Anyone for Gatsby?
David Fincher’s movie of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button should get a few people interested in the work of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Does anyone feel like reading/rereading The Great Gatsby? Sign up, we could have a discussion group.
Painting: “View of Toledo” by El Greco
West Egg, especially, still figures in my more fantastic dreams. I see it as a night scene by El Greco: a hundred houses, at once conventional and grotesque, crouching under a sullen, overhanging sky and a lustreless moon. In the foreground four solemn men in dress suits are walking along the sidewalk with a stretcher on which lies a drunken woman in a white evening dress. Her hand, which dangles over the side, sparkles cold with jewels. Gravely the men turn in at a house—the wrong house. But no one knows the woman’s name, and no one cares.
Original book cover by Francis Cugat
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
January 3rd, 2009 at 10:50
I was about to read “The Great Gatsby”(a dog eared copy I bought from Recto for only 30 pesos) last 2006 when a lady guard from an Ice Cream factory I’m working ask me if I could lend it to her first because she’s fond of pocket books and her child can use it for his project… She never returned my book, so can you please count me in while I’m scouring bargain bins again…
January 3rd, 2009 at 11:18
Now I feel like rereading it. You know what? I will reread it.
The Great Gatsby will be Baz Luhrmann’s next project, btw. Just in case you haven’t heard yet. :-)
January 3rd, 2009 at 15:34
I read The Great Gatsby around two years back. I guess I read it before or immediately after A Separate Peace — the two books I found at a booksale for around 20-30 pesos. I found Gatsby’s ending brilliant, one of the classic examples of the American dream gone awry, and the vehicular accident (?) which is an unforgettable part of the novel for me. The book I bought has the cover with Robert Redford on it, so I guess it has been turned into a film? I wanted to reread it as well but I recommended it for someone who borrowed it from me for a book report and that friend is now in Australia. Gosh.
January 3rd, 2009 at 16:15
The Great Gatsby is one of the most tragic examples of the American dream gone awry. But if the setting was transformed into Filipino circa 1990’s what do you think it would llok like?
January 4th, 2009 at 18:28
I’m up for re-reading it. I first read it after I graduated from high school a few years ago because it had been recommended by my English teacher and it seemed like the sort of book that I wanted to read. I loved it, because the motivations for his transformation seemed so admirable and worthy, and his end so tragically meaningless. At the end of 2007, in my last year of university, I re-read it for a literature and philosophy subject and had to go through all the irritating over-analysis and smug assumptions about what an author meant or a technique does which tend to ruin one’s innate, untrained understanding and appreciation for something one otherwise loves.
Incidentally, Jessica, I recently got the book that you gave me last year as a prize, Mystic River, and I just finished reading it. Thanks again! I’ll have to look for the movie. (I just wished that you had autographed the book… :P )
Cheers.
January 5th, 2009 at 00:02
I love Gatsby so much. I’ve read it thrice already. I got a paper back edition with the original book cover but the book is already starting to disintegrate. There are so many lines to remember from this book, so many scenes that will forever be seared in my memory: Dr. Eckleburg’s eyes glowering down at the people walking upon the desolate valley of ashes, Daisy’s words sounding like a melody that will never be played again, the “superciliousness” of Tom, Gatsby’s funeral, Daisy and Tom’s cruelty and selfishness, Gatz’s earnestness and the way he convinced Nick to arrange a meeting with Daisy, etc. I don’t think I will ever get tired of reading this book even though I still have some books lying around in here which I’ve never even opened yet.
June 25th, 2010 at 22:49
i love Gatsby, but nothing beats Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night…. ugh.