The American Dream in 180 pages.

I hope that students who "have to read this for English class" will not be turned off by the one-star reviews written in text message by the functionally illiterate. And I hope that those who did "read this for English class" and didn't get it will pick it up again at some point in their lives and finally see.

The first time I read Gatsby was in high school, too young and coerced to come away with much but an urge to slap Daisy. The second read, in my early twenties, was magic -- I drank it in a night, awed by the grace of the language, and particularly swept up in the sad romance of it: gauche, hopeful Jay Gatsby, arms and dreams wide as he stared across the Sound at the green light at the end of Daisy's dock.

This third time was the best, the purest, and if you haven't read it for a while, I urge you to pick it up again. It's truly a masterpiece, painting the whole American mess in vivid colors and flawless perspective without wasting a stroke. The best part, the deftest, is that Fitzgerald makes everyone culpable, from philandering elitist Tom Buchanan to passive narrator Nick Carraway. Even the reader can't help but feel involved: In the thousand wrongs and slights of everyday, in our selfish wants and our crueler rationalizations, we create and prolong the world Fitzgerald painted for us.

And yes, I still want to slap Daisy.

Perhaps becaues it was written in a different era, I had difficulty in getting a lot out of it.

The Great Gatsby is a beautifully written book. Perhaps its greatest strength lies in the sheer magic of the writing. Fitzgerald spins sentences of such wonder, such clarity and honesty, that we are left to do nothing else but shake our head in amazement. Jay Gatsby may be a great mystery, he may be the Great American Dream personified, but if he sparkles, then the novel itself shines.

Nick Carraway has decided, at twenty-nine to 'go East and learn the bond business. Everybody I knew was in the bond business, so I supposed it could support one more single man.' By chance, he finds a cheap house, a 'weather-beaten cardboard bungalow at eighty a month' that is nestled amongst the huge mansions of the rich. He doesn't know it to begin with, but he is neighbours with Jay Gatsby, The Great Gatsby.

Gatsby holds parties on the weekends, grand affairs of cocktails and party dresses, his house filled to the rafters with people, some invited, most not. He is endlessly hospitable, allowing his alcohol to be drunk, his food to be consumed, his pool, his books, his home - they are open to his guests. Guests, not friends.

He is a mystery. Nobody knows why he has these parties, though everyone attends. Just as nobody knows how he made his money, or who he really is. Gatsby, when he enters Nick's world, refers to him and everyone as 'old sport', a distancing technique that is prevalent throughout the novel. 'It was testimony to the romantic speculation he inspired that there were whispers about him from those who had found little that it was necessary to whisper about in this world.'

But he is not completely unknowable, though the romantic beliefs about him are accurately held. No, Gatsby is more and less than the stories that surround him. He is in love, his mansion lies directly across from that of Nick's cousin, Daisy, an old flame he cannot let go. At her jetty a green light winks across the water, and it is this that Gatsby watches on lonely nights, nights which are filled with people who mean nothing, or nights he spends alone.

Gatsby is mysterious and alluring while he remains unknown. When his love for Daisy is revealed, he becomes more known and less ethereal, his character growing from an enigma into a person. It adds warmth and humility to his personality, and is something beautiful. 'He had waited five years and bought a mansion where he dispensed starlight to casual moths - so that he could 'come over' some afternoon to a stranger's garden.'

But it is when Daisy 'becomes his' that Gatsby's character loses its shine and lowers to the ground. He is now a normal man, with the same strengths and weaknesses as everyone else. Perhaps there are more weaknesses - it is hard to consider cuckolding Tom Buchanan an admirable quality. Gatsby represents the dull, ordinary routine of a dream realised, that failed glow of actualised fantasy.

Nick's presence in the story has its own plot, but it runs adjacent to Gatsby. Perhaps Fitzgerald's greatest inspiration was to make Nick a 'supposer', to remove Gatsby from the immediacy of intimate narration and make him the refracted imaginings of Nick. 'I am one of the few honest people I have ever known', Nick says of himself. But Gatsby isn't honest, so how can an honest man understand someone's whose life is built on fantasy and deceit? More importantly, can an honest man understand someone who exists - has created himself - out of a love that has fallen into the past? He can't, which is what makes Gatsby, and Nick, so interesting.

Gatsby's love lies in the past. Fitzgerald refrains from sentimentalizing Gatsby as a younger man, but it is evident from the text that the sadness of his - our? - lives comes from an unwillingness to leave the past and live for today, or better yet, the future. Gatsby is sad and melancholy, a friendless man who wants a friend, an unloved man who wants to be loved. But

I re-read this book for a book club, being ~20 years since I read it in high school. It was much better reading it as an adult, as one generally has a much better perspective on answering/understanding concepts of lust vs. love, desire/drive for material aquisitions and what importance it has in life. There are multitudes of discussion questions regarding this novel available on the internet, worth considering. I believe that our club's discussion of this book offered many different opinions, making it one our more intersting ones. Also, worth reading about F. Scott Fitzgerald's biography and seeing parallelisms between his life and the story. The book is relatively a quick read and maintains your interest. It is worth re-reading, particularly if it was something you read many a years ago.