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.
I think Joyce was great, and I have a lot of respect for what he's done on his work regarding form, but I tried really hard and it was unbearable to keep on reading Ulysses - I got past half, but had to abandon - and this is coming from someone really used to 'hard' reads.
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.
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.
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.
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..
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.
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.
There are so many great parts to Moby Dick. It has a reputation for tedium, so I was surprised the first time I read it at how much humor is in it, often mingled with deep insight, e.g.:
> Though amid all the smoking horror and diabolism of a sea-fight, sharks
will be seen longingly gazing up to the ship’s decks, like hungry dogs
round a table where red meat is being carved, ready to bolt down every
killed man that is tossed to them; and though, while the valiant
butchers over the deck-table are thus cannibally carving each other’s
live meat with carving-knives all gilded and tasselled, the sharks,
also, with their jewel-hilted mouths, are quarrelsomely carving away
under the table at the dead meat; and though, were you to turn the
whole affair upside down, it would still be pretty much the same thing,
that is to say, a shocking sharkish business enough for all parties;
and though sharks also are the invariable outriders of all slave ships
crossing the Atlantic, systematically trotting alongside, to be handy
in case a parcel is to be carried anywhere, or a dead slave to be
decently buried; and though one or two other like instances might be
set down, touching the set terms, places, and occasions, when sharks do
most socially congregate, and most hilariously feast; yet is there no
conceivable time or occasion when you will find them in such countless
numbers, and in gayer or more jovial spirits, than around a dead sperm
whale, moored by night to a whaleship at sea. If you have never seen
that sight, then suspend your decision about the propriety of
devil-worship, and the expediency of conciliating the devil.
Fun fact: while Moby Dick has an overall Flesh-Kincaid reading-ease score of 57.9 ("10th to 12th grade" by the US scale), this particular sentence's score is −146.77. On the scale, 90-100 is at the 5th grade level and 0-10 is the "Professional" level, characterized as "Extremely difficult to read. Best understood by university graduates."
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!
Moby Dick is one of the greatest English works. Herman Melville, did not, in fact, get any second chance during his lifetime. My understanding is that except for "Bartleby the Scrivener", the reception for Moby Dick embittered him into not trying much afterwards. Bartleby might be autobiographical, that Melville "would prefer not to" attempt any works from then on.
His obituary in the New York Times is telling (Oct 2 1891) [1] - he was already considered an obscure trivia at the time. (The Sept 29 obituary notice actually misspelt Moby Dick.)
"There has died and been buried in this city, during the current week, at an advanced age, a man who is so little known, even by name, to the generation now in the vigor of life that only one newspaper contained an obituary account of him, and this was but of three or four lines. Yet forty years ago the appearance of a new book by Herman Melville was esteemed a literary event, not only throughout his own country, but so far as the English-speaking race extended."
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_.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
Yep same. HS English classes pretty much killed all desire to read Shakespear or any of the "important" American authors. Kurt Vonnegut's works are the only ones I remember enjoying.
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.
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.
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.
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.
>[...] understanding the context of the narrator being a returning soldier and member of the lost generation is important.
This was one of my biggest annoyances about how this book is usually presented and taught to high school students.
Back when I was a HS student myself (barely a decade ago), I had read that book. While it was a decent book imo, I thought it was overhyped. Mostly because the primary message of the book explained to us by teachers was that it was basically a story about a man who was so deeply in love with a woman who he didn't get to date, he had built great riches and life for himself. And yet none of that extravagant lifestyle could satisfy his desire for her, and it all ends in a tragedy. Something something greed something something green eyes are a symbol of his undying light for her or something.
And while the veteran background of the narrator was mentioned by teachers quite a few times, and we were told it was important to know, teachers never went as far as explaining why and how it was important to the story. Or how it was related at all. No connection to the lost generation either, besides it being mentioned once. Basically, the book was treated as a dramatic tragedy about a very quick fall of a man due to his love and desire. At no point when the book was discussed years later with people in real life it went deeper than that.
Many years later, I saw someone pointing out what you've just pointed out in your comment online, and the book had suddenly clicked for me. It all started making sense, and I finally understood why it was regarded so highly. If you view the entirety of the storyline through the eyes and context of the narrator's past, it adds a whole different dimension to the story, which not only adds depth, it straight up transforms your entire understanding of what it really was about.
The only solid analogy I can think of is if someone described MLK's civil rights movement as a simple protest due to a woman being so stubborn she didn't want to sit in the back of the bus, and her friends wanted to back her up, because they were upset about separate fountains and other facilities too. But once you actually understand what it was about, it completely changes the impact and gravity of what it really was.
> Mostly because the primary message of the book explained to us by teachers was that it was basically a story about a man who was so deeply in love with a woman who he didn't get to date, he had built great riches and life for himself. And yet none of that extravagant lifestyle could satisfy his desire for her, and it all ends in a tragedy. Something something greed something something green eyes are a symbol of his undying light for her or something.
Oof. No wonder. When I read it during high school, my English teacher specifically talked about it as a commentary on the society of the time, especially about class. I still remember him pointing out that Nick was a Yale graduate (he mentions "New Haven" early) and that we needed to keep in mind the perspective the narrator brings to the story - a background shared with Daisy and Tom, but detached due to coming back from the war. Even if I was too young to fully appreciate what the narrator brings to the story, reading with that understanding really gave the book depth, and it was quite clear it wasn't celebrating any of the characters.
Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises” is another phenomenal book which embraces the post-war era and the Lost Generation theme in a much more central way. I highly recommend it!
I didn’t get the article either. My take from 20 years ago was that the book is about a moderately successful but self-loathing bootlegger’s extremely elaborate suicide, spending himself to death, the tragedy being that nobody understood or cared; all anybody saw was the party.
Fitzgerald is a writer of the Southern tradition that decries the Northern materialistic mantra. Gatsby is a hick from nowhere who attaches himself to a rich man but gets kicked out by the rich man's new wife. An ambitious young man, he improves himself to the point where he becomes a military officer. While in training camp, he meets and falls in love with the beautiful and wealthy Daisy. A WWI hero, Gatsby goes to New York and pursues the American dream of riches. He earns his money through organized crime but still yearns for Daisy. Daisy marries a wealthy man who cheats on her. Anyways, a love triangle ensues and Gatsby ends up getting killed. Daisy blithely goes back to her wealthy but brute of a husband. Traditional analysis says that Fitzgerald's book is a cautionary tale of the corruption-price of the American dream of becoming a self-made man. Another traditional take, is the wealthy elite's stranglehold on power and social status.
For me, it was a meh. Gatsby lied, cheated, stole to win his dream girl who only cared about her wealthy life style. Fitzgerald crapped on New York. In the novel, Fitzgerald compared Manhattan to a grotesque surrealist painting. What else is new. Personally, I would choose living in New York over Mississippi or Missouri any day.
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?
77 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 119 ms ] threadhttps://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
[0] https://www.biblio.com/moby-dick-by-melville-herman/work/550...
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.
> Though amid all the smoking horror and diabolism of a sea-fight, sharks will be seen longingly gazing up to the ship’s decks, like hungry dogs round a table where red meat is being carved, ready to bolt down every killed man that is tossed to them; and though, while the valiant butchers over the deck-table are thus cannibally carving each other’s live meat with carving-knives all gilded and tasselled, the sharks, also, with their jewel-hilted mouths, are quarrelsomely carving away under the table at the dead meat; and though, were you to turn the whole affair upside down, it would still be pretty much the same thing, that is to say, a shocking sharkish business enough for all parties; and though sharks also are the invariable outriders of all slave ships crossing the Atlantic, systematically trotting alongside, to be handy in case a parcel is to be carried anywhere, or a dead slave to be decently buried; and though one or two other like instances might be set down, touching the set terms, places, and occasions, when sharks do most socially congregate, and most hilariously feast; yet is there no conceivable time or occasion when you will find them in such countless numbers, and in gayer or more jovial spirits, than around a dead sperm whale, moored by night to a whaleship at sea. If you have never seen that sight, then suspend your decision about the propriety of devil-worship, and the expediency of conciliating the devil.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flesch%E2%80%93Kincaid_readabi...
https://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/42/moby-dick/777/chapter-96-the-t...
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!
His obituary in the New York Times is telling (Oct 2 1891) [1] - he was already considered an obscure trivia at the time. (The Sept 29 obituary notice actually misspelt Moby Dick.)
"There has died and been buried in this city, during the current week, at an advanced age, a man who is so little known, even by name, to the generation now in the vigor of life that only one newspaper contained an obituary account of him, and this was but of three or four lines. Yet forty years ago the appearance of a new book by Herman Melville was esteemed a literary event, not only throughout his own country, but so far as the English-speaking race extended."
Melville's revival came in 1919, long afterwards.
[1] http://www.melville.org/hmobit.htm
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_American_Novel
Few months ago, I even saw a Korean version called The Burning on netflix!
The privileged versus unprivileged; being trapped and unable to achieve the dream and living with unfulfilled desires...
The Parasite has won an Oscar I think.
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
[0] https://www.britannica.com/topic/augury
His character really does have an opulent house and reading about it is one of things you can enjoy in the novel.
GatsbyJS: https://www.gatsbyjs.com/guidelines/logo#footnotes GQ: https://ychef.files.bbci.co.uk/1024x1280/p096h71g.webp
[1] http://www.identifont.com/similar?2AG [2] http://www.identifont.com/similar?9TR
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
Anyone want to let me in on what the book's really about?
This was one of my biggest annoyances about how this book is usually presented and taught to high school students.
Back when I was a HS student myself (barely a decade ago), I had read that book. While it was a decent book imo, I thought it was overhyped. Mostly because the primary message of the book explained to us by teachers was that it was basically a story about a man who was so deeply in love with a woman who he didn't get to date, he had built great riches and life for himself. And yet none of that extravagant lifestyle could satisfy his desire for her, and it all ends in a tragedy. Something something greed something something green eyes are a symbol of his undying light for her or something.
And while the veteran background of the narrator was mentioned by teachers quite a few times, and we were told it was important to know, teachers never went as far as explaining why and how it was important to the story. Or how it was related at all. No connection to the lost generation either, besides it being mentioned once. Basically, the book was treated as a dramatic tragedy about a very quick fall of a man due to his love and desire. At no point when the book was discussed years later with people in real life it went deeper than that.
Many years later, I saw someone pointing out what you've just pointed out in your comment online, and the book had suddenly clicked for me. It all started making sense, and I finally understood why it was regarded so highly. If you view the entirety of the storyline through the eyes and context of the narrator's past, it adds a whole different dimension to the story, which not only adds depth, it straight up transforms your entire understanding of what it really was about.
The only solid analogy I can think of is if someone described MLK's civil rights movement as a simple protest due to a woman being so stubborn she didn't want to sit in the back of the bus, and her friends wanted to back her up, because they were upset about separate fountains and other facilities too. But once you actually understand what it was about, it completely changes the impact and gravity of what it really was.
Oof. No wonder. When I read it during high school, my English teacher specifically talked about it as a commentary on the society of the time, especially about class. I still remember him pointing out that Nick was a Yale graduate (he mentions "New Haven" early) and that we needed to keep in mind the perspective the narrator brings to the story - a background shared with Daisy and Tom, but detached due to coming back from the war. Even if I was too young to fully appreciate what the narrator brings to the story, reading with that understanding really gave the book depth, and it was quite clear it wasn't celebrating any of the characters.
For me, it was a meh. Gatsby lied, cheated, stole to win his dream girl who only cared about her wealthy life style. Fitzgerald crapped on New York. In the novel, Fitzgerald compared Manhattan to a grotesque surrealist painting. What else is new. Personally, I would choose living in New York over Mississippi or Missouri any day.
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?
It's not about the Salem witch trials, but rather, a critique of McCarthyism!