This reminded me a little of Truman Capote's "Breakfast at Tiffany's" which I read recently. Both are set in New York and have fashionable, larger-than-life protagonists: Jay Gatsby and Holly Golightly. In fact, the two might have made a good couple.
And both are told from the perspective of outsiders. Actually, the narrators in both books remind me of each other as much as the main characters do. It occurs to me that it would be tough to write a book about The Great Gatsby if Gatsby were the narrator. You need an outsider to tell the story properly. Here, you have to wait 47 pages before Gatsby even shows up, and I admit that the book didn't really take off for me until he did appear. Perhaps, though, he wouldn't have been as compelling a character, if he had been there at the very beginning.
This is the second time I've read this book. The first was in high school English, in which the teacher (a different one from the one I mentioned in the Winesburg, Ohio post) talked a lot about Jay Gatsby representing America itself. I suppose that's possible, but the idea didn't really make me like the book all that much. I find I'm enjoying it a lot more now that I'm not particularly worried about who or what Jay Gatsby symbolizes.
This teacher was wonderful when teaching writing, but he tended to teach literature by drawing geometric shapes on the blackboard. I will always remember that "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" is nothing but a circle. I think "The Great Gatsby" may have been a circle too, but I can't quite remember. Personally, I prefer to read parabolas.
This is a classic, but for me it was a little uneven. There were sections I loved, sections that seemed like the finest writing ever. (The chapter about Gatsby's first party pops to mind.) Other times, I grew impatient and was tempted to skim. But Fitzgerald does capture a time and a place beautifully. Part of the problem may be that his time and place aren't always all that appealing.
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