I’m pretty impressed with myself.
Posted on 05/07/2013 12:00:59 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Hi I’m Holden Caulfield and even though not too long ago a bunch of guys manned up and lost lives and limbs liberating a continent, I’m going to bitch and moan about how tough it is as a rich kid to grow up and deal with an adult world.
I just read a quote from Roger Ebert to the effect of: “It’s not what a work of art is about, it’s about how it is about that thing.”
“And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder....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 it was already behind him, somewhere back in the vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.”
Sounds like the narrator is talking about America today...
Oh yeah, Holden, I remember you. You suck!
My argument was not necessarily to say something popular is by definition, "good."
I levelled a lot of criticism against Dan Brown's DaVinci Code, not because it was popular, but because it was generally wrong and based entirely on a flawed premise...And because Umberto Eco had dealt with the same subject matter in a far more cerebral and historically accurate, Foucault's Pendulum about 20 years earlier.
If someone reads Gatsby and doesn't like it, more power to them. A lot of the crtiticism I read sounds to me like sour grapes against Fitzgerald for his success.
LOL! I'm from the Leave it to Beaver era...........and I STILL can't get into Shakespeare.
Or “The English Patient.”
Hey, a kindred spirit! I agree on all three.
Including his suicide?
Our 20th century culture was hijacked by the left long ago. Every time I read a review of art, music, movies or literature I resent the way they impose their morally and intellectually bankrupt opinions on the rest of us.
What intelligent person wants to look into the sick mind of abstract artists? Who likes atonal music? And before I take the word of ANYBODY on whether to spend my valuable time reading a book I want to know the hidden agenda of the reviewer.
Among the “goals of communism” printed in the Congressional Record of January 10, 1963 are these sad lines:
“Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
“Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression.
“Control art critics and directors of art museums. Our plan is to promote ugliness and repulsive, meaningless art.
“Eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.
“Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.”
Nobody talks like that in real life, but then again, no-one ever used to write like they talked. If you ever get the chance to read letters Civil War soldiers wrote home to their mothers, the poetry and formality is almost shocking to our modern ears, but can leave you wondering how is it that lowly farmboys turned warriors can write so much better than the most artful of modern writers. The key, though, is that they expressed so much better what they meant.IIRC, many people of that era taught themselves to read and write studying the KJV of the Bible.
Not a bad way to learn how to express yourself.
I’m pretty impressed with myself.
“...If there’s no one to sympathize with, what’s the point?”
I liked the man with the owl-eyed glasses.
I’m pretty impressed with myself.
I like “Tender is the Night” or “This Side of Paradise” better than “Gatsby.” I can’t read the book without seeing Redford as Gatsby and Mia Farrow as Daisy — blecccccch! And the author is right about some of the heavy-handed symbolism, the shallow archetypal characters, and the absurd plot contrivances. But I can’t say I hate it. I just think Fitzgerald did better.
GMTA
What sort of act did they have? My grandfather had a tumble act in the ‘30s. He taught a young, really good-looking guy from Harlem everything he knew. That fella went on to a long and successful career in Hollywood.
Could not agree more with the author of this article. Gatsby makes my eyes glaze over just thinking about it. Simply dreadful, uninspired, and soulless.
Just because something is simple doesn’t mean it’s invalid. Take a look at today’s best sellers for evidence of that. 90% of it is cheap coffee table crap. The only reason Gatsby got to be so widely read is that it was issued by the US Military to troops during the War. If the Army hadn’t handed it out by the case it would be another in a long line of forgotten dreck.
The characters are one dimensional, the plot both ridiculous and utterly predictable at the same time. The writing style is stilted and painful. I’ve read it three times and every time I’ve come to the same conclusion. I’d have been better off reading a “how to” book on some skill,I’ve not yet acquired.
But then I’m not some high falluting New York Times book critic or anything. I’m just a guy who likes to read.
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