read it for the first time as an adult, it’s a perfectly fine book. But it certainly doesn’t deserve the iconic status it seems to have in the US.

jimbob45 6y ago

Probably because English teachers have all read it and can teach it if they need to switch into teaching that class. It’s a trash book but material to teach books takes a lot of time and effort to conjure up and honestly not worth it unless there’s a clearly better successor to replace the book with.

readflaggedcomm 6y ago

Apparently we read it because of "forty-five" and capitalism as emotion. For certain definitions of "we," of "America." This performance of an analysis strikes me as trying to be too meta-cute to take seriously. Maybe the author was practicing writing from the viewpoint of Holden Caulfield.

gonzus 6y ago
This is the second reference to The Catcher in the Rye I see in this thread... If Great Gatsby is anything like that book, I don't want it any closer to me than orbital distances.
- readflaggedcomm 6y ago
  The article reminds me more of Catcher in the Rye than The Great Gatsby does.

chmod600 6y ago

"The tragedy here is the death of the heart, capitalism as an emotion." The piece seems to equate capitalism with materialism. But the former is an economic system; the latter a universal human flaw. Winning material wealth doesn't win love or happiness. Living in a country with a few socialist policies doesn't magically make you immune from falling into that trap.

fabianhjr 6y ago
> Materialism is a form of philosophical monism that holds that matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and that all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions. https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Materialism https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Materialism How is materialism a universal human flaw? From context I would assume you mean greed.
- chmod600 6y ago
  Hmm, I guess I was using an informal term, but I don't think greed quite fits, either. I think of greed as self-defeating. Letting your bet ride on the blackjack table, or believing a conman in hopes of a get-rich-quick scheme. What I was trying to express when I said "materialism" is the idea that money is the solution to any problem, and that everyone else values money as much as you do.
- BrianOnHN 6y ago
  > ma·te·ri·al·is·tic excessively concerned with material possessions; money-oriented.
- thundergolfer 6y ago
  Their use of materialism is correct. Materialism has multiple meanings.
hguant 6y ago
>The piece seems to equate capitalism with materialism. You assume the piece seeks to make an argument, or even a statement, as opposed to making vague references to popular/twitter sentiment.

chmod600 6y ago

"It would have been an age in which self-cultivation construes as a delusion of the American dream. You could build a fortune, then afford to build an identity" I had always thought the American Dream was rising from a lower class to have a humble house, a few children, a stable Mon-Fri job, and some basic comforts. Where did the idea that the American Dream is about riches come from? Note that I'm not saying the American Dream is unique. I just never heard that it somehow was tied to getting rich.

NineStarPoint 6y ago
Getting rich has been a part of the American dream since at least the gold rush, the idea of striking out west to make your fortune. More generally I’d argue that the American dream is that we made a country with greater social mobility than any other. That from any start, through hard work and intelligence you could become either middle class or rich according to your will. That the only thing holding you back would be your ability to capitalize on opportunities. It is of course, a dream that was either never true or has ended. It is demonstrably false that the US has greater social mobility than many of our contemporary first world countries. While there is still opportunity here, and social mobility is far from impossible, the rich get richer and the poor stay poor is probably closer to the truth of modern America than the American dream of a fully socially mobile society.
- scsilver 6y ago
  What are the countries with higher mobility. Including those for the mobility of immigrants. Just wondering if you still have some sources around to research.
- mechEpleb 6y ago
  >fully socially mobile society. Such a thing has never existed and never will. There's not much space at the top. >demonstrably false Then demonstrate it. And don't use spurious derived measures like some abstract social mobility index, argue an actual case. The US is still the place where you move to if you want to truly make it big in life, even if you've got lottery odds of success. I say this as a resident of a fairly well off European country.

paulcarroty 6y ago

'Cause people often acting like Gatsby: live in a mirage, unrealistic dreams, high expectations, not always (so) romantic as described in the book. So there are natural reasons to be sympathetic. Have doubts if you can understand it all in high school, but for 20-30+ people it's great book and shows perfectly what happened if you are obsessed with your dreams.

mjevans 6y ago
Can we agree it's not-the-best but has a good moral message about the danger of living in an illusionary bubble?
- thundergolfer 6y ago
  The book’s message about fantasy is much richer than you’re giving it credit for. Gatsby isn’t simply a wild dreamer, he has a very specific dream, a dream that is wrapped up in the individualistic American dream and its tension with class. He’s also not living in an illusion, it’s repeatedly noted that he’s chasing the past (which he had with Daisy), but fatally cannot catch it because he needs something he had to have owned before he was even born. Nobility. Gatsby is an enormously capable and wonderful person. He is both ridiculously resourceful, and interpersonally treasured. He falls in love with a rich young woman, Daisy, who herself is interpersonally treasured but also whose wealth is an inevitable draw on the dirt poor Gatsby. Against all odds, Gatsby rises through American life to be possibly even richer than Tom Buchanan, the old-money rich man Daisy marries. Despite Gatsby’s accomplishments and abilities, he is still unable to wrest back Daisy from her old money life, highlighting the distance between them that was always class-based and foundational, a distance that would had wrecked their relationship even if Gatsby had never gone to war and left Daisy. The old-money Daisy and Tom “were careless people”, notes Nick the narrator. Gatsby’s fatal flaw was how much he cared about and believed in the American Dream and those who supposedly occupied it. He cared and did everything right, but they didn’t care that he did, because the American Dream means nothing to the upper-class. Climb it, against all odds, and they’ll still sneer, or in Daisy’s case be too weak to abandon the security of class. I don’t think you should read The Great Gatsby for it’s moral message about living in an illusion. It’s a story about the American Dream and it’s conflict with class. Having written that out stream of consciousness style, I’ve gone to check the Wikipedia and under Analysis the top two subheadings are “The American Dream” and “Class Permanence” so I think I have picked up what Fitzgerald was putting down, more or less. I initially loved The Great Gatsby because Fitzgerald writes beautiful sentences, and because Gatsby had a Randian hero quality to him. But after a while the political and gender commentary has become equally as valued.

janvdberg 6y ago

I read it over the weekend and was pleasantly surprised. The story is thin, the underlying themes are a bit richer, but it is the style that is extraordinary. I have highlighted many, many sentences just for their delightful form, rich descriptiveness and poignant observational value. Other than that, the place in time and bottled up description of the roaring 20s are other reasons people keep referring to it.

thundergolfer 6y ago
I’ve just read Tender is the Night, and while I didn’t love it like I loved The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald knocks it out of the park with “poignant observational value”. “Intermittently she caught the gist of his sentences and supplied the rest from her subconscious, as one picks up the striking of a clock in the middle with only the rhythm of the first uncounted strokes lingering in the mind.” That was a favourite sentence.
- hycaria 6y ago
  I'm not native and also am blown away by Fitzgerald writing, reading the great gatsby and tender is the night afterwards. They are rather different books, but I loved the characters in tender is the night a lot more, so my preference would go to this one I guess.
- teorema 6y ago
  What's funny to me — and I mean this sincerely, not as a troll — almost all the examples of good writing in Gatsby in this thread and the target article seem overwrought to me. If you'd present them to me out of context, I'd think they were examples of comically bad writing. I'm sort of neutral about The Great Gatsby. It's not my favorite but I think it's become a popular testament to its era. Because that era in many ways is the dawning of our own, it has special relevance.
  - mcphage 6y ago
    > almost all the examples of good writing in Gatsby in this thread and the target article seem overwrought to me. If you'd present them to me out of context, I'd think they were examples of comically bad writing Evocative, overwrought, comically bad in hindsight—in a book about the 1920s.

Hamuko 6y ago

Somewhat related: the staff at NPR's Planet Money recently released a 4.5-hour reading of the Great Gatsby. https://www.npr.org/2021/01/14/956800308/the-great-gatsby https://www.npr.org/2021/01/14/956800308/the-great-gatsby

mercer 6y ago
BBC's In Our Time (pretty good podcast) also did an episode on The Great Gatsby: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000r4tq https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000r4tq

projectileboy 6y ago

Strange coincidence - I just read it for the first time, and I’m pushing 50. I thought it was incredible. So much packed into so few words.

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gadders 6y ago

Coincidentally, this novel was recently discussed on BBC Radio 4's In Our Time: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000r4tq https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000r4tq

mercer 6y ago
Hah, much as the host occasionally annoys me with his interrupts, I can't recommend this podcast enough! Honestly, my only real complaint is the audio levels of the various guests. It seems like they're not normalized(?) enough so the audio goes from loud to very quiet. But I can definitely recommend going through the backlog of this podcast. Great stuff.
- gadders 6y ago
  It used to be better when they were in the same room, but I think now it is remote due to COVID.

WaffleIronMaker 6y ago

This is a really funny article for me to see, because I am currently sitting in high school, ignoring my teacher who is teaching this book. Great timing.

BitwiseFool 6y ago
English is fundamentally a culture class. The goal is to instill certain values through required literature. From what I recall the Great Gatsby is mainly about the ills of great wealth and gilded age capitalism. If you talk about the themes of the book in a supportive way you're certain to get better grades. Don't just recap what you've read, endorse what they are trying to teach you and you'll be a much more successful English student.
- travisporter 6y ago
  In the US (at least several decades ago when I was in school... I'm old) this was sadly not true for AP English. It's very much about understanding the themes not just recapping what you read. But there was no propagandization involved. Mein Kampf was a summer reading choice although I think I ended up reading Grapes of Wrath.
  - BitwiseFool 6y ago
    Sure, I didn't mean to come at this with a view that it's propaganda. Rather, they're trying to instill values that make you a good citizen. Looking back on my comment it does come off as rather cynical. Probably because I had a rough time in English class and I spent most of my time making summaries rather than making insights.

yuriko_boyko 6y ago

I didn't like it. I don't get what is so good about its style. The prose is too purple and it meanders a lot. Even for its time the style feels choppy.

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CADBOT 6y ago
Purple? How is prose purple? Genuinely curious if this is an alternate usage for the word or a typo.
- machello13 6y ago
  Google says "prose that is too elaborate or ornate".

ryanmercer 6y ago

I've never read it, it wasn't part of school (Yes, I'm in the U.S.), and I'm not sure anyone I know has read it (at last we've never discussed it).

jeegsy 6y ago

I suppose I have picked the wrong time to start reading more of the "serious" stuff on the Internet and offline. This article would have been ok except for the totally random mention of blackface which read like a fulfillment of the current editorial house rules than an organic part. Of course the kicker is the mention of "forty-five" because you haven't written something of substance until you make some sort of oblique reference to him.

trgn 6y ago

The ending conclusion is so bizarre to me. From the article: > That’s a question to think about as you start to read this thing, whether for the first or fifty-first time. Daisy is this man’s objective, but she’s the wrong fantasy. It was never her he wanted. Not really. It was America. One that’s never existed. Just a movie of it. America. My reading is the exact opposite. He falls deeply in love as a young man, cannot correctly frame this infatuation with Daisy, and spend his entire life in trying to win her back. The wealth was a means to an end. Rather than being purposeful about his love for her, he goes about it in an almost timeless fashion. Gatzby makes himself visible in the largest way he can, stretching out into the world, without actually directly aiming for her. Hence all the parties, so eventually Daisy must get caught up in his orbit, just by the sheer enormity of his presence. It was _exactly_ her he wanted, and the mansion across the water, the sports cars, were the elaborate mechanisms to get her. Not "america" or whatever. The ambiguity is if she truly loved him, or if Daisy just got caught up by the sheer gravitational pull of it all. It's happened to be set in the roaring 20s because that's when the book was written, the self-made man was already a trope in american literature, as was the excess of the nouveau riche. It's a book - quite simply - about (mostly) unrequited love, and the length men equate achievement with desirability.