Tuesday, December 5, 2017

Not so great Gatsby

Soo I started the Great Gatsby. And so far I am absoloutely underwhelmed. I'm 79 pages through a less than 200 page book and so far almost nothing has happened. I understand that at some point Gatsby allegedly becomes a psychopathic murderer but if that's going to happen, F Scott motherfucking Fitzgerald better pick up the pace. This book is supposed to be about the roaring twenties? Right? Well, this glamorous imagery is lost on me as a citizen of the 21st century and it doesn't help that Fitzgerald writes as though he's trying to actively avoid a cohesive narritave. The big parties Gatsby throws sound like they involve more abused women than fun cocktails, Daisy Buccanan and Jordan I-don't-remember-her-last-name are flatter characters than the page they're written on and the narrator of the story reads as uncompelling and self-rigeous.
I think my dislike for the narrator is somewhat biased by the era and place I from where I hail. In the feminist part of the 21st century, a man introducing himself by preaching his virtues is not considered flattering. Especially when it's so obviously a crock of bullshit.
For those of you who haven't read the novel so widely taught across the country in high schools Nick spends about two pages bragging about how he and his father make it a policy not to judge anyone else. And they're better people than everyone else because their lack of judgement. Give it a second. Sit with that. Then, he procedes to judge Daisy, Tom, and Jordan in quick succession. He works in the stock market, goes to a few of Gatsby's ragers, gets involved in a middle school-esque plot of Gatsby likes Daisy and boom, there's act one.
I'm not saying good literature has to have a lot of goings on to classify as good.
But . . . If you don't have plot maybe you could have dialogue, which Fitzgerald actively avoids or at least vibrant writing. Fitzgerald's writing isn't bad, I'm sure, but so far the most decadent thing he's described in the book is a row of French windows . . . Which isn't incredibly sexy. There's been a lot of abuse towards women, people of color, and the lower class.
I'm sure as the book goes on I'll have more things to say but so far the Great Gatsby has been more like a great dissapointment.
Maybe we should occasionally reevaluate our classics and stop fetising this cis het white male version of what we know as the literary cannon. More to follow . . .

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