Thursday, June 13, 2013

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Sorry if this seems overkill. I always say go big or go home. Well I went Gatsby big. Saw the new movie, read the book, bought the soundtrack and saw the old movie. Here are my quick thoughts on the book. Let's start by saying this is the second actual, physical book I have read in 2 years. While it is only 189 pages, it is not a quick read. Let me rephrase that, it is a quick read, however, it is like you are reading a big poem. The way it is written is so deep that you cant just skim, or read this fast and not miss something. It is pretty funny that as I was reading the book the soundtrack of the new movie was playing in my head. The songs were very appropriate. Just for the record, Gatsby makes the book boyfriend list. This should go without saying. Whether it's the book, Redford or DiCaprio, all these men make the list!  Here are some of my favorite quotes from the book:

"Yet high over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening streets, and I was him too, looking up and wondering. I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life."

"He smiled understandingly-much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life...It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey."

"'You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock.' Daisy put her arm through his abruptly but he seemed absorbed in what he had just said.  Possibly it had occurred to him that the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever... His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one."

"...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 or arms farther....And one fine morning---

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

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