19 ms·

The Great Gatsby is the most misunderstood novel (2021)

85 points by 1659447091 10mo ago

gnabgib 10mo ago
(2021) At the time (64 points, 72 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26085219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26085219
- kazinator 10mo ago
  That's odd. The date on the article is now April 10, 2025. In the text it refers to the publication date of The Great Gatsby as being 100 years ago. That is correct; the novel was evidently published on April 10, 1925. I see in the Internet Archive that they revised the text. Originally the article was published Feb 9, 2021, and the wording was: "Almost a century after he was written into being, F Scott Fitzgerald's doomed romantic has become shorthand for decadent flappers, champagne fountains and never-ending parties. " The article was clearly occasioned by Nick by Michael Farris Smith being published later that same month, delayed until 2021 due to copyright issues. Someone at the BBC simply made a note (or dug it up) to republish the article on the centennial of The Great Gatsby publication date, with some minor wording adjustment.
  - keiferski 10mo ago
    Makes sense. Certain phrases like “Gatsby misunderstood” are always relevant.
kazinator 10mo ago
> The thought crossed my mind that it would be really interesting if someone were to write Nick's story," he says. In 2014, by then a published author in his 40s, he sat down to do just that, telling neither his agent nor his editor. It was only when he delivered the manuscript 10 months later that he learned copyright law meant he'd have to wait until 2021 to publish it. WTf? Can't write an original spin off on some nearly hundred year old thing, without brushing with copyright law?
- SirSavary 10mo ago
  Crazy huh? If an author wrote something as a child and lived over a hundred, you could hit even two hundred :) F. Scott Fitzgerald, the author, died in December 1940. Given the rules around copyright I would have expected things to expire in 2010 (death of author, roll to next calendar year, +70 years) so I'm unsure what happened here.
  - duskwuff 10mo ago
    The rules were different at the time Gatsby was published. Its copyright expired 95 years after it was published - 1930 + 95 = 2025.
    - kazinator 10mo ago
      But Nick is not a derivative work; it's something original which references the characters and ideas in The Great Gatsby. It's pretty crazy that you have to wait until 95 years until the publication of the referenced work to publish something like this. Is it even about copyright or more about the abstract threat of litigation using copyright as a (baseless) pretext.
    - SirSavary 10mo ago
      Whack, I always naively assumed copyright periods have only ever gotten longer. Good to know The Mouse [1] has precedent behind their legal theory :) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act#Support https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act#S...
    - cyphar 10mo ago
      I was under the impression that the Mickey Mouse Protection Act 1998[1] extended the copyright protection for works retroactively (though already public domain works were excluded). That being said, I guess the act had precautions to stop it from reducing the copyright protection for edge cases like these? [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act
    - 10mo ago
rayiner 10mo ago
I love the Great Gatsby, but I don’t understand how anyone could misunderstand the book. It’s quite a straightforward story.
- SirSavary 10mo ago
  Very likely a result of said anyone not having read the book in the first place.
  - shermantanktop 10mo ago
    It’s a short, easy read for high schoolers. They won’t be reaching for a dictionary and can probably pass the test based on study guides. No work = no retention and no growth.
    - SirSavary 10mo ago
      I'm well aware, I had the opportunity to read it in high school, though that was because of my grade stream; students in a 'lower' stream didn't get the same material. Our prom theme the year I graduated was "The roaring 20s". The 2013 film had released months prior, and I remember discussing with friends how misleading it was--making the parties look incredible, while missing the book's subtler commentary. People who only glanced at the book, or only saw the film, can easily walk away thinking the Roaring Twenties were all glamour and fun, which is exactly the gap I was (poorly) pointing out in my earlier comment.
      - hunter-gatherer 10mo ago
        Yeah, I remember reading it in highschool and all we talked about eas the love story and parties. I re-read it in my early thirties for some reason and quickly realized the story was about temporal and moral tragedy. Daisy and Gatsby aren't romantics; they are morally shallow and selfish. I felt like the book was more about how we created a world were we train ourselves to chase glamor, but are punished for it in the process. Funny enough a while back my wife and her friends were talking about having a "Gatsby" themed party. I think that is exactly what woukd have Fitzgerald rolling in the grave. Haha
hutao 10mo ago
Today, we tend to see The Great Gatsby as a work of historical literature, as it gives a window into the Roaring Twenties. However, F. Scott Fitzgerald did not set out to depict the past; he was depicting his own present. Similarly, Proust's literature is seen as a window into the French high-society of the Belle Epoque, a society in which Proust lived. Which works today do you think future generations will see as the classics of the 2010s and 2020s? Such may not even necessarily be works of literature; they could be other storytelling mediums, such as film.
- thundergolfer 10mo ago
  Unironically dril's tweets[1]. Part of the problem of our time is that shared culture has significantly receded. There's little capacity to maintain "classics" as we understand them today. Take any massive artistic output (film, book, TV show) and it's nowadays either not seen/read/heard by more than 20% of the population or it's a flash in the pan hit which will be forgotten in another year or so (e.g. Barbenheimer). 1. https://www.reddit.com/r/dril/comments/cqde0e/pound_for_pound_what_is_the_best_dril_tweet_of/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dril/comments/cqde0e/pound_for_poun...
  - deleted 10mo ago
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  - pharrington 10mo ago
    The Year is 2026. Civilization has progressed little in the last 100 years.
    - wizardforhire 10mo ago
      Obligatory: https://youtube.com/watch?v=QbzcFbhPV-o&pp=ygUbVGhlIExpb24gaW4gV2ludGVyIGl0cyAxMTM4 https://youtube.com/watch?v=QbzcFbhPV-o&pp=ygUbVGhlIExpb24ga...
- tbrownaw 10mo ago
  > Which works today do you think future generations will see as the classics of the 2010s and 2020s? South Park? Maybe collectively those "actually the villain is just misunderstood" movies I hear are becoming a thing recently? They seem like a decent candidate for the "window into the culture of the time" thing. Some of those wide-audience computer games like Candy Crush and Farmville?
thundergolfer 10mo ago
This article ends up seeming like an ad for some dubious derivations of the original novel. - "Take, for instance, Michael Farris Smith's new novel, Nick. The title refers, of course, to Nick Carraway, the narrator of Gatsby, who here gets his own fully formed backstory." - "Jane Crowther's newly published novel, Gatsby, updates the plot to the 21st Century, and flips the genders to feature a female Jay Gatsby and a male Danny Buchanan." - "And Claire Anderson-Wheeler's The Gatsby Gambit is a murder mystery which invents a younger sister for Fitzgerald's eponymous anti-hero: Greta Gatsby – get it?"
- JKCalhoun 10mo ago
  Not a very good ad then since it seems rather dismissive of them.
- akoboldfrying 10mo ago
  > Jane Crowther's newly published novel, Gatsby, updates the plot to the 21st Century, and flips the genders I was tired of the idea of gender-flipping a story before the first story was ever gender-flipped, and I'm no less tired of it now. I suspect that even people who think it's important to perform the rite of gender-flipping a story don't actually like the stories that result. Because it's the same story as before, but now you have the feeling the author is standing in front of you, waiting for an opportunity to remind you that the main character is a woman now and isn't that incredible?
  - sharkjacobs 10mo ago
    What are the other gender swapped retellings that you're thinking of?
    - akoboldfrying 10mo ago
      In truth, the only one that comes to mind is Ghostbusters.
  - ajkjk 10mo ago
    well the target audience is people who do enjoy it. so, not you. maybe there's a whole dubious narrative about why... or maybe they just have tastes that seem simple and basic to you. why not?
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takoid 10mo ago
I always enjoyed D’Angelo Barksdale’s interpretation from The Wire: > D’Angelo: "He’s saying that the past is always with us. Where we come from, what we go through, how we go through it—all that shit matters. Like at the end of the book, you know, boats and tides and all. It’s like you can change up, right? You can say you’re somebody new, you can give yourself a whole new story. But, what came first is who you really are, and what happened before is what really happened. > And it don’t matter that some fool say he different ’cause the only thing that make him different is that he say it. But it ain’t the truth. Gatsby, he was who he was, and he did what he did. And because he wasn't willing to get real with the story, it caught up to him." > Inmate: "So you're saying he couldn't get over?" > D’Angelo: "No, I’m saying he was who he was. They found him out. They found him out in the end. And that’s what it is. You can’t get over. You can’t even get out."
- thijson 10mo ago
  The show itself was pretty good too.
  - hackeraccount 10mo ago
    My favorite scene in the show was two kids talking about Baltimore. Don't you ever just want to get out? Get out of what?
    - thijson 10mo ago
      In one of the first seasons there was a kid that was a witness to a murder. He got out of the city and was living with relatives in the countryside, he was safe. I didn't understand why, but he came back to Baltimore and ended up getting killed. He could have just stayed where he was and lived out his life in peace.
fortran77 10mo ago
I think readers are free to interpret a work of fiction any way they choose to, and nobody should be chided for "misunderstanding" anything.
- stodor89 10mo ago
  Yep. Time has taught us that often the author is a vehicle for the work, not the other way around.
viccis 10mo ago
This is a very confused article, I think. The fact that people associate these extravagant roaring 20s parties with the character of Gatsby has everything to do with his character and over-the-top parties being the strongest cultural touchstone that people today have with that era, given that almost all of us (in the US at least) have to read it in high school. The fact that the aesthetic qualities of Gatsby that are paid homage to have nothing to do with the subtext of those parties when you learn about his character is not a contradiction. This happens all the time. Rappers loved Scarface and mob movies back in the 90s/00s and used to imitate those aesthetics all the time, despite Tony Montana being clearly depicted as a complete idiot whose lack of impulse control is his undoing. The didn't "misunderstand" Scarface. They just loved the aesthetics and power fantasy.
- an0malous 10mo ago
  > Tony Montana being clearly depicted as a complete idiot whose lack of impulse control is his undoing. The didn't "misunderstand" Scarface. I think you’d be surprised how many people didn’t understand that
  - jimt1234 10mo ago
    I feel the same about Fight Club (the movie, not necessarily the book). Many people focused almost entirely on the Tyler Durden character, either celebrating or criticizing the extreme masculinity. But the whole point of the movie was a rejection of that character.
    - LanceH 10mo ago
      Sure, but at the same time a whole lot of the movie is about rejecting the modern treadmill we find ourselves on -- and that appeals to many. If there were just a way to be strong and feel alive, and not worry about anything else. Then the movie takes a turn and they hatch a scheme to blow stuff up and the viewer didn't realize what they were watching the whole time. In fact, calling it "Fight Club" is wrong if it's about the psychological drama going on in his head. It has nothing to do with the fight club, that's just one possible expression of it. People latch on to the first 2 acts of discovering oneself when stepping out of the expectations of society. Critics of those people like to point out that there are bad things about the movie also. No shit. They don't seem to get that other people can differentiate between enjoying a fiction and blowing stuff up. Lots of people ran out to try an MMA gym, not very many started blowing up buildings. Most just watched a movie. But hey, it's really easy to feel superior saying those people are toxic idiots for liking it at all.
kwindla 10mo ago
I'm a big Gatsby fan and recommend this recent Wesley Morris podcast about the book. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/our-last-chance-to-talk-gatsby/id1151436460?i=1000742680920 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/our-last-chance-to-tal... Morris has written some of my favorite long-form New York Times pieces, ("Willie Nelson's Long Encore", "Aretha Franklin Had Power. Did We Truly Respect It?", ), and he has the novelist Min Jin Lee and Gilbert Cruz, editor of The New York Times Book Review, as guests on the podcast to talk about why they regularly re-read Gatsby. Min Jin Lee talks about how amazing the craft of the novel is (beyond the obvious greatness of the sentence-by-sentence writing). A couple of months ago I was in New York and found a new cyberpunk re-telling of Gatsby called Local Heavens. A fun read if you like Fitzgerald, or re-imaginings of famous novels, or cyberpunk. https://kmfajardo.com/local-heavens/ https://kmfajardo.com/local-heavens/
snet0 10mo ago
I hate this sentiment. The book isn't "about" a thing in particular, neither does it "mean" any specific thing. It may have been written with some ideas in mind, and there may even be overt indications as to those ideas. Everyone has their own relationship with each and every piece of art, and may sometimes choose to include the artist and/or their intentions, but may also choose to exclude them. The article even discusses certain readers' developing relationship over time! The book hasn't changed, the text is static. Even within a person, the understanding of the text is fluid. To say it could possibly be misunderstood is to say that there is a wrong way of understanding, but clearly there are at least multiple correct - or at least not incorrect - understandings! A certain subculture of online males have fallen in love with Patrick Bateman. Now some of them might not have read or watched American Psycho, so to say they misunderstand the art is nonsense as they haven't actually seen it. For those that have and still choose to worship the obviously awful character, I see a lot of people say they haven't "understood" the film/book. They have! They just disagree with author's own interpretation!
- solumunus 10mo ago
  > To say it could possibly be misunderstood is to say that there is a wrong way of understanding, but clearly there are at least multiple correct - or at least not incorrect - understandings! There are multiple correct understandings but there are also understandings that are completely incorrect, no? You’re saying any interpretation is valid, even ones that are clearly nonsensical?
  - snet0 10mo ago
    At some point we have to bound our terms, obviously if someone interprets The Great Gatsby to be making commentary on interplanetary space travel they are incorrect but if someone was to interpret The Great Gatsby as containing some meaningful commentary that can be related to interplanetary space travel, that is within reason. If your definition of "interpretation" involves making claims about the author or empirical details, it is clear you can be incorrect. Otherwise, I think everything else is permissible.
- cgriswald 10mo ago
keiferski 10mo ago
I think the 2013 movie unfortunately has made the book into the symbol of the roaring 1920s era, and that comes with a lot of baggage that Fitzgerald didn’t intend to put center stage. I can’t think of any other mainstream media that is also set in the 20s and has as big of a cultural pull. So everything 1920s related gets crammed into Gatsby, when in reality it’s more of a fable on American identity.
jmyeet 10mo ago
My interest in literature lies at the intersection with politics and society. I resonate with the principle that art asks questions. In decades and centuries past, art was particularly important to the masses to question society at a time when that was often forbidden, forcing the use of metaphors. Literature, plays, opera and so on. So a result of this is that as a general rule conservative political movements cannot produce art because they don't want people to ask questions. They want to give them answers that they take unquestionably in a similar way to how religious dogma is propagated. So you see how fascist movements, most notably the Third Reich, have treated art and have sought "objective" beauty in an acceptable aesthetic and have denounced actual art as degenerate, even subversive, leading to such terms as "cultural Bolshevism". So I see the Great Gatsby as questioning the very society of the Roaring Twenties where you might otherwise see it more superficially as simply depicting that era. It's historically noteworthy that it was released in 1925, well before the crash of 1929 and the Great Depression that was (IMHO) the inevitable consequence of an era of great inequality where wealth was accumulated, even then, through financialization. Lest we forget Nick was a bond salesman. And on top of this system we have Tom and Daisy who are essentially parasitic, who float through life with no regard for the consequences of their actions, who produce and give back nothing in spite of their wealth and status. Other, most notably Gatsby himself, pay the price for their reckless disregard. I first read the Great Gatsby before the dot-com bust but it seems like you can draw many parallels with the post-GFC tech boom. This is why, for me at least, the Great Gatsby is inherently anti-capitalist.
yanhangyhy 10mo ago
Personally, aside from Russian literature, I now prefer American literature, which I think is underestimated in China. I really like that film adaptation, but what the film expresses is something else, not the same as the novel’s core theme. My own understanding is that American literature has at least three themes that are very distinctive and different from Europe(or other countries). One is the depiction of desolation and human loneliness before the American continent was developed into a prosperous land. Another is the pursuit of the American Dream, where people achieve success through relentless struggle. The third is what this novel expresses: what happens after success? Money and career cannot solve all problems; people need more to fill an entire life. I think this kind of contradiction is expressed most clearly in American literature and is also most worth articulating within the American cultural context. This is because its commodity economy and social transformation have been too successful, and it lacks the kind of historical entanglements that Europe has to dilute these problems. As a result, this sense of emptiness stands out even more sharply and demands a more urgent response. I don’t know if there are horror films like this, but I once saw something similar in the TV series WandaVision. She creates an illusion in which she and Vision are a standard middle-class couple, well-fed and well-clothed, with the visuals in black and white. This made it feel like a horror story to me. Why? Because you feel as if they lack nothing, yet they seem like empty shells: their lives are filled with commodities, and all their actions seem stripped of a spiritual dimension. Of course, I don’t think that America’s secular success means it has no spiritual world; rather, the former has been so successful that the latter has been greatly neglected. The purpose of American literature should be to depict, under the success of this commodity economy, what people’s inner lives have actually become, and what they ought to pursue. This, to me, is its most distinctive quality.
- Exoristos 10mo ago
  Ancestral Americans really do not have a "spiritual world," in my opinion, as acquisitiveness and power games suffuse even our churches, spiritual movements, and fraternal societies. The emptiness you delineate is very integral to the long-term American experience. As a reaction, addictive and manic personalities are endemic.
  - 10mo ago
auntienomen 10mo ago
No wonder Gatsby is frequently misunderstood: Most people won't have the experience needed to understand it until they're in their 30s, but we prescribe it for high schoolers year after year.
- brewdad 10mo ago
  I think this is true of much of the traditional high school English curriculum. I was way ahead of most of my peers and still far too great an idiot to fully appreciate the novels we read. I have reread some of those classics as an adult and should probably read more of them.
  - DyslexicAtheist 10mo ago
    i feel like this about literally every book I re-read a decade later.
- agumonkey 10mo ago
  I had similar questions regarding middle/high school literature studies. So many, so many ideas were out of reach from my soul when I was 15 (say the social contract by Rousseau). But maybe that was just emotional/existential immaturity on my part. Maybe some pupils, arguably a few, really had the maturity to connect with these themes. Maybe also, previous generations were more mature early on. I believe that in mathematics, in the 70s, it was expected to learn abstract algebra in high school, it college.
- port11 10mo ago
  The article underlines that what you get out of Gatsby will change substantially with age, and even encourages a re-reading later to get a different understanding of the novel. If a teenager’s understanding of it is ‘wrong’ according to you, that’s precisely the point. Perhaps the blame should be cast on a teacher’s poor explanation of it?
- bean469 10mo ago
  I suppose you could argue that it is a great book in terms of style and prose, which is why kids should be introduced to the work. I did not grow up in the US, so I have only first read it as a young adult and I vividly remember that the book was beautifully written. It was a joy to read, which I cannot say about all classics.
sometimes_all 10mo ago
While I'm not an American, I read a bit of American literature, and sometimes I feel that many American children/teenagers are exposed to the classics slightly early, before they can accurately pick up nuances, understand the social structure of the setting, and are able to grasp the different strengths and foibles of human beings, both real and fictional. This tends to make them either misunderstand the text, read it literally, or just get bored of books in general. On one hand, I admire the fact that great books are read by young people (something which isn't true in my country), but I wonder whether it ends up being counterproductive. Adaptations running away from the main story to focus overtly on stuff that attracts the audience instead of being faithful to the crux of the source material doesn't help either.
- elemdos 10mo ago
  I think it’s probably counterproductive. It’s like religion - there’s arguably a lot to be gained from it, but people form negative early experiences and associate them with the thing itself. I’d love to re-read The Great Gatsby but dont want to relive middle school.
  - aebtebeten 10mo ago
    I think it's intentional. Going back and rereading both 1984 and Brave New World as an adult made me realize how awful my english teachers' interpretations ("fantastic dystopias" instead of "mirrors of then-current society") had been. Give them to kids who don't have the life experience to interpret them for themselves, and you can make people believe they know what Orwell and Huxley were writing about...
    - bell-cot 10mo ago
      > Going back an rereading ... made me realize how awful my english teachers' interpretations ... Consider that a final lesson. Both about how much you've changed since high school, and about the career-ending downside to teaching kids that current society already is pretty damn dystopian.
seanhunter 10mo ago
I am in (perhaps) a tiny minority in that I love American literature but just don’t get what the fuss is about The Great Gatsby. I just don’t think it’s that good a novel. Off the top of my head I could come up with a list of at least 10 American novels that I have read that I think are significantly superior. In no order here goes 1. Blood meridian 2. The Bell Jar 3. Of Mice and Men 4. Mason and Dixon (everyone’s gonna say “Gravity’s Rainbow” but I think since this is an explicitly American list, the themes of Mason and Dixon of the North/South divide etc put it more squarely on this list) 5. To Kill a Mockingbird 6. Moby Dick (I’m not the biggest fan of this actually but it’s way better than Gatsby for me) 7. Walden (Does this count? Anyway whatever. Walden) 8. Portrait of a Lady 9. Infinite Jest 10. Go tell it on the mountain Honestly this is right off the top of my head and looking back I haven’t even got any Hemingway on here, or Ralph Ellison, or Toni Morrison. I could make a case for Slaughterhouse 5 or Catch-22 or The Naked and the Dead or a bunch of other things. Like even though I think he’s a total tool, Bonfire of the Vanities probably has a good case for being on the list I just genuinely don’t get the fuss about Gatsby. I’m glad people like it, but there seem far, far better American novels. Edit to add: And yes I did read it. Twice in fact, once in my late teens after I had read a lot of serious literature and thought it was ok but not great and then again in my late 30s because I was sure I must have missed something and was very disappointed to come to the conclusion that I really hadn’t. I have two theories for why maybe people like it so much. Firstly, because the author is such a stylist and they get strung along by some of the prose. But when you read a truly jawdropping stylist like for example in my book Joyce or Virginia Woolf or Cormac Macarthy, F. Scott Fitzgerald really doesn’t stand well in that company. Second theory (perhaps cynical) is that it’s the first novel in the US school syllabus that gets really serious literary criticism applied to it and so for a lot of people it is the book that awakens them to the power of literature. I could totally see that if you had a really great teacher introducing you to proper literature by means of the book you might love the experience and, because of that, the book.
- ErroneousBosh 10mo ago
  I never really understood Infinite Jest, and I've tried to read it several times over the past couple of decades. I don't really get on with the "wacky wacky wacky" nonsense humour, and the constant sesquipedalian polysyllablism in every incongruent sentence makes it read like it was written by a smartarse 14-year-old who has just found they can look up long words in a thesaurus and thinks it makes them sound clever. It's hard work to read with no payoff, I guess unless you like endless drivelling descriptions of drug use, which I don't.
JumpCrisscross 10mo ago
I remember reading a take that Gasby could be read as mixed race, and that gives the story another dimension. (Probably unintended as the plain reading. But the absence of descriptors for Jay Gatsby alone implies this might have been something Fitzgerald toyed with.)
jhjkhkjyuiyuoij 10mo ago
[dead]
Mikhail_Edoshin 10mo ago
The meaning of "The Lord of the Rings" would be something like that: if you somehow got some dark skill (say, you're a good liar) then the only way to save you from becoming a slave of the Dark Lord is to get rid of that skill. You cannot use that skill "for good", because each time you do that the Dark Lord gets closer. The journey would be long and even if you manage to get to the end, it may still be hard to lose that skill: it is a part of you and losing it would be as easy as losing a finger. Now let's see how we understand that meaning. Oh! We play endless sessions of Dungeons & Dragons! Here's a sword +4 and here's a cursed shield -2!
nephihaha 10mo ago
It's a high school book I believe and in my experience that tends to alienate a lot of people. I don't know whether school children have the life experience to understand the Great Gatsby.
cainxinth 10mo ago
The admiration some readers have for Jay Gatsby (even though he’s meant to be a tragic figure) reminds me of how some currently view the character of Patrick Bateman from American Psycho as aspirational (minus the murder). I think America values success and beauty so dearly that it can override better judgement in cases.
- thundergolfer 10mo ago
  They’re completely different characters and their qualities are completely different. You can easily admire tragic figures, as well. As whole essay could be written about how this comparison misunderstands The Great Gatsby.
spcebar 10mo ago
Tangentially, if you enjoy The Great Gatsby, you might also enjoy All The King's Men, which is a work of fiction that I think similarly richly described a swath of the American experience. As for Gatsby, I think it's a great piece of fiction that invites a lot of readings, and everyone's invited to that ownership of the text. I think you can come away with the deeply shallow understanding of "the twenties were cool," and still be enriched by Fitzgerald's writing style. I don't think anyone has made a good film adaptation of Gatsby and I don't know if anyone will, as long as it's adapted literally. The imagery and iconography of wealthy 1920s America eats so much of anything that tries to adapt it, that they tend to come out feeling shallow, and the writing is so dense that dialogue feels stilted and weird spoken out loud. You'd either need to, in my opinion, lean heavily into both, or abandon both, to make a good adaptation (leaning into both immediately feels like a Wes Anderson movie to me). I think the best adaptation would be to do something like Jobs, where they just take a few scenes from the book and create a movie out of that.
port11 10mo ago
This article is infuriating. The most misunderstood? Of all novels? Are we sure? Why not call it a “very misunderstood” novel? The entire article is a maze of ideas, explaining very little in the end. Okay, it’s misunderstood by young readers, people who think the latest movie adaptation looks cool, and so on. That’s it? You don’t think The Catcher in the Rye and Dracula were even more misunderstood? I don’t get what the BBC columnist is getting at here. I’ve re-read the novel and it does ‘feel’ different when you’re older, but it never conveyed that the 20s were cool and parties were awesome back then. Ach!
datancoffee 10mo ago
Makes me want to read it :)
Stargirl1 10mo ago
I just found your website, and I am fascinated by the discussion. Most who comment are rational and serious about literature. Such a plus these days. Anyway, it caught my eye because I'm writing, well trying to write, about Gatsby. I have mixed feelings about the book, but I have mixed feelings about most things. I don't think Fitzgerald necessarily set out to write a commentary on the 1920's. Like most writers he just set out to write the story in his head, and the story in his head turned out to be relatable to the culture in many ways. And he didn't even know that "...sometimes a great notion."

85 points by 1659447091 10mo ago

(2021) At the time (64 points, 72 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26085219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26085219

kazinator 10mo ago
That's odd. The date on the article is now April 10, 2025. In the text it refers to the publication date of The Great Gatsby as being 100 years ago. That is correct; the novel was evidently published on April 10, 1925. I see in the Internet Archive that they revised the text. Originally the article was published Feb 9, 2021, and the wording was: "Almost a century after he was written into being, F Scott Fitzgerald's doomed romantic has become shorthand for decadent flappers, champagne fountains and never-ending parties. " The article was clearly occasioned by Nick by Michael Farris Smith being published later that same month, delayed until 2021 due to copyright issues. Someone at the BBC simply made a note (or dug it up) to republish the article on the centennial of The Great Gatsby publication date, with some minor wording adjustment.
- keiferski 10mo ago
  Makes sense. Certain phrases like “Gatsby misunderstood” are always relevant.

kazinator 10mo ago

> The thought crossed my mind that it would be really interesting if someone were to write Nick's story," he says. In 2014, by then a published author in his 40s, he sat down to do just that, telling neither his agent nor his editor. It was only when he delivered the manuscript 10 months later that he learned copyright law meant he'd have to wait until 2021 to publish it. WTf? Can't write an original spin off on some nearly hundred year old thing, without brushing with copyright law?

SirSavary 10mo ago
Crazy huh? If an author wrote something as a child and lived over a hundred, you could hit even two hundred :) F. Scott Fitzgerald, the author, died in December 1940. Given the rules around copyright I would have expected things to expire in 2010 (death of author, roll to next calendar year, +70 years) so I'm unsure what happened here.
- duskwuff 10mo ago
  The rules were different at the time Gatsby was published. Its copyright expired 95 years after it was published - 1930 + 95 = 2025.
  - kazinator 10mo ago
    But Nick is not a derivative work; it's something original which references the characters and ideas in The Great Gatsby. It's pretty crazy that you have to wait until 95 years until the publication of the referenced work to publish something like this. Is it even about copyright or more about the abstract threat of litigation using copyright as a (baseless) pretext.
  - SirSavary 10mo ago
    Whack, I always naively assumed copyright periods have only ever gotten longer. Good to know The Mouse [1] has precedent behind their legal theory :) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act#Support https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act#S...
  - cyphar 10mo ago
    I was under the impression that the Mickey Mouse Protection Act 1998[1] extended the copyright protection for works retroactively (though already public domain works were excluded). That being said, I guess the act had precautions to stop it from reducing the copyright protection for edge cases like these? [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act
  - 10mo ago

rayiner 10mo ago

I love the Great Gatsby, but I don’t understand how anyone could misunderstand the book. It’s quite a straightforward story.

SirSavary 10mo ago
Very likely a result of said anyone not having read the book in the first place.
- shermantanktop 10mo ago
  It’s a short, easy read for high schoolers. They won’t be reaching for a dictionary and can probably pass the test based on study guides. No work = no retention and no growth.
  - SirSavary 10mo ago
    I'm well aware, I had the opportunity to read it in high school, though that was because of my grade stream; students in a 'lower' stream didn't get the same material. Our prom theme the year I graduated was "The roaring 20s". The 2013 film had released months prior, and I remember discussing with friends how misleading it was--making the parties look incredible, while missing the book's subtler commentary. People who only glanced at the book, or only saw the film, can easily walk away thinking the Roaring Twenties were all glamour and fun, which is exactly the gap I was (poorly) pointing out in my earlier comment.
    - hunter-gatherer 10mo ago
      Yeah, I remember reading it in highschool and all we talked about eas the love story and parties. I re-read it in my early thirties for some reason and quickly realized the story was about temporal and moral tragedy. Daisy and Gatsby aren't romantics; they are morally shallow and selfish. I felt like the book was more about how we created a world were we train ourselves to chase glamor, but are punished for it in the process. Funny enough a while back my wife and her friends were talking about having a "Gatsby" themed party. I think that is exactly what woukd have Fitzgerald rolling in the grave. Haha

hutao 10mo ago

Today, we tend to see The Great Gatsby as a work of historical literature, as it gives a window into the Roaring Twenties. However, F. Scott Fitzgerald did not set out to depict the past; he was depicting his own present. Similarly, Proust's literature is seen as a window into the French high-society of the Belle Epoque, a society in which Proust lived. Which works today do you think future generations will see as the classics of the 2010s and 2020s? Such may not even necessarily be works of literature; they could be other storytelling mediums, such as film.

thundergolfer 10mo ago
Unironically dril's tweets[1]. Part of the problem of our time is that shared culture has significantly receded. There's little capacity to maintain "classics" as we understand them today. Take any massive artistic output (film, book, TV show) and it's nowadays either not seen/read/heard by more than 20% of the population or it's a flash in the pan hit which will be forgotten in another year or so (e.g. Barbenheimer). 1. https://www.reddit.com/r/dril/comments/cqde0e/pound_for_pound_what_is_the_best_dril_tweet_of/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dril/comments/cqde0e/pound_for_poun...
- deleted 10mo ago
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- pharrington 10mo ago
  The Year is 2026. Civilization has progressed little in the last 100 years.
  - wizardforhire 10mo ago
    Obligatory: https://youtube.com/watch?v=QbzcFbhPV-o&pp=ygUbVGhlIExpb24gaW4gV2ludGVyIGl0cyAxMTM4 https://youtube.com/watch?v=QbzcFbhPV-o&pp=ygUbVGhlIExpb24ga...
tbrownaw 10mo ago
> Which works today do you think future generations will see as the classics of the 2010s and 2020s? South Park? Maybe collectively those "actually the villain is just misunderstood" movies I hear are becoming a thing recently? They seem like a decent candidate for the "window into the culture of the time" thing. Some of those wide-audience computer games like Candy Crush and Farmville?

thundergolfer 10mo ago

This article ends up seeming like an ad for some dubious derivations of the original novel. - "Take, for instance, Michael Farris Smith's new novel, Nick. The title refers, of course, to Nick Carraway, the narrator of Gatsby, who here gets his own fully formed backstory." - "Jane Crowther's newly published novel, Gatsby, updates the plot to the 21st Century, and flips the genders to feature a female Jay Gatsby and a male Danny Buchanan." - "And Claire Anderson-Wheeler's The Gatsby Gambit is a murder mystery which invents a younger sister for Fitzgerald's eponymous anti-hero: Greta Gatsby – get it?"

JKCalhoun 10mo ago
Not a very good ad then since it seems rather dismissive of them.
akoboldfrying 10mo ago
> Jane Crowther's newly published novel, Gatsby, updates the plot to the 21st Century, and flips the genders I was tired of the idea of gender-flipping a story before the first story was ever gender-flipped, and I'm no less tired of it now. I suspect that even people who think it's important to perform the rite of gender-flipping a story don't actually like the stories that result. Because it's the same story as before, but now you have the feeling the author is standing in front of you, waiting for an opportunity to remind you that the main character is a woman now and isn't that incredible?
- sharkjacobs 10mo ago
  What are the other gender swapped retellings that you're thinking of?
  - akoboldfrying 10mo ago
    In truth, the only one that comes to mind is Ghostbusters.
- ajkjk 10mo ago
  well the target audience is people who do enjoy it. so, not you. maybe there's a whole dubious narrative about why... or maybe they just have tastes that seem simple and basic to you. why not?

deleted 10mo ago

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takoid 10mo ago

I always enjoyed D’Angelo Barksdale’s interpretation from The Wire: > D’Angelo: "He’s saying that the past is always with us. Where we come from, what we go through, how we go through it—all that shit matters. Like at the end of the book, you know, boats and tides and all. It’s like you can change up, right? You can say you’re somebody new, you can give yourself a whole new story. But, what came first is who you really are, and what happened before is what really happened. > And it don’t matter that some fool say he different ’cause the only thing that make him different is that he say it. But it ain’t the truth. Gatsby, he was who he was, and he did what he did. And because he wasn't willing to get real with the story, it caught up to him." > Inmate: "So you're saying he couldn't get over?" > D’Angelo: "No, I’m saying he was who he was. They found him out. They found him out in the end. And that’s what it is. You can’t get over. You can’t even get out."

thijson 10mo ago
The show itself was pretty good too.
- hackeraccount 10mo ago
  My favorite scene in the show was two kids talking about Baltimore. Don't you ever just want to get out? Get out of what?
  - thijson 10mo ago
    In one of the first seasons there was a kid that was a witness to a murder. He got out of the city and was living with relatives in the countryside, he was safe. I didn't understand why, but he came back to Baltimore and ended up getting killed. He could have just stayed where he was and lived out his life in peace.

fortran77 10mo ago

I think readers are free to interpret a work of fiction any way they choose to, and nobody should be chided for "misunderstanding" anything.

stodor89 10mo ago
Yep. Time has taught us that often the author is a vehicle for the work, not the other way around.

viccis 10mo ago

This is a very confused article, I think. The fact that people associate these extravagant roaring 20s parties with the character of Gatsby has everything to do with his character and over-the-top parties being the strongest cultural touchstone that people today have with that era, given that almost all of us (in the US at least) have to read it in high school. The fact that the aesthetic qualities of Gatsby that are paid homage to have nothing to do with the subtext of those parties when you learn about his character is not a contradiction. This happens all the time. Rappers loved Scarface and mob movies back in the 90s/00s and used to imitate those aesthetics all the time, despite Tony Montana being clearly depicted as a complete idiot whose lack of impulse control is his undoing. The didn't "misunderstand" Scarface. They just loved the aesthetics and power fantasy.

an0malous 10mo ago
> Tony Montana being clearly depicted as a complete idiot whose lack of impulse control is his undoing. The didn't "misunderstand" Scarface. I think you’d be surprised how many people didn’t understand that
- jimt1234 10mo ago
  I feel the same about Fight Club (the movie, not necessarily the book). Many people focused almost entirely on the Tyler Durden character, either celebrating or criticizing the extreme masculinity. But the whole point of the movie was a rejection of that character.
  - LanceH 10mo ago
    Sure, but at the same time a whole lot of the movie is about rejecting the modern treadmill we find ourselves on -- and that appeals to many. If there were just a way to be strong and feel alive, and not worry about anything else. Then the movie takes a turn and they hatch a scheme to blow stuff up and the viewer didn't realize what they were watching the whole time. In fact, calling it "Fight Club" is wrong if it's about the psychological drama going on in his head. It has nothing to do with the fight club, that's just one possible expression of it. People latch on to the first 2 acts of discovering oneself when stepping out of the expectations of society. Critics of those people like to point out that there are bad things about the movie also. No shit. They don't seem to get that other people can differentiate between enjoying a fiction and blowing stuff up. Lots of people ran out to try an MMA gym, not very many started blowing up buildings. Most just watched a movie. But hey, it's really easy to feel superior saying those people are toxic idiots for liking it at all.

kwindla 10mo ago

I'm a big Gatsby fan and recommend this recent Wesley Morris podcast about the book. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/our-last-chance-to-talk-gatsby/id1151436460?i=1000742680920 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/our-last-chance-to-tal... Morris has written some of my favorite long-form New York Times pieces, ("Willie Nelson's Long Encore", "Aretha Franklin Had Power. Did We Truly Respect It?", ), and he has the novelist Min Jin Lee and Gilbert Cruz, editor of The New York Times Book Review, as guests on the podcast to talk about why they regularly re-read Gatsby. Min Jin Lee talks about how amazing the craft of the novel is (beyond the obvious greatness of the sentence-by-sentence writing). A couple of months ago I was in New York and found a new cyberpunk re-telling of Gatsby called Local Heavens. A fun read if you like Fitzgerald, or re-imaginings of famous novels, or cyberpunk. https://kmfajardo.com/local-heavens/ https://kmfajardo.com/local-heavens/

snet0 10mo ago

I hate this sentiment. The book isn't "about" a thing in particular, neither does it "mean" any specific thing. It may have been written with some ideas in mind, and there may even be overt indications as to those ideas. Everyone has their own relationship with each and every piece of art, and may sometimes choose to include the artist and/or their intentions, but may also choose to exclude them. The article even discusses certain readers' developing relationship over time! The book hasn't changed, the text is static. Even within a person, the understanding of the text is fluid. To say it could possibly be misunderstood is to say that there is a wrong way of understanding, but clearly there are at least multiple correct - or at least not incorrect - understandings! A certain subculture of online males have fallen in love with Patrick Bateman. Now some of them might not have read or watched American Psycho, so to say they misunderstand the art is nonsense as they haven't actually seen it. For those that have and still choose to worship the obviously awful character, I see a lot of people say they haven't "understood" the film/book. They have! They just disagree with author's own interpretation!

solumunus 10mo ago
> To say it could possibly be misunderstood is to say that there is a wrong way of understanding, but clearly there are at least multiple correct - or at least not incorrect - understandings! There are multiple correct understandings but there are also understandings that are completely incorrect, no? You’re saying any interpretation is valid, even ones that are clearly nonsensical?
- snet0 10mo ago
  At some point we have to bound our terms, obviously if someone interprets The Great Gatsby to be making commentary on interplanetary space travel they are incorrect but if someone was to interpret The Great Gatsby as containing some meaningful commentary that can be related to interplanetary space travel, that is within reason. If your definition of "interpretation" involves making claims about the author or empirical details, it is clear you can be incorrect. Otherwise, I think everything else is permissible.
cgriswald 10mo ago

keiferski 10mo ago

I think the 2013 movie unfortunately has made the book into the symbol of the roaring 1920s era, and that comes with a lot of baggage that Fitzgerald didn’t intend to put center stage. I can’t think of any other mainstream media that is also set in the 20s and has as big of a cultural pull. So everything 1920s related gets crammed into Gatsby, when in reality it’s more of a fable on American identity.

jmyeet 10mo ago

My interest in literature lies at the intersection with politics and society. I resonate with the principle that art asks questions. In decades and centuries past, art was particularly important to the masses to question society at a time when that was often forbidden, forcing the use of metaphors. Literature, plays, opera and so on. So a result of this is that as a general rule conservative political movements cannot produce art because they don't want people to ask questions. They want to give them answers that they take unquestionably in a similar way to how religious dogma is propagated. So you see how fascist movements, most notably the Third Reich, have treated art and have sought "objective" beauty in an acceptable aesthetic and have denounced actual art as degenerate, even subversive, leading to such terms as "cultural Bolshevism". So I see the Great Gatsby as questioning the very society of the Roaring Twenties where you might otherwise see it more superficially as simply depicting that era. It's historically noteworthy that it was released in 1925, well before the crash of 1929 and the Great Depression that was (IMHO) the inevitable consequence of an era of great inequality where wealth was accumulated, even then, through financialization. Lest we forget Nick was a bond salesman. And on top of this system we have Tom and Daisy who are essentially parasitic, who float through life with no regard for the consequences of their actions, who produce and give back nothing in spite of their wealth and status. Other, most notably Gatsby himself, pay the price for their reckless disregard. I first read the Great Gatsby before the dot-com bust but it seems like you can draw many parallels with the post-GFC tech boom. This is why, for me at least, the Great Gatsby is inherently anti-capitalist.

yanhangyhy 10mo ago

Personally, aside from Russian literature, I now prefer American literature, which I think is underestimated in China. I really like that film adaptation, but what the film expresses is something else, not the same as the novel’s core theme. My own understanding is that American literature has at least three themes that are very distinctive and different from Europe(or other countries). One is the depiction of desolation and human loneliness before the American continent was developed into a prosperous land. Another is the pursuit of the American Dream, where people achieve success through relentless struggle. The third is what this novel expresses: what happens after success? Money and career cannot solve all problems; people need more to fill an entire life. I think this kind of contradiction is expressed most clearly in American literature and is also most worth articulating within the American cultural context. This is because its commodity economy and social transformation have been too successful, and it lacks the kind of historical entanglements that Europe has to dilute these problems. As a result, this sense of emptiness stands out even more sharply and demands a more urgent response. I don’t know if there are horror films like this, but I once saw something similar in the TV series WandaVision. She creates an illusion in which she and Vision are a standard middle-class couple, well-fed and well-clothed, with the visuals in black and white. This made it feel like a horror story to me. Why? Because you feel as if they lack nothing, yet they seem like empty shells: their lives are filled with commodities, and all their actions seem stripped of a spiritual dimension. Of course, I don’t think that America’s secular success means it has no spiritual world; rather, the former has been so successful that the latter has been greatly neglected. The purpose of American literature should be to depict, under the success of this commodity economy, what people’s inner lives have actually become, and what they ought to pursue. This, to me, is its most distinctive quality.

Exoristos 10mo ago
Ancestral Americans really do not have a "spiritual world," in my opinion, as acquisitiveness and power games suffuse even our churches, spiritual movements, and fraternal societies. The emptiness you delineate is very integral to the long-term American experience. As a reaction, addictive and manic personalities are endemic.
- 10mo ago

auntienomen 10mo ago

No wonder Gatsby is frequently misunderstood: Most people won't have the experience needed to understand it until they're in their 30s, but we prescribe it for high schoolers year after year.

brewdad 10mo ago
I think this is true of much of the traditional high school English curriculum. I was way ahead of most of my peers and still far too great an idiot to fully appreciate the novels we read. I have reread some of those classics as an adult and should probably read more of them.
- DyslexicAtheist 10mo ago
  i feel like this about literally every book I re-read a decade later.
agumonkey 10mo ago
I had similar questions regarding middle/high school literature studies. So many, so many ideas were out of reach from my soul when I was 15 (say the social contract by Rousseau). But maybe that was just emotional/existential immaturity on my part. Maybe some pupils, arguably a few, really had the maturity to connect with these themes. Maybe also, previous generations were more mature early on. I believe that in mathematics, in the 70s, it was expected to learn abstract algebra in high school, it college.
port11 10mo ago
The article underlines that what you get out of Gatsby will change substantially with age, and even encourages a re-reading later to get a different understanding of the novel. If a teenager’s understanding of it is ‘wrong’ according to you, that’s precisely the point. Perhaps the blame should be cast on a teacher’s poor explanation of it?
bean469 10mo ago
I suppose you could argue that it is a great book in terms of style and prose, which is why kids should be introduced to the work. I did not grow up in the US, so I have only first read it as a young adult and I vividly remember that the book was beautifully written. It was a joy to read, which I cannot say about all classics.

sometimes_all 10mo ago

While I'm not an American, I read a bit of American literature, and sometimes I feel that many American children/teenagers are exposed to the classics slightly early, before they can accurately pick up nuances, understand the social structure of the setting, and are able to grasp the different strengths and foibles of human beings, both real and fictional. This tends to make them either misunderstand the text, read it literally, or just get bored of books in general. On one hand, I admire the fact that great books are read by young people (something which isn't true in my country), but I wonder whether it ends up being counterproductive. Adaptations running away from the main story to focus overtly on stuff that attracts the audience instead of being faithful to the crux of the source material doesn't help either.

elemdos 10mo ago
I think it’s probably counterproductive. It’s like religion - there’s arguably a lot to be gained from it, but people form negative early experiences and associate them with the thing itself. I’d love to re-read The Great Gatsby but dont want to relive middle school.
- aebtebeten 10mo ago
  I think it's intentional. Going back and rereading both 1984 and Brave New World as an adult made me realize how awful my english teachers' interpretations ("fantastic dystopias" instead of "mirrors of then-current society") had been. Give them to kids who don't have the life experience to interpret them for themselves, and you can make people believe they know what Orwell and Huxley were writing about...
  - bell-cot 10mo ago
    > Going back an rereading ... made me realize how awful my english teachers' interpretations ... Consider that a final lesson. Both about how much you've changed since high school, and about the career-ending downside to teaching kids that current society already is pretty damn dystopian.

seanhunter 10mo ago

I am in (perhaps) a tiny minority in that I love American literature but just don’t get what the fuss is about The Great Gatsby. I just don’t think it’s that good a novel. Off the top of my head I could come up with a list of at least 10 American novels that I have read that I think are significantly superior. In no order here goes 1. Blood meridian 2. The Bell Jar 3. Of Mice and Men 4. Mason and Dixon (everyone’s gonna say “Gravity’s Rainbow” but I think since this is an explicitly American list, the themes of Mason and Dixon of the North/South divide etc put it more squarely on this list) 5. To Kill a Mockingbird 6. Moby Dick (I’m not the biggest fan of this actually but it’s way better than Gatsby for me) 7. Walden (Does this count? Anyway whatever. Walden) 8. Portrait of a Lady 9. Infinite Jest 10. Go tell it on the mountain Honestly this is right off the top of my head and looking back I haven’t even got any Hemingway on here, or Ralph Ellison, or Toni Morrison. I could make a case for Slaughterhouse 5 or Catch-22 or The Naked and the Dead or a bunch of other things. Like even though I think he’s a total tool, Bonfire of the Vanities probably has a good case for being on the list I just genuinely don’t get the fuss about Gatsby. I’m glad people like it, but there seem far, far better American novels. Edit to add: And yes I did read it. Twice in fact, once in my late teens after I had read a lot of serious literature and thought it was ok but not great and then again in my late 30s because I was sure I must have missed something and was very disappointed to come to the conclusion that I really hadn’t. I have two theories for why maybe people like it so much. Firstly, because the author is such a stylist and they get strung along by some of the prose. But when you read a truly jawdropping stylist like for example in my book Joyce or Virginia Woolf or Cormac Macarthy, F. Scott Fitzgerald really doesn’t stand well in that company. Second theory (perhaps cynical) is that it’s the first novel in the US school syllabus that gets really serious literary criticism applied to it and so for a lot of people it is the book that awakens them to the power of literature. I could totally see that if you had a really great teacher introducing you to proper literature by means of the book you might love the experience and, because of that, the book.

ErroneousBosh 10mo ago
I never really understood Infinite Jest, and I've tried to read it several times over the past couple of decades. I don't really get on with the "wacky wacky wacky" nonsense humour, and the constant sesquipedalian polysyllablism in every incongruent sentence makes it read like it was written by a smartarse 14-year-old who has just found they can look up long words in a thesaurus and thinks it makes them sound clever. It's hard work to read with no payoff, I guess unless you like endless drivelling descriptions of drug use, which I don't.

JumpCrisscross 10mo ago

I remember reading a take that Gasby could be read as mixed race, and that gives the story another dimension. (Probably unintended as the plain reading. But the absence of descriptors for Jay Gatsby alone implies this might have been something Fitzgerald toyed with.)

jhjkhkjyuiyuoij 10mo ago

[dead]

Mikhail_Edoshin 10mo ago

The meaning of "The Lord of the Rings" would be something like that: if you somehow got some dark skill (say, you're a good liar) then the only way to save you from becoming a slave of the Dark Lord is to get rid of that skill. You cannot use that skill "for good", because each time you do that the Dark Lord gets closer. The journey would be long and even if you manage to get to the end, it may still be hard to lose that skill: it is a part of you and losing it would be as easy as losing a finger. Now let's see how we understand that meaning. Oh! We play endless sessions of Dungeons & Dragons! Here's a sword +4 and here's a cursed shield -2!

nephihaha 10mo ago

It's a high school book I believe and in my experience that tends to alienate a lot of people. I don't know whether school children have the life experience to understand the Great Gatsby.

cainxinth 10mo ago

The admiration some readers have for Jay Gatsby (even though he’s meant to be a tragic figure) reminds me of how some currently view the character of Patrick Bateman from American Psycho as aspirational (minus the murder). I think America values success and beauty so dearly that it can override better judgement in cases.

thundergolfer 10mo ago
They’re completely different characters and their qualities are completely different. You can easily admire tragic figures, as well. As whole essay could be written about how this comparison misunderstands The Great Gatsby.

spcebar 10mo ago

Tangentially, if you enjoy The Great Gatsby, you might also enjoy All The King's Men, which is a work of fiction that I think similarly richly described a swath of the American experience. As for Gatsby, I think it's a great piece of fiction that invites a lot of readings, and everyone's invited to that ownership of the text. I think you can come away with the deeply shallow understanding of "the twenties were cool," and still be enriched by Fitzgerald's writing style. I don't think anyone has made a good film adaptation of Gatsby and I don't know if anyone will, as long as it's adapted literally. The imagery and iconography of wealthy 1920s America eats so much of anything that tries to adapt it, that they tend to come out feeling shallow, and the writing is so dense that dialogue feels stilted and weird spoken out loud. You'd either need to, in my opinion, lean heavily into both, or abandon both, to make a good adaptation (leaning into both immediately feels like a Wes Anderson movie to me). I think the best adaptation would be to do something like Jobs, where they just take a few scenes from the book and create a movie out of that.

port11 10mo ago

This article is infuriating. The most misunderstood? Of all novels? Are we sure? Why not call it a “very misunderstood” novel? The entire article is a maze of ideas, explaining very little in the end. Okay, it’s misunderstood by young readers, people who think the latest movie adaptation looks cool, and so on. That’s it? You don’t think The Catcher in the Rye and Dracula were even more misunderstood? I don’t get what the BBC columnist is getting at here. I’ve re-read the novel and it does ‘feel’ different when you’re older, but it never conveyed that the 20s were cool and parties were awesome back then. Ach!

datancoffee 10mo ago

Makes me want to read it :)

Stargirl1 10mo ago

I just found your website, and I am fascinated by the discussion. Most who comment are rational and serious about literature. Such a plus these days. Anyway, it caught my eye because I'm writing, well trying to write, about Gatsby. I have mixed feelings about the book, but I have mixed feelings about most things. I don't think Fitzgerald necessarily set out to write a commentary on the 1920's. Like most writers he just set out to write the story in his head, and the story in his head turned out to be relatable to the culture in many ways. And he didn't even know that "...sometimes a great notion."