Oh look, it’s the 1920s in America! 

Sequin dresses! Boobed haircuts! Feathered headbands! Pearl necklaces! 

Endless cocktails! Lavish buffets! Jazz music! Swimming pool! Yellow car—

Nah, that’s enough cues, for it should be abundantly clear already that today we’re reviewing… 

Book Review #11: The Great Gatsby by F.Scott Fitzgerald

A spoiler-free synopsis:

Nick Carraway, a Yale graduate from a prominent Midwest family, moved to New York in 1922 to work as a bonds salesman. Renting a house in West Egg – the nouveau riche side of Long Island – he became a neighbor of the wealthy yet mysterious Jay Gatsby. At his vast mansion, Gatsby frequently threw over-the-top parties, attended by uninvited guests who didn’t even know him. After a chance encounter at one such party, Gatsby asked Nick to arrange a meeting for him with Nick’s distant cousin, Daisy. It turned out Daisy, now married to Tom Buchanan, was an old lover of Gatsby, and the steely determination to win Daisy back had driven Gatsby and continued to shape the future of his dream.    

Personal opinion:

What stood out most to me was the novel’s non-linear narration. There are in fact two Nick Carraways: the one in the story, and the one currently writing the story. Indeed, the first chapter begins with the latter ruminating about his few months with Gatsby:

“Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.”

The Nick of the past was still in the dark as to Gatsby’s true identity for the first half, and more is only revealed either through the reflections of the older Nick or through the information gradually revealed by other characters. This structure works wonders for me, for it creates a perpetual fog of mystery and intrigue surrounding Gatsby, and information is always timely divulged to exceptional emotional and thematic effects.

I’m equally impressed by the general depravity masked as richness so vividly depicted by Fitzgerald. Though not expressly pointed out, we readers can almost taste the rotten reek of hypocrisy permeating contemporary American society: though people touted “the American dream,” self-made individuals faced stinking snobbery; though people heartily drank bootlegged spirits and engaged in other orgiastic activities, those who did the bootlegging were sneezed at. Heralded as the land of freedom, one that rejected aristocracy, the America Fitzgerald depicts still handed almost obscene privileges on a silver platter to those born into wealth and power.

My review (alas) doesn’t do justice to the novel that pops up unfailingly on nearly every list of best books ever written. But I think you should give this masterpiece a try, to see beneath the glossy facade of the Roaring Twenties, as well as the man whose unwavering hope has made him the Great Gatsby.