The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

 

I read this book like thirty years ago (ack!) when I was in college, and I remembered liking it, and when my wife picked it as a classic-ish literary novel, I figured I'd read it while we had a copy in the house. It's ... maybe better than I remembered, even if there aren't a lot of particularly sympathetic characters. There are some strong thematic concerns here, more than I can enumerate or name, obsession and social strata and all-a-that, and probably more. The language in the novel--the prose--is something to sink your teeth into. I can definitely see why people get pulled into this novel repeatedly. It's a shame that so many people are exposed to it in school, have it crammed down their gullets, learn to hate it while it lies dead and quivering on the lepidopterist's pins; it deserves better treatment than that.