{"id":1251,"date":"2015-09-01T17:32:28","date_gmt":"2015-09-01T15:32:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/?p=1251"},"modified":"2025-09-07T00:01:20","modified_gmt":"2025-09-06T22:01:20","slug":"der-grosse-gatsby-f-scott-fitzgerald","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/2015\/09\/the-great-gatsby-f-scott-fitzgerald\/","title":{"rendered":"The Great Gatsby \u2022 F. Scott Fitzgerald"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

The Great Gatsby<\/em> is a classic so ubiquitous that it\u2019s hard to get around it. When I put out a small call on Twitter for good classics recommendations, this book was mentioned several times, and since it was already on my TBR pile, it moved straight to the top this time. I love books set in 1920s New York. There\u2019s a kind of strange pseudo-nostalgia there that turns the city\u2014and the legends surrounding it\u2014into an ideal place for adventure, but also into an exciting backdrop for human endeavors. With all the promises the city stood for at that time.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

At the center of the story stands Jay Gatsby with his tragic love story. It\u2019s embedded in the decadent life of the 1920s before the great crash\u2014in a society that really indulged itself. Fitzgerald presents this time and its people in a fairly straightforward way: critically, with a sarcastic, sometimes even oddly satirical style. It\u2019s hard to pigeonhole this book. It is multifaceted and not exclusively a depiction of the era\u2019s ills, not only a love story, and not just a portrait of the actions of the wealthy set. It\u2019s a mixture of all these things and much more. Sometimes poetic, sometimes very realistic, somehow autobiographical, yet always a bit off-kilter.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Refraining from critical judgments contains an infinite hope. (p. 10)<\/p><\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

If you take a 1,000-page classic and shake the book until about 80% of the sentences fall out, you end up with something like The Great Gatsby<\/em>. Of course not at random, but through a sieve that retains only the most essential information\u2014with great sensitivity preserving exactly the sentences and passages needed to create an intense impression in the reader. Fitzgerald describes situations, actions, and thoughts with pinpoint precision, and precisely through what he doesn\u2019t write, much of the mood and the characters\u2019 feelings are conveyed. And I think that\u2019s exactly why this book became so famous. Because especially when his protagonists don\u2019t speak, the reader senses instinctively what remains unspoken and how much meaning lies in that. He doesn\u2019t even describe the people fully, leaving much to the reader\u2019s imagination\u2014yet those gaps are filled aptly, since the key cornerstones of his characters nevertheless appear vividly before the mind\u2019s eye, mostly through what happens\u2014what they do, how they react to others.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

This book reminded me strongly of Garden by the Sea<\/em>, which likewise has a distinctly impressionistic style, creates a pastel-like image, and conveys so much through its undertones. Somehow it\u2019s not entirely graspable, diffuse, and yet the mood and feelings are perfectly clear. As readers we learn everything through Nick, who describes his observations. The feelings\u2014the things that move the actual main figures of the love story\u2014remain in the shadows. Here too, the book strongly resembles Garden by the Sea<\/em>, where everything was relayed by the gardener. In my view, however, this is also the great weakness. Of course the story is artfully composed\u2014with its hints, its bon mots, its stereotypical yet very realistic figures. After only a few pages you feel the melancholy hanging over Gatsby, and the sluggish decadence weighing on Daisy like a dark veil. You also get a sense, in very subtle fashion, of what Tom and Daisy\u2019s marriage looks like and how the spouses feel. All of this comes across very clearly without these impressions being spelled out or shouted. And yet there is always a distance. You see the players, but empathy bumps up against its limits\u2014against the limit of what can be conveyed through observation alone.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Fitzgerald imparts a certain realism in this book. Even when he exaggerates, you still buy the story and the characters. That reminded me of Maupassant, who also always managed to cloak his tales\u2014despite overdrawn elements\u2014in a mantle of authenticity. And in fact, such a story is possible and even likely within its framework. As with Maupassant, I accepted it from him as well, and for me the question of whether the protagonists\u2019 decisions are plausible is answered with a yes.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Looking back at the book now, the nostalgia I mentioned at the beginning didn\u2019t rub off on me. Whether it was the places of this story, the people themselves, or the moods\u2014none of it brought that classic image of New York to life in me. Just as the characters\u2019 feelings didn\u2019t fully reach me, the city\u2019s charm didn\u2019t either\u2014even if Fitzgerald finds some very beautiful words in places.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Over the great bridge, where the sunlight falling between the steel girders creates a constant flicker on the moving cars, while on the other side of the river the city rises as a range of white sugar cubes, all conjured into being by mere wishing, out of completely odorless money. When you see it from the Queensboro Bridge, the city is always as if seen for the first time, the first wild promise of the world\u2019s secrets and all its beauty. (p. 86)<\/p><\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Conclusion:<\/strong> The Great Gatsby<\/em> is certainly a masterful composition, one that lives off what is left unwritten\u2014one that creates a story out of what is fragmentary. Whether feelings, thoughts, or New York itself\u2014everything is told realistically, impressionistically, unvarnished, and very much in the spirit of its time. But Nick as observer and narrator inserts a distance between the actual main characters that did convey their feelings to me, yet didn\u2019t manage to make me feel them\u2014didn\u2019t allow them to reach me in full. I trust Fitzgerald enough to believe this is intentional, that nothing in this refined composition is left to chance. But the portrait of the people, their fates, and the image of New York did not enthrall me, and so The Great Gatsby<\/em> and its Daisy will probably rank further back among the great classics for me.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Book information:<\/strong> The Great Gatsby<\/em> \u2022 F. Scott Fitzgerald \u2022 Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag \u2022 256 pages \u2022 ISBN 9783423139878<\/p>\r\n\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Great Gatsby is a classic so ubiquitous that it\u2019s hard to get around it. When I put out a small call on Twitter for good classics recommendations, this book was mentioned several times, and since it was already on my TBR pile, it moved straight to the top this time. I love books set … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “The Great Gatsby \u2022 F. Scott Fitzgerald”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1429,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"slim_seo":{"title":"Der gro\u00dfe Gatsby \u2022 F. Scott Fitzgerald - lesestunden","description":"Der gro\u00dfe Gatsby ist ein Klassiker, der so pr\u00e4sent ist, dass man nur sehr schwer um ihn herum kommt. Bei einem kleinen Aufruf f\u00fcr gute Klassikertipps in Twitter"},"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10,20],"tags":[58],"class_list":["post-1251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-classics","category-reviews","tag-f-scott-fitzgerald"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/fitzgerald_der_grosse_gatsby.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}