There are some books that are claimed as classics and are well deserved of the title and some that feel as if they have been slapped with a sticker marked classic by literary types but don't really live up to it and that's how i feel about 'The Great Gatsby'.
Now that a film of the book is showing at our cinema's the book is being discussed once again and i'm quite perplexed by the insistence to build the book up to be mentioned in the same breath as 'To Kill A Mockingbird' or 'Of Mice and Men' which were amazing books.
The Great Gatsby was a decent enough novella, set in one summer of Roaring Twenties America, the high end of society at the time, it is a slow builder with a brutal ending and the author, F. Scott Fitzgerald, does a very good job of creating the era in your minds eye.
I do recall a story of how the book was largely ignored at the time it was originally published in 1925 and it wasn't until the book was given away free to US soldiers during the second World War that it became widely read and that is where i believe the term 'classic' comes from.
The book, read by the 150,000+ military, became synonymous with America WW2 in much the same way that whenever i hear certain songs it takes me back to a certain time and place and my good or bad experiences of that time so The Great Gatsby will hold many memories for the soldiers of that time, passed onto the next generation and that was how this 'classic' was born, a great PR move.
I may be wrong but that's how i see a good, if short, book becomes elevated to a status that it doesn't in all honestly deserve.
That said, i would recommend it as a decent read but i do plan to give the film a swerve.
2 comments:
I read The Great Gatsby for the first time only 2 or 3 years ago. I thought it was great, actually. A lot better than I was expecting.
But as you say, there's no reason that's particularly obvious to us, in the 21st century, as to why it took off to become so astoundingly popular and influential, while others didn't. Some things just capture the zietgeist and then seem to gather their own momentum.
As for the film, I recall seeing the Robert Redford version many years ago... thought it was a bit dull. Might give the new one a go. It looks quite flashy from the trailer.
I think DiCaprio is a decent actor but as the book is very short i can sense quite a bit of padding to fill it out so unless i hear people raving about it, i will wait until it comes on TV.
It is a good book, just not that good a book that when i finished it i wished i hadn't so i could start all over again.
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