The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby is a recognized classic. Interestingly, the book did not sell very well during Fitzgerald’s lifetime, and when he died in 1940 he seemed to have regarded the book as a failure. When he died, scholars started to assess his work, and The Great Gatsby was recognized as an important work of literature. Besides its recognition, one must also think about its meaning for us in the present day. The “prohibition” period that he writes about was a strangely decadent period in America. Furthermore, the catastrophes of the Holocaust and WWII changed much about the U.S. and its position in the world. Since then, too, there has been substantial progress in civil rights, including the rights of women. In this sense, his novel seems parochial, and not very relevant for us today: Too much has changed about the world. Nevertheless, I think that if you approach the novel with an open mind and some knowledge of the historical context, you can see elements that remain of interest today. Fitzgerald was struggling with themes that are larger than his times, and still speak to us today. In this sense, I can recommend this book.

I grew up hearing about The Great Gatsby but somehow never had to read it in any English course. I finally read it after college and am confused as to why it's a classic. It's an easy read, that's about the only positive thing I can say about it. I once saw a tweet saying something along the lines of, "I have to assume that anyone who has a Great Gatsby themed party never finished the book." It still makes me chuckle. It's an awful and depressing story with no redeeming qualities. And don't forget the drunk driving! Pfft.

If the Great Gatsby had gone through just one more rewrite, it would be a flawless and poetic novel depicting New York during the early 1920s. Gatsby comes alive on the page through Fitzgerald's masterful command of dialogue and character development. It's hard not to see a young 30 somethin Robert Redford, as Gatsby, a man who through out the story is living a tragedy of unrequited love, creating a life of lavish wealth and parties, in hopes to win her heart.Although this book is one of the greatest works of literature, it seemed Fitzgerald rushed through it too quickly, hoping to get it out onto bookshelves. The story gets muddled by Fitzgeralds historical retellings of Gatsby's past. His descriptions of Dan Cody, the yachtsman who started Gatsby's climb to wealth, seemed too superfluous. Also the chapter start introducing the list of guests who attended Gatsby's parties seemed way too lengthy and unneeded in the story. The ending where Gatsby's father arrives to tell about his son's childhood and his daily routine kind of ruined the ending for me.Next to other great works though, this is superb storytelling!Its sad how underappreciated Fitzgerald was during his lifetime! This guy was the Picasso of English Literature, yet he struggled all through his life just to make ends meet, unlike authors of lesser quality, like Hemingway who were dashing millionaires. Goes to show how underappreciated creative authors are next to art genius. But it's way more difficult to write a novel like this, I think, than it is to paint a Picasso.

I believe the alchemy of time, place and the right talent and drive can create in an author the story and words to compose a portrait of truth and beauty that transcends time; a work of supreme art so rare and splendid that it is revered because our soul longs to be transported to the splendor of a moment in time and desires to be granted the providence to create something so divine that through it we may survive on this Earth forever.As rare and astounding as the art of Rembrandt, Renoir and Rodin, F. Scott Fitzgerald's short novel casts a spell on me in his painting Love, Truth, Mythology and Tragedy in words so poignant, eloquent and gorgeous that I, a mere mortal, cannot do them justice, so I must quote (though I typically prefer not to):“The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.”***“In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.”***“His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy’s white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed like a flower and the incarnation was complete.”***“And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning——So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”***This is my favorite American novel.

So I thought I should read some of the classics once in a while, to improve my mind, expand my knowledge, etc.So having now read 'The Great Gatsby", I don't know how it got to be a classic.Bad writing, long run on pompous sentences, totally boring characters and very little plot don't add up to a classic in my opinion.Mostly it's plot, what little there is, involves some rich full of themselves people trying to score some booze and looking for a party during prohibition.What is somewhat interesting is the description of daily life in the U.S. in the 1920s. The technology, clothes, hairstyles, and attitudes. Otherwise I would say why bother, unless you want to cross a "classic" off your reading bucket list.

This is considered to be one of the best fiction novels and no doubt it is a great novel. After I watched the movie, I just had to read it and oh boy!, what a beautifully written book. The book definitely arose more emotions than the movie. Gatsby is about the emptiness that is profound in the lifestyle of the society where values are completely distanced from the opulence. The more you read this book, the more you would fall into it.This is a tragic love story. The feelings are intense and at times you would feel so much for Gatsby. There are things you can't buy with money and that is what is shown profusely in the novel. This is a very simple story but a very very complicated one at the same time. There is a lot of symbolism that one may want to understand a bit in detail. So do a bit of research on those scenarios that the author is building. This one is a classic and will always be with me. I will always revisit this story.Gatsby is a great character that Fitzgerald has developed and many people will relate with him. Daisy is the demure girl that many people would feel so much for. This book rouses emotions and feelings to a different level.

After spending some precious time reading works from this era, I have been trying to stay away from US-based classics telling stories based in the 20th century. I tend to dislike the overall feeling they give me; the way most local authors wrote during this period is definitely not my cup of tea. I, however, started a certain list of classics and finally got to reading this one among others mentioned in the list.So, here are my two pence on the matter: the book uses smooth, general language and is quite easy to read. I definitely recommend it to ESL students who want to test their knowledge of the era.I don't know if the version I read is a somehow edited version which doesn't coincide with the original or not; I know this was done often back in the days and not only in the US. What bothers me is how could this turn into the epitome of flapper, of la mode, of fashion and lifestyle when even Gatsby's own lifestyle is barely touched upon in the book. Obviously, I'm misguided by the visual adaptations of the story. Be warned, ye who may end up in my shoes!The story seems very slow during most of the book, but there are huge leaps at the very last of the pages. I almost missed the huge event (starting vague to eliminate spoiler possibilities, even though it's a classic) because it was written somewhere at the end of a book I found very exhausting.The last chapters have 1,000% the action of all the previous ones. I found it lacking in parties, vague when it comes to relationships, flat when it comes to character development of secondary characters. The only character amongst these pages who was worth it for me was our protagonist. I guess I expected too much from Gatsby and the ladies.I am fully aware that writing a somewhat negative review of a classic is a risky endeavor. However, I think honesty, especially in this case, cannot hurt anyone.

Fitzgerald’s narrator is Nick Carraway who starts the book with a quote from his father to always remember that people have not had the same advantages as him and as a consequence he always reserves judgement when he meets people. Nick is from a wealthy family and went to school with Tom Buchanan, but he still feels like an outsider as he has to work for a living. He looks to go into the bond market and rents an inexpensive house in the grounds of Gatsby’s mansion.Tom and Daisy Buchanan are from a privileged class of bright young things. When we first meet Daisy she is lounging in a room with all the curtains open doing nothing. This fanciful idea of the curtain billowing, the ladies reclined with their skirts caught in the wind, as if being carried away in a balloon, fits perfectly with Daisy’s personality. “I’m paralyzed with happiness.” are the first words we hear her speak and reinforces the idea of doing nothing. Physically he gives the reader the description of, “Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it..” The excitement in her voice was “a singing compulsion, a whispered ‘Listen,’ a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since..” This flamboyant, effervescent character is both carefree and careless. The way she changes subject mid conversation to ‘you must see the baby’ suggests a lack of attention and a distressed mental state. She also suggests it is better for women to be a pretty fool, a social comment on the way women of her class are seen in Fitzgerald’s world.Tom equally indulges in the pleasures of life, not just his horse riding and cars, but keeping a mistress in the poor district between his mansion and the city. He suffers a crisis when Daisy admits to loving Gatsby and he finds out his mistress is being taken away by her husband. Suddenly everything he has is slipping through his fingers, he is losing control.Gatsby himself is a mystery. In the beginning we are told that no one is ever invited to Gatsby’s place they just turn up. This makes the invitation to the narrator equally strange. Then when Nick meets Gatsby he has to mysteriously disappear to answer a phone call. This is the first clue that Gatsby’s business is not strictly legitimate. He has made and maintains his fortune on prohibition. Yet everything he has and does is to impress Daisy, to be and belong in her world. He has a man in the city send him shirts, so he knows what to wear, the nouveau rich fitting in. The idea of him taking the blame for the car accident, when she was driving, is perfectly in keeping with his character.Why is he called great? I think Fitzgerald was creating the ultimate American icon. The self made man who never gives up no matter what. As one reviewer suggests, Fitzgerald is creating the American Dream before the term was even used. Gatsby also has this insatiable positive attitude which never gives up hope that there is something on the horizon, just out of reach, all you have to do is keep striving. Encapsulated in the famous closing lines, “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter – tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further...” Again this pre-figures the American Dream that if you work hard enough you will succeed and those who fail, didn’t strive enough. It’s a recipe for tragedy, mental illness and loss.

I re-read TGG after more that 50 years because my grandson is reading it as a set book at A-level. I didn't take in its supposed significance all those years ago, and I don't now. Apparently it gained its early fame because it was distributed to the US armed forces in huge quantites during WWII. Those readers could probably appreciate the story of a young man from the wrong side of the tracks who had his emotional development held back by service overseas and coming into too much wealth. In 2018 the nearest equivalent is highly paid young footballers playing in forreign teams. It's a well constructed story told by a third person observer who maintains a necessary distance from the central emotional action. Readers have to do some work, and they should not be too shocked at the anti-semitism of 70+ years ago, revealed when we find out where the money came from. Why is it still on exam syllabi? I'm not sure. Perhaps its a classic - one of the books that everyone knows they should read but . . .

I had no idea what to expect as I hadn't seen any of the films. I also have a beautiful little hardback edition that I picked up for 20p from the Salvation Army. The pages have lovely gold edging and there is a blue ribbon for a bookmark. The cover oozes glamour and makes me think of the high society of the 1920s.The American born author F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote this novel in 1925. He also wrote other notable novels and short stories.It's the story of Jay Gatsby's obsession with his old flame Daisy Buchanan. Daisy is a married woman. After getting his neighbor Nick to help him meet up with Daisy, Jay begins an affair with her and trouble ensues. Privilege and wealth are not enough. Daisy suffers from her husband's obvious infidelity. Yet she takes the same path with Gatsby. Gatsby is a creepy character. I was uncomfortable at his determination to get Daisy back. Gatsby admits that he threw lavish parties in the hope that Daisy would turn up with her circle of friends. People didn't need invitations to his parties. They showed up and that was fine by him. The story is exciting, gripping and full of action.The book made me think about wealth and carelessness. In the story wealth is about money. Wealth can also mean having adequate food, water and shelter. Wealth can be from love. We are wealthy when we have a supportive family. It made me think that when we do have in abundance food, love, toilet roll (Ahem!) etc. do we care if others have enough? Whilst making sure we have stocked up do we cause others to not have anything? The behaviour of some people during the current crisis springs to mind. Tom and Daisy lived a life based on their own selfish needs. Gatsby used his riches to impress Daisy. He wanted her back in spite of her Husband.Yet, thank God for the good people who do care. The character Nick Carraway is a good guy. He does contribute to some questionable behaviour but his heart is in the right place. He reminds them all on how lucky they are.It's a great story and I was definitely gripped from the start. I liked the description and I loved the romance. It's not a large novel, my edition is 183 pages and I read it in 2 or 3 sittings. I would definitely recommend it.

Reviewed by Craig from The Farsley Book Club, Leeds.Well, what a fantastic book club meeting last evening. The Great Gatsby was hailed as the greatest novel ever written and F. Scott Fitzgerald quite rightly earned his place as the finest writer of his or any other generation. It was also the first book in Farsley Book Club history to score a full house 100% approval rating!What? What do you mean? Tell the​ truth, that was the truth wasn't​ it?Well, a bit like Jay Gatsby himself I was a little guilty of embracing a fantasy and attempting to manipulate the outcome in my favour. It was my choice after all.Okay, okay, let me pull the lever and flush out the lies....It wasn't exactly like that. So, let me tell it as it was old sport.Very much described as a class book and not as many thought a die hard love story full of romance. No, this is about a man who aspires to love but is so cruelly denied.The Gatsby parties were the stuff of legend but meant little to Gatsby himself who like a proud peacock wanted to demonstrate to Daisy (his former and would be future lover) the lofty position he had attained through less than honest ways. Surely Daisy would love him now?This is ultimately the problem with the characters in The Great Gatsby. They are superficial, lacking in character, depth and meaning. So long as the money poured in and the champagne never ran dry they could all forget their empty miserable lives.Oh, but the 1920s Jazz Age, the parties, I mean who wouldn't (despite the above attendees) want to be a part of the celebration? I know I would. "A Gin Ricky bartender, if you would be so kind."Alas, the party couldn't last forever and the coming crash, depression, and the increased suicides notably by those who attended such parties are in the 1930s waiting.It was Gatsby, the dreamer, weak and uncertain, fearful and lonely, the representation of new money and garage owner Wilson representing the working man who became the major victims of this work by Fitzgerald (not forgetting the unfortunate Myrtle Wilson). Both had humble beginnings and although Gatsby climbed the ladder of success it seemed to mean nothing without Daisy who he attempted to protect after Myrtle's own death. His most heroic act that led to nothing but separation from her permanently.The book does suffer a terrible anticlimax with the bloody demise of Gatsby at the hands of George Wilson who in turn then takes his own life believing Gatsby to be responsible for his wife's death. Consequently the party moved on and there were few mourners at Gatsby's funeral, as one attendee at his funeral observed, "the poor son-of-a-bitch!" Nick Carraway, Gatsby's friend became the custodian of his legacy which had to have greater meaning than just his possessions and Nick attempted to inject this meaning after Gatsby's death.I'm sure the money attached themselves to other parties seemingly getting away with drinking and dancing and forgetting poor Gatsby. They would not always get of scott free, if you'll pardon the pun.Fitzgerald himself was familiar with this club and as a noted drunk and party animal he himself would have recognised all to well the life Gatsby and his 'friends' would have led and would also recognise the empty shells with which he mingled.In the end, tragically, it killed him as well having suffered a fatal heart attack at the crazy age of 44. The famous wit Dorothy Parker quick to draw parallels between Fitz and Gatsby was heard to quip at his funeral, "The poor son-of-a- bitch."It was suggested that Fitzgerald wove into his narrative a homosexual encounter between Nick and Mr. McKee at the end of Chapter 2 and this suggestion is perhaps supported by Nick's description of Tom Buchanan (Daisy's unlikable husband), his admiration for Gatsby himself and his reluctance to press for any relations with the female sex. The evidence is there and It's very difficult to argue against. Read it for yourself If you don't agree.But, isn't that great? That Fitzgerald was prepared to weave this thread into his masterpiece demonstrates what a forward thinking writer he was. He deliberately embraced a theme that in 1925 would seem crazy and unthinkable and yet there it is. Fitz of course knew this world as he had friends of this persuasion and perhaps this nod was him acknowledging his support in a public way in a world that wasn't​ ready to accept it. I think this is a further demonstration of his greatness.Despite a few of the collective not taking easily to Fitz's style of writing and the emptiness/shallowness of the characters the book was well received. Many prepared to read it again.So, we can add The Great Gatsby by The Great F. Scott Fitzgerald to the Farsley Book Club Portfolio with an amazing approval rating of 72.9%.Rest in Peace Jay Gatsby and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

This is one of those books that you really feel you should have read years ago and, once you're done, you don't really know why you didn't.I'm not really sure what I expected from The Great Gatsby but this wasn't it. I suppose I thought it would be a tale of excess, money and greed – which I suppose it is in a way – but I hadn't expected it to be so sad.It isn't really long enough for any of the characters other than Nick, our narrator, to be much more than two dimensional, however I found so many of them just horrible people and couldn't help but feel sorry for Gatsby. Daisy and Tom deserve each other. Fitzgerald is right to put them together to make each other unhappy, even if they do inflict themselves on others to a greater or lesser degree.The obvious symbolism and critique of the American Dream seems appropriate in a novella set so soon before the Great Depression and the shallowness of everything that comes with the worship of money and celebrity is a lesson that could be learned by many in today's society as well.

Fitzgerald's short novel is widely regarded as a supreme example of twentieth century American literature. I am not entirely convinced, but it certainly exposed the corruption of the American Dream. Gatsby is an ambiguous figure: he stands apart from the hedonism of his friends and acquaintances, but has acquired great wealth by dubious means. His pursuit of love fails to be realized, and fate deals him a savage blow. However, the author miraculously paints the shallowness of the era, using language which can be incandescent beautiful, and devising a plot which contains much symbolism hidden in its surface simplicity.

On the surface, The Great Gatsby is a story of the thwarted love between a man and a woman. The main theme of the novel, however, encompasses a much larger, less romantic scope. Though all of its action takes place over a mere few months during the summer of 1922 and is set in a circumscribed geographical area in the vicinity of Long Island, New York, The Great Gatsby is a highly symbolic meditation on 1920s America as a whole, in particular the disintegration of the American dream in an era of unprecedented prosperity and material excess.Fitzgerald portrays the 1920s as an era of decayed social and moral values, evidenced in its overarching cynicism, greed, and empty pursuit of pleasure. The reckless jubilance that led to decadent parties and wild jazz music—epitomized in The Great Gatsby by the opulent parties that Gatsby throws every Saturday night—resulted ultimately in the corruption of the American dream, as the unrestrained desire for money and pleasure surpassed more noble goals. When World War I ended in 1918, the generation of young Americans who had fought the war became intensely disillusioned, as the brutal carnage that they had just faced made the Victorian social morality of early-twentieth-century America seem like stuffy, empty hypocrisy. The dizzying rise of the stock market in the aftermath of the war led to a sudden, sustained increase in the national wealth and a new-found materialism, as people began to spend and consume at unprecedented levels. A person from any social background could, potentially, make a fortune, but the American aristocracy—families with old wealth—scorned the newly rich industrialists and speculators. Additionally, the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919, which banned the sale of alcohol, created a thriving underworld designed to satisfy the massive demand for bootleg liquor among rich and poor alike.Fitzgerald positions the characters of The Great Gatsby as emblems of these social trends. Nick and Gatsby, both of whom fought in World War I, exhibit the new-found cosmopolitanism and cynicism that resulted from the war. The various social climbers and ambitious speculators who attend Gatsby’s parties evidence the greedy scramble for wealth. The clash between “old money” and “new money” manifests itself in the novel’s symbolic geography: East Egg represents the established aristocracy, West Egg the self-made rich. Meyer Wolfshiem and Gatsby’s fortune symbolize the rise of organized crime and bootlegging.

I have just re-read this as my daughter is studying it for A level - it was a text I studied at University, where it was lauded as "relevant", "cynical", "insightful" etc of the American Dream and human condition. For me then, in among a study module of Vonnegut, Heller, Bellow, Ellison, it lacked quality and depth and was not "up there".Coming to it again now, I am surprised at how dated and hackneyed it seems; how misogynist in its depiction and exposition of its female characters; how lightweight and unengaging all the characters are.For me it is not a classic; its themes have been better explored elsewhere. I will be interested to see what my A levelling daughter makes of it and how she is encouraged to look at it...

The West Egg is full of individuals who have developed a fortune as opposed to being born into an inheritance (East Egg). Day and night, Jay Gatsby's mansion on the West Egg buzzes with bright young things drinking, dancing (all things great in the 1920s), and debating his mysterious character. For Gatsby - young, handsome, fabulously rich - always seems alone in the crowd, watching and waiting, although no one knows what for. Beneath the shimmering surface of his life his is hiding a secret longing that can never be fulfilled.Fitzgerald brilliantly captures both disillusion of post-war America, the moral failure of a society obsessed with weather and status, and the disappointment of the American dream. Fitzgerald re-creates the universal conflict between illusion and reality but chronicling Gatsby tragic pursuit of his dream.

Gorgeous, glamorous and doomed, Jay Gatsby epitomises the American dream: that we can be anyone we like, we can achieve anything we want... but that there's always a moral price to be paid. Dripping in glittering prose, this dissects the tragic disillusionment of the 1920s with its excesses of consumerist capitalism, its fragile, brittle allure - and the moral bankruptcy which underpins this charmed world.In the beautiful but vacuous Daisy, and Gatsby himself - both an illusion and the victim of his own self-constructed illusion - Fitzgerald embodies the qualities of his age, but this is also a prescient book which speaks to a twenty-first century audience just as pressingly. With its investment banker narrator, its nascent idea of celebrity in Gatsby, and its catalogue of material things (motor cars, yachts, lavish dinners, legendary parties, mansions, swimming pools) this is as relevant today, almost a hundred years after it was written.What makes this book stand out is Fitzgerald's tenderness: it would have been easy to have written this as a satire on wealth, on materialism, on the religion of possessions but he is a more nuanced writer and has a more subtle moral vision than that. For all that Gatsby may be a modern Trimalchio, as he is named in chapter 7, he's also a tragic figure, a victim of his own idealism.My personal favourite Fitzgerald is Tender is the Night but this is perhaps the more accessible, and more tightly crafted text. Tender is the Night

I have read this a couple of times before, but I think I always read it too quickly and didn't pay enough attention to it, hence never fully understood what all the hype was about. Having just given it a third reading, this time on Kindle, I finally appreciate what an incredible novel it really is.Essentially it's a story of a man clinging onto a dream long after the dream's sell-by date. The writing is powerful, ideas are expressed which on a couple of occasions for me bring an almost religious aspect to the novel, for example when Gatsby talks about his time with Daisy five years ago, Nick is reminded of something that he has heard somewhere a long time ago but cannot quite place.The book is quite a short one, quality rather than quantity is always a plus. There are no wasted words, the structure is good. If you haven't read it yet and you enjoy great writing, I highly recommend it. I can't think of any other book which I have read which it is similar to (I haven't read any other work by this author); it is quite unique.

One hesitates to criticise a classic, but this is a book I had been meaning to read for years, and sadly it was a disappointment. Maybe it's just that it's showing its age (though Dickens doesn't.) First, the structure - it rambles on about irrelevant stuff, particularly in the first quarter of the book. I was almost reminded of Ulysses in the way it describes all the minutiae of the day. Then suddenly whoosh, we're off to the relationship between Gatsby and Daisy. Except we're not. Maybe it's a fault of having a male narrator (written by a man - does that sound sexist?) but there is very little sense of the emotional currents flowing here. As a result, I really couldn't make myself care about any of the characters. And its the characters who make a book worth reading.

Perhaps more than any other book I have ever read, this marvellous novel leads up to its final sentence. There are lots of novels with memorable or poignant final sentences, but the whole crux of "The Great Gatsby resides in the final four paragraphs, and, in particular, in the closing sentence, "And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."At the simplest level this is a love story. Gatsby as a young and impoverished man meets, and falls deeply in love with, Daisy Fay, but is posted to Europe a America becomes involved in the First world War. Now, in 1922 Gatsby is immensely wealthy, and buys a huge mansion in New Jersey just across the sound from the house where Daisy now lives with her husband Tom Buchanan. Nick Carraway, the beautifully understated narrator of the novel first encounters Gatsby staring out across the sound. What Nick doesn't realise is that Gatsby is transfixed by the view, staring at a bright green light at the end of the Buchanans' jetty, which he sees as a token of his unfading love for Daisy.Throughout the summer Gatsby holds a series of wild parties to which everyone in the neighbourhood seems to come. Gatsby takes little part in these revelries, and only later do we discover that he doesn't like parties at all, and only hosted them in the vague hope that Daisy might chance to come along. The parties are certainly uproarious affairs, and it comes as a bit of a shock to remember that they were happening against the backdrop of America's misplaced experiment with Prohibition. Champagne and spirits flow with great abandon.Throughout the novel Gatsby remains an enigma - no-one seems to know who he is, or where he came from. Conflicting speculations abound, with some characters asserting, vehemently, that he is a German spy while others aver, equally rigorously, that he belongs to one of Europe's older royal houses. Gatsby himself is scarcely to be believed, telling Nick Carraway at different times that he had inherited his money from an immensely wealthy family, only later to describe how he had had to struggle when he started in business because he lacked any capital or inheritance. He quickly adapts his story, but already the cracks are there for doubters to probe.Carraway goes through a range of emotion reactions towards Gatsby, at different times admiring him, liking him despising him, though in the end admiration shines through. "Gatsby turned out all right in the end".The other characters are finely drawn, too. Tom Buchanan is simply odious: a racist, arr arrogant thugs who is shielded from the realities of life by his huge wealth. Daisy, Buchanan's wife and the great obsessive love of Gatsby's life isn't faultless, either. She is a slightly ephemeral character, and we see more of her through Gatsby's recollections or Jordan baker's tales of their shared youth than we really learn from our encounters with the woman herself. On balance she and Tom are well suited to each other: "They were careless people, Tom and Daisy -- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made. . . ."Gatsby has clearly had some dubious connections (or "gonnegtions" as Meyer Wolfsheim, one of his cronies would say). Indeed, there is a chilling paradoxical footnote for later writers. Wolfsheim, the stereotypical rendition of a Jewish gangster, makes a big point about the shell company he uses to launder the proceeds of his villainy. What now seems bizarre to us is that he calls this company the "Swastika Holding Company". Of course, the novel was published in 1925 and set in 1925 and that symbol had not yet acquired its chilling associations. It is merely fortuitous that a Jewish character should choose to adopt it.All of this makes it sound somewhat chaotic. Not a bit of it. The novel flows with great pace, and Fitzgerald's prose has an almost hypnotic effect. Is it The Great American Novel? I don't know. however, I do know that it is A great American novel, and that's enough for me.