I'm not American so don't judge me too harshly that I only just read The Great Gatsby.

I can't believe that despite most American kids being exposed to this masterpiece, almost none leave school with a profound love of reading.

It's short, simple, funny, sad, captivating, and has some of the most beautiful passages of prose I've ever read.

In translation?

>>24564593 (OP)
Anon, the problem with your assessment "American kids don't appreciate the novel to its true value" is a general issue all over the world. I'm willing to bet that most students loath or disconsider anything they had to study in school as part of the curriculum.
Furthermore you've read it when you could grasp it's beauty. Teenagers aren't able to do that and even though it's an easier read, it doesn't necessary mean that it's easy to understand. .

Yeah the worst thing you can do for a book is force people to read it

>>24564593 (OP)
Yes it's good. Either being retarded in the pace of reading and discussion-- or having to much usually dogshit textbook assigned readings displacing your natural intellectual curiosity's pleasure reading exploring the canon -- that what's good is inundated by trash. American public schools are low security prisons cum daycare for people that would otherwise displace invader economic/census fraud electoral mercenaries, even the best of them.

>>24564593 (OP)
It wasn't well received in the US. The only reason it became a classic and was adopted by the public school system is because the army bought tens of thousands of paperbacks and distributed them as entertainment during WWII.

How can you enjoy Fitzgerald's sublime prose if you have the vocabulary of a 3rd grader from the 1920s? Kids in American public schools don't read on their own and the curriculum doesn't force them to. They reach Gatsby after being handheld through YA lit like Number the Stars, The Giver, The Outsiders, Lord of the Flies, etc. when they're 11-12, and are immediately filtered. Maybe 10% of students actually read it and they pass the rest so the whole class doesn't fail English.

IIRC they made me read this in school but I still loved it.

I had a profound love of reading long before 10th grade english class when I had to read this tripe. While the prose is nice, every character is a retard and I had no interest in their drama.

>>24566371
>every character is a retard
Give an example why

>>24566387
Gatsby can do anything he wants, but chooses to be a moody sad sack pining after a vapid cunt with no redeeming qualities. Nick is a flat non-entity. I can't even remember details about Tom, other than he and Daisy both being shitheads and perfect for each other.

Just all around a display of human ugliness.

>>24566418
>Just all around a display of human ugliness.
Well that's why is good, my nigga

The only reason it gets assigned as reading at high schools everywhere is because it's fundamentally an anti-WASP novel.

Trust me, if the book was written 30 years later and Tom and his wife were Jewish, it wouldn't have proliferated like it has.

Tom Buchanan was unironically right too, Gatsby and his bootlegging kike did eventually destroy America. He was fully justified in being contemptuous of him.

>>24566418
>Nick is a flat non-entity.
Holy mother of filtered

>>24564602
OP was so impressed by the novel that OP can not fathom how others are not moved by it in the same way.

>>24564593 (OP)

Anon you are a true American, this book should be on the citizen test, and we should kick out some of the fucked up gamer immigrants and invite you for a green card.

>>24566418

The movie with Di Caprio makes Nick look like a flat non-entity. in the book he is acutely aware of the bullshit all around him, and at least manages to be intimate with Baker (who is well above his paygrade in life).

>>24566479
>He was fully justified in being contemptuous of him.
Yes because America HASN'T been wrecked by the offspring of capitalists, who produce no value of their own, but still laud the ingenuity and resourcefulness of their economic system.
Tom Buchanan is basically a proto Private Equity bro.

>>24566525
>Reads The Great Gatsby
>Sees nothing has changed in the US, and in fact, it's probably gotten worse.
>Thinks people that understand the book would WANT to be become American.

>>24564593 (OP)
When I got it assigned junior year of highschool I finished it the week we got it, then read it again, then immediately went out and got The Beautiful and Damned to read (which became my all time favorite book). Everyone else in my class hated it and I'm pretty sure most students just don't read books at all anymore. Many U.S. states are at below 5th grade reading levels for most graduating students today.

Here is a great passage from The Beautiful and Damned

Once upon a time all the men of mind and genius in the world became of one belief—that is to say, of no belief. But it wearied them to think that within a few years after their death many cults and systems and prognostications would be ascribed to them which they had never meditated nor intended. So they said to one another: "'Let's join together and make a great book that will last forever to mock the credulity of man. Let's persuade our more erotic poets to write about the delights of the flesh, and induce some of our robust journalists to contribute stories of famous amours. We'll include all the most preposterous old wives' tales now current. We'll choose the keenest satirist alive to compile a deity from all the deities worshipped by mankind, a deity who will be more magnificent than any of them, and yet so weakly human that he'll become a byword for laughter the world over—and we'll ascribe to him all sorts of jokes and vanities and rages, in which he'll be supposed to indulge for his own diversion, so that the people will read our book and ponder it, and there'll be no more nonsense in the world. "'Finally, let us take care that the book possesses all the virtues of style, so that it may last forever as a witness to our profound scepticism and our universal irony.' "So the men did, and they died. "But the book lived always, so beautifully had it been written, and so astounding the quality of imagination with which these men of mind and genius had endowed it. They had neglected to give it a name, but after they were dead it became known as the Bible.

>>24566418
>Gatsby can do anything he wants, but chooses to be a moody sad sack pining after a vapid cunt with no redeeming qualities.
That's called the moral of the story. Gatsby sets up wealth and status and getting-the-girl as the idols of his life, but then he gets these things and one by one they're all revealed to be shams. If he didn't make this mistake the book would be a lighthearted comedy about a clam fisher in Minnesota.

>>24568081
Ah so Fitzgerald would today be moving Bibles to the fiction section and posting it on reddit for sneering updoots

>>24568590
The character who says that passage is sort of a sarcastic caricature but yes I could see that of Fitzgerald. If Hemingway's accounts of him are to be believed.

>>24568026

it is true, America has the most Freedom so it's hard to imagine others not liking freedom.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nkR_A13TP4

The problem I have with it is that the characters are too retarded for me to care. Yes, exploring their mistakes is the essential purpose of the work, but their motivations are so mundane it would be better off as a comedy like a confederacy of dunces or something like that. Empathizing with retards, failures, and bad people is actually one of my favorite things a book can do, feeling that understanding of the complexity of human experience, but pure pathological vanity is something I can only laugh at (American Psycho is a masterpiece in this regard). Maybe I just fundamentally lack the capacity to empathize with vanity, while I can empathize heavily with most other evils humans get sucked into.

>>24564593 (OP)
It's pretty boring. 1984 and Animal Farm are more readable

>>24564593 (OP)
Kek I only remember hating reading this shit. It seemed boring and mediocre to me at the time.

>>24564593 (OP)
Most students are exposed to masterpieces all around the world yet very few of them can appreciate them and develop a taste for reading. This is no one's fault btw. Some people are just biologically tastelets.

>>24566479
You're not wrong. A lot of people miss this but the narrator of TGG is clearly a homosexual, Fitzgerald basically spells it out in that one scene with the shaving cream.


>>24568026
>Yes because America HASN'T been wrecked by the offspring of capitalists, who produce no value of their own, but still laud the ingenuity and resourcefulness of their economic system.
>Tom Buchanan is basically a proto Private Equity bro.
The capitalists built this nation and did it so well that the foundations still hold even as their successors do their best to destroy it. I really go into detail about this, how the Constitution was written so ingeniously that it actually thwarts and delays the insanity currently ruling the nation resisting it centuries later. America isn't remotely capitalist in nature anymore so if this is a criticism it's a bit baffling.

>>24566479
You're not wrong. A lot of people miss this but the narrator of TGG is clearly a homosexual, Fitzgerald basically spells it out in that one scene with the shaving cream.

Tom Buchanon is an idiot, but he isn't wrong.


>>24568026
>Yes because America HASN'T been wrecked by the offspring of capitalists, who produce no value of their own, but still laud the ingenuity and resourcefulness of their economic system.
>Tom Buchanan is basically a proto Private Equity bro.
America isn't remotely capitalist in nature anymore so if this is a criticism of capitalism I don't understand it. Perhaps we have different definitions, do you think it's capitalism to manipulate the government and secure business preferences?

Regardless the capitalists built this nation and did it so well that the foundations still hold even as their successors do their best to destroy it. I really could go into detail about this, how the Constitution was written so ingeniously that it actually thwarts and delays the insanity currently ruling the nation resisting it centuries later, the founding fathers quite literally made it intentionally almost impossible to change the law.

>>24570552
>A lot of people miss this but the narrator of TGG is clearly a homosexual
You only hear this kind of analysis from repressed homosexuals and women.

>>24564593 (OP)
1. Most high schools don’t have the life experience to understand the novel anyway.
2. Most teachers don’t either
3. Most teachers don’t know enough to tell the students that there is a lot of parody and sarcasm in carraway’s narration.

Particularly on the last point I’d say even most people miss that regardless of age. They’re so busy thinking that since it’s a classic piece of literature it’s dead serious business but really there’s a lot of smirk worthy, if not snicker worthy moments. It can be genuinely funny just like some of the early portions of tender is the night.

>>24566371
>every character is a retard and I had no interest in their drama.
See:
>>24571442
You probably took it too seriously

>>24566479
>Tom Buchanan was unironically right too
In some respects, and in some of his beliefs, yes. He was also his own worst enemy as well so he can’t be excused of all his faults.

>>24570552
You don’t even know his name and think you can discuss his sexuality properly?

I’m so sick of this Reddit revisionism making everyone gay. That I gave to see some faggot repeat it here is repulsive to me. Kill yourself, please. It would immediately improve the world.

>>24571340
>>24571453
The fact you disagree just demonstrates how shallow your reading of the book was. No I don't recall the name, it was a minor character but Fitzgerald's intentions were obvious and memorable, it was the photographer trying to get Tom's business.

>>24571340
>>24571453
Great Gatsby? More like the Great GAYSBY.

It's pretty obvious what Fiztgerald is doing here, idk how anyone can deny it. This is the only time in the whole book where he uses ellipsis btw.

>>24571567
fixed the image

>>24571453
>nick carraway
>minor character
I accept your concession poopsniffer

>>24564593 (OP)
Because the unit its typically used in is to teach textual analysis and that's something even good professors struggle with, let alone secondary ed English teachers

You can't enjoy a book when your goal is not to understand the plot but rather figure out what the green light symbolizes, or more specifically what the lesson plan's answer key says it's meant to symbolize

Lord of the Flies suffers the exact same fate

>>24566368
What books would you place between Lord of the Flies and The Great Gatsby on the curriculum to properly prepare kids to read Gatsby?

>>24566350

Novels were once the primary form of entertainment, well before radio and film. It is why many of the best novels come from that era.

Even movies themselves were sidelined by television, and now video games dominate the entertainment industry.

Les Miserables was very popular with Civil War soldiers both North and South.

>>24564593 (OP)
School kids never appreciate the novels they read in school, it's a universal problem. The "forced reading" of classics haunts every great book across different countries.
e.g. I grew up in Brazil and had to read Machado de Assis in school, now I'm the only one who left school and actually went back to re-read him while everyone else just remembers him as 'overly verbose guy'

>>24571601
holy brainlet Batman
obviously he's talking about the guy Nick fucks and who never shows up again

>>24571576
>keep your hands off the lever
subtle

>>24572410
I actually replied to the wrong post but the flaming faggot revisionist literally refers to nick as “the narrator” rather than his name. I then said he didn’t know his name so how can he discuss his sexuality. He then referred to the character as a minor character.

>>24571576
>>24571514
>>24571576
>>24571514
If the mention of a loosely phallic object causes you to think about gay sex, then you are repressed or a woman. It’s no wonder that this particular idea about Nick was born in universities in the 1970s while the sexual revolution was in reaching its stride. These readings tell us more about the reader than that which is read.

>>24571673
Maybe in 100 years people will say "You play video games?!" Oh that's great! I should have guessed because you look smart!"

>>24573129
>it's just the lever comment that suggests it
lol no
are you stupid or did you only read the 1 sentence? your level of literacy seems pretty low anon
>m-m-muh 70s
no one was reading Gatsby before it's nothing to do with anything else

>>24573604
>no one was reading Gatsby before it's nothing to do with anything else
Now you're just being dishonest. Search "freudian analysis of nick carraway" on google for repressed homosexual opinions similar to your own, from the era of the sexual revolution. I won't do you research for you.

>>24573724
>maybe if I ignore the point being made and hyper focus on the thing just named as irrelevant that will PROVE I'm not an illiterate retard
kek

>>24571644
"there is one way to interpret this text, answer it correctly to proceed" is broadly what's killing reading and literacy rates. It pushes people to not read, and nowadays there are *so many* other options

>>24571453
You're an illiterate psued and you should go back to the reddit you claim to despise

>>24573937
>n-n-no see he’s really gay and if you don’t agree with my head canon faggotry y-y-youre a pseud!!
Hang yourself and stream it faggot, your parents will be so relieved when their biggest mistake has been resolved.

>>24564593 (OP)
I read this in hs and thought it was gay as hell. i dont understand the hype unless your a third worlder who still believes in the American Dream. Fitzgeralds writing style is so drawn out and infuriating to read. that is in stark contrast to the very based Ernest Hemingway who only writes what needs to be said. no more, no less.

>>24564593 (OP)
i was never required to read it. modern public school is a trash fire. they dont make you read