Wednesday, July 25, 2007

The Great Gatsby

THE GREAT GATSBY (F. Scott Fitzgerald) - Four Stars

I had originally read The Great Gatsby in high school. Now, some fifteen or so years later, I decided to sit down and reread the novel—because I wanted to, not because I had to. I understand, now, why I remembered so little of the book from my high school years.

The Great Gatsby is deceptively simple to an enormous extent. Despite being less than 200 pages and superficially a rather simple love story, I would consider it more of a college-level book in the analysis of all the symbols and meanings. Certainly, my teenage self missed quite a lot the first time through (or, perhaps, I have just forgotten it over the years). Amongst the things that really stood out to me this time...

(1) The drunken revelry. A little too young to fully understand it the first time I read the novel, Fitzgerald quite amusingly details the drunkenness at these high society parties. It's probably because he was an alcoholic himself, but Fitzgerald's portrayal of social inebriation is spot-on in the book.

(2) The sociology of wealth. The "class battles" between "new rich" and "old wealth" in The Great Gatsby, but I was rather intrigued at how much of a rebuke the novel was against pointless wealth in general. Far from being a new idea in the Reaganomics-era, Fitzgerald in the 1920s makes some astute and disapproving comments about the general soullessness vast amounts of money can bring to people ("new rich" or "old wealth") who are incapable of utilizing it productively (Gatsby's largesse, the Buchanan's general aloofness, etc.).

(3) Gatsby's character and how it pertains to the title. The title, The Great Gatsby, is almost sarcastic: one feels the word "Great" should have quotation marks around it. How is he great, and to whom? Gatsby is a wonderfully paradoxical character. He was a war hero in WWI and performed many acts of valor, but barely seems proud of any of that. He is, at heart one believes, a generally good person, but he had no compunction in making his fortune in illicit activities like bootlegging (and maybe more: the fact that his name is a play on "gat"/gun is not coincidental). And, of course, the entire goal for amassing his fortune: Daisy Buchanan (or rather, Gatsby's idealized memory of Daisy Buchanan)—an "old wealth" girl from Kentucky that Gatsby is obsessed with and certain that the only way he can impress her/win her heart is with wealth (in one of the many, many cynical observations made in the book, Gatsby is mostly correct in this regard). And yet, his love and loyalty to Daisy remains so absolute (even after she spurns him) that he takes the blame for a vehicular manslaughter that was her fault.

(4) The enormity of the shallowness most of the characters possess. Nick Carraway and Jay Gatsby are the only two characters in the novel that seem to possess any wide-range of feeling. Daisy, the girl Gatsby is infatuated with, is actually a shockingly soulless and cold individual (name one scene in the novel, apart from the climatic confrontation between Tom Buchanan and Jay Gatsby in the New York City hotel room, where Daisy displays any "true" emotion; there isn't one, for all her emotion is portrayed as just a "show" for social purposes, like jewelry). After the aforementioned vehicular manslaughter, after running over and killing someone (I won't spoil who, but it certainly didn't seem "accidental" to me), Daisy lets Gatsby take the blame for it and goes on vacation. Even Nick's slight love affair with Jordan dissolves due to Nick's disgust at these shallow, idle rich people.

But possibly my favorite part of The Great Gatsby is Fitzgerald's skewering of American society's obsession with symbols and symbolism. His points on the general uselessness of symbols in the characters lives, and the fact those symbols only hold the individual meaning each person gives to them resonated greatly with me. America is and always has been a fairly jingoistic society with an unhealthy obsession with symbolism (as evidenced by the thousands of "patriotic" jackasses willing to beat the shit out of you for burning a woven piece of fabric with fifty white stars on a blue background and thirteen red and white stripes). Perhaps the best part came at the end, when the faded billboard eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg are revealed to be the condemning eyes of God (but only to a grief-mad, broken down, suicidal man).

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Wide Sargasso Sea

WIDE SARGASSO SEA (Jean Rhys) - One Star

Life Sucks. Because.

There's the entire novel for you, in three short little words. I'm glad I didn't waste a lot of time reading it (a mercifully short 160 pages), because I found the book to be wholly without merit.

A hypothetical "prequel" to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, Rhys's novel supposedly relates the hard-luck life story of Edward Rochester's hidden/insane first wife Bertha Mason. It is supposed to be a masterpiece of postmodern and postcolonial literature, but I found it soul-crushingly bitter and mean-spirited. Nearly all the characters presented in Wide Sargasso Sea are loathesome individuals (or, perhaps, simply have their worst traits emphasized), and the misery and bad tidings are heaped upon them with sadistic remorselessness. I can assure you that nothing good happens to ANYONE in the entire course of the novel.

I understand that Jean Rhys had a rather rough life herself. Perhaps Sargasso's matter-of-fact but pessimistic portrayal of life displays that. I also have read that Rhys (originally from the West Indies herself) took exception with the rather slanted portrayal of Creole women in Brontë's Victorian text. However, all of Rhys's attempts to explore themes of isolation, cultural alienation, and loss of identity fell flat with me because I could never sympathize with the main character.

The book is whiny and angsty, even through the narrative voice-changes; far from a great novel, for me it read more like a teenager's livejournal put to paper.

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Death on the Nile

DEATH ON THE NILE (Agatha Christie) - Three Stars

There's really not much from my Murder on the Orient Express review that doesn't also apply here. Christie's books are light, breezy reads: slightly mentally challenging without being brain-busting, and highly entertaining. I also appreciate that Christie maintains objectivity with her main character: a lesser author might have fallen too in love with Hercule Poirot, but Christie doesn't hesitate in portraying Poirot as the smugly pompous ass he can be at times (although these passages are written with tongue pretty firmly in cheek).

Death... receives only three stars because it was a little too easy to figure out. I had "who" and the "why" figured out long in advance. Christie still weaves in several wonderful, inconsequential sub-plots, and even those are a delight to figure out; and, like in Murder..., there's a twist in the last couple of pages that is both shocking and entertaining.

I'm sure there will be more Christie novels in my future, and I'm sure their reviews will be equally brief. All I can do is recommend that you check her books out if you haven't already.