[HN Gopher] The Great Gatsby: Misunderstood Novel
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The Great Gatsby: Misunderstood Novel
Author : pseudolus
Score : 49 points
Date : 2021-02-10 02:42 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| wyldfire wrote:
| I just started watching HBO's "The Wire."
|
| It was interesting to hear D'Angelo Barksdale's take on it [1]. I
| think it's related to his character's arc - inner turmoil about
| whether to leave the criminal world behind.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/8DOy4hCih7w
| toyg wrote:
| First time through The Wire? Oh man, I envy you.
| Mistri wrote:
| High school ruined this book for me. It would've been easier to
| read if I hadn't been forced to tear apart every single sentence
| for analysis. Hearing "Great Gatsby" triggers my gag reflex now,
| along with most other books I analyzed in high school.
| RBerenguel wrote:
| I had this with The Picture of Dorian Gray, but on a re-read
| later (several years on a bored weekend, that was before I
| wrote code or read about code most of the time) I came to
| really appreciate it.
| jwdunne wrote:
| Similar thing happened to me but with Of Mice and Men and
| Macbeth. Come to enjoy those stories but it always felt like I
| was meant to glean a deeper meaning than even the author
| intended!
| tjalfi wrote:
| Literary augury[0] is my term for that kind of literature
| discussion.
|
| [0] https://www.britannica.com/topic/augury
| WalterBright wrote:
| I finally got around to reading Romeo+Juliet in my 40's. It was
| much better than I expected, aside from all the tired cliches
| in the prose.
| toyg wrote:
| In Italy that happens with Dante's _Divina Commedia_ and
| Manzoni's _I Promessi Sposi_. Very good reads on their own,
| they get absolutely destroyed by being forced on kids.
| acdanger wrote:
| Heh. It looks like GatsbyJS - the React static site generator -
| cribbed their logo from the GQ magazine pictured in the article:
|
| GatsbyJS: https://www.gatsbyjs.com/guidelines/logo#footnotes GQ:
| https://ychef.files.bbci.co.uk/1024x1280/p096h71g.webp
| drewzero1 wrote:
| Maybe! The font on the magazine appears to be Broadway
| Engraved[1], but similar fonts were extremely common in the
| book's time period, making any of them an obvious choice. The
| logo looks a lot more like the C and O in Secret Agent NF[2].
| Could be inspiration, or could easily be coincidence.
|
| [1] http://www.identifont.com/similar?2AG [2]
| http://www.identifont.com/similar?9TR
| kylegill wrote:
| Yeah there is certainly some truth to that, the original logo
| design came from an open source contributor who mentioned some
| ideas coming from the movie posters:
| https://github.com/gatsbyjs/gatsby/issues/408#issuecomment-2...
| ksdale wrote:
| They may well have done that, but as a very nit-picky aside,
| that font has a pretty general art deco vibe, so it's not
| necessarily unique to that GQ cover.
| steve76 wrote:
| Mixes real world celebrity into "literature as a product."
| Interesting to think who would be like Fitzgerald today, and fun
| to think authors can do that to people, draw crowds and
| headlines.
|
| Creates a world that likely wouldn't exist without the book.
|
| Memento for a group of people who feel sympathy for a lost
| friend, and remember an era where free expression was something
| brand new. Paris in the 1920s was probably really nice, not
| decadent, more like a wonderland, seeing things for the first
| time.
|
| Ten years after Fitzgerald died, when America had to compete
| against fascism, communism and imperialism, we took everything
| cultural, loaded it into a cannon, and shot it at the world to
| see what would stick. How could it be disillusionment when we
| took over the world?
| kylegill wrote:
| I agree with what the article mentions, and think the concept of
| the Great American Novel [0] gives the Great Gatsby wings and
| leads to it being more _popular_ than it perhaps is _understood_.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_American_Novel
| [deleted]
| jrumbut wrote:
| I'm not how naming a couch Gatsby really reflects a
| misunderstanding.
|
| His character really does have an opulent house and reading about
| it is one of things you can enjoy in the novel.
| winrid wrote:
| The Green light! It must mean Envy!
| GizmoSwan wrote:
| I have seen several versions of it in the movies which were
| easier to interpret than the novel.
|
| Few months ago, I even saw a Korean version called The Burning on
| netflix!
| dondawest wrote:
| That movie was based on the Haruki Murakami short story "Barn
| Burning," though it did reference Gatsby directly in the
| dialogue
| GizmoSwan wrote:
| Yes it did mention the Gatsby. The author was obviously
| interpreting the psycho-thriller angle by design.
|
| The privileged versus unprivileged; being trapped and unable
| to achieve the dream and living with unfulfilled desires...
| cercatrova wrote:
| I watched Burning and Parasite as a duology, both have very
| similar themes about modern day Korea. I'd suggest you
| watch them back to back as well.
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| Also the world's most boring novel.
| northwest65 wrote:
| Give The Lord of the Rings a whirl...
| baldfat wrote:
| HEY, Two Towers and the double time line was UGH but LotR and
| Foundations Trilogy are the only books I read every decade of
| my life since my teens.
| Rhinobird wrote:
| Lord of the Rings is boring until they get out of
| Rivendell. Once they actually start their journey it's a
| fun read.
| ttz wrote:
| Nothing misunderstood. IMO it's just a mediocre book with
| overemphasis on hiding middling meaning in prose. A story that
| speaks many words but says little.
| kinghtown wrote:
| No, it's an excellent novel. I do think it's a little
| overrated, but mediocre would be a silly take on it. It's
| highly regarded for a reason. For sure there are greater
| American novels..
| leephillips wrote:
| An opinion that differs from yours is not, thereby, silly. I
| also find it mediocre. A bit of a bore overall, the prose
| unremarkable.
| kinghtown wrote:
| We all harbour silly opinions.
| dang wrote:
| " _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other
| people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| omosubi wrote:
| which novels are better?
| ReptileMan wrote:
| I would say that from what is considered Great American
| Classics only catch 22 is actually good.
| alwaysanon wrote:
| I really rate Jack London as the great American novelist. I
| like the lessor known Sea Wolf the best of his but White Fang
| and The Call of the Wild really capture a sense of adventure
| and the history and vibe of that period of American expansion
| into the West.
| deepsun wrote:
| Interestingly, Jack London saw writing as purely commercial
| activity. He preferred to buy plots, or "take the idea"
| (hence lots of plagiarism accusations) to inventing.
| leephillips wrote:
| So, so, many. Moby Dick; The Scarlet Letter; Lolita; Ulysses;
| Et Tu, Babe; Lexicon; Malone Dies;....
| dan_hawkins wrote:
| Ulysses is Irish though.
| leephillips wrote:
| So is _Malone Dies_ ; maybe I misinterpreted the
| question, if it was asking only about American novels.
| gverrilla wrote:
| ulysses - you gotta be kiding. did you read that?
| QuesnayJr wrote:
| I think the conceit (the different styles for different
| chapters) sometimes overwhelms the book, but it has a lot
| of highlights, like the opening and closing chapters. I
| think of this quote often: History,
| Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to
| awake.
| leephillips wrote:
| Twice, and I dip into it now and then and read a chapter.
| It's one of my favorites.
| happyconcepts wrote:
| Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky struck me as a better
| novel. But it's almost 1000 pages.
| tjalfi wrote:
| There's always The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov.
| mikhailfranco wrote:
| Another discussion of the book on the BBC:
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000r4tq
|
| I used to think of _" In Our Time"_ as the set of topics for
| which every educated person should have a basic understanding of
| the facts, hence hold an informed opinion, and be able to enter a
| meaningful discussion.
|
| But now it is approaching ~900 episodes, so the subjects are
| necessarily becoming more obscure, but that also means there is
| occasionally a fascinating surprise.
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qykl/episodes/player
| pseudolus wrote:
| What's particularly interesting, and was unknown to me, was that
| 'The Great Gatsby' was not an immediate success. I was similarly
| surprised when I read that 'Moby Dick' had an initial print run
| of 500 copies and that only 3215 copies were sold during
| Melville's lifetime [0]. I guess authors get second chances.
|
| [0] https://www.biblio.com/moby-dick-by-melville-
| herman/work/550...
| the_snooze wrote:
| Moby Dick probably would have sold more early on if it weren't
| interleaved with chapters from a whaling ship operating
| handbook.
| josephorjoe wrote:
| lol. but the third time you read Moby Dick those are the best
| parts.
|
| loose fish vs fast fish is top of the line 19th century
| humor.
|
| i admit i was bored to tears by those sections on the first
| read.
|
| honestly i think it just isn't a great read for people in
| their teens/20s as the world weariness, fatalism, and
| obsession with an imperfect understanding of an obscure
| expertise is something better appreciated as one ages.
| devindotcom wrote:
| Melville was already an established author after Typee and Omoo
| - Moby Dick was sort of like a Sgt Pepper situation. People
| expected a sea story and they got something quite a bit
| different. Or imagine if Tom Clancy wrote ten Jack Ryan books
| and then Gravity's Rainbow or something.
|
| Sadly many authors don't get the recognition they deserve for
| generations afterwards... but the important thing is they
| didn't let that possibility dissuade them from writing!
| mrkeen wrote:
| I misunderstood this article as well!
|
| Anyone want to let me in on what the book's really about?
| karaterobot wrote:
| The article doesn't offer a position on that. It just points
| out the obvious fact that it's NOT about how cool and fun it is
| to be rich and throw fancy parties, and that understanding the
| context of the narrator being a returning soldier and member of
| the lost generation is important.
| [deleted]
| acabal wrote:
| The Great Gatsby entered the US public domain this year, and you
| can read it for free at Standard Ebooks:
| https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/f-scott-fitzgerald/the-gre...
| omosubi wrote:
| the audiobook is also free on spotify -
| https://open.spotify.com/album/3pGXKRHWi69wIBdI39PfZc?si=rnT...
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