Publisher : Hachette Audio
Publication Date : 1995 01 01
>> The Doppler Effect
applied to the star rating of books In brief the Doppler effect addresses the perceived frequency of waves such as a fire truck s siren by taking into account the actual frequency and the relative speeds of the source of the sound and the observer So too with books your opinion is so often determined by your particular circumstances perhaps rushing towards the source or enjoying the lengthening perspective that life in its fullness can provide Unlike so many of the now familiar 1 star reviews written by students forced to read the book as an assignment I first read this book of my own free will more or less when I was in Vietnam some 40 plus years ago When you are living in a bunker the whining of the rich and their self induced troubles does not go down well and if Amazon had existed then the best I could have mustered would have been a 2 star rating
But a friend chided me into undertaking a second read And I found a finely crafted novel yes concerning the rich primarily set in the early years of the Roaring 20 s The story is told through the voice of Ned Carraway standing in that proverbial inertial reference frame a migrant from the Mid West attempting to scratch a living by selling bonds on Wall Street and living in modest circumstances on Long Island The book s essential theme is lost love or more precisely lost opportunities in courtship and involves the title character Jay Gatsby n Jimmy Gatz and his desire for Tom Buchanan s wife Daisy whom he had briefly known before her marriage She requites for sure The minor characters do their share of suffering There is plenty of philandering all around and a somewhat predictable Greek tragedy denouement
Fitzgerald tells his story well and it is relatively fast paced and dense There are sufficient insights to maintain the interest Tom exudes much of the stupidity and bigotry that so often goes with wealth Consider the following statement Nowadays people begin by sneering at family life and family institutions and next they ll throw everything overboard and have intermarriage between black and white At another point Fitzgerald says of Tom As for Tom the fact that he had some woman in New York was really less surprising than that he had been depressed by a book Something was making him nibble at the edge of stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his preemptory heart
But the primary focus is on Gatsby And therein were some problems Somerset Maugham did the obsession with a woman thing to perfection Fitzgerald s explanation of Gatsby s obsession was substantially weaker And then there is the matter of his rapid acquisition of wealth Could it have occurred so quickly under any circumstances since the novel was set in the early 20 s instead of the late 20 s
The Rich really are different than you and me as the old saw goes The concentration of wealth in the United States even in the midst of the Great Recession exceeds even that of the 20 s so the foibles prejudges and contrived problems of the lucky or is it unlucky few from that prior era merit another look as the wavelength of that receding period lengthens along with perspective of the reader
A 5 star read but not one of the 10 best American novels of all time
>> Great Gatsby
I have yet to receive this purchase I find this to be unacceptable I purchased it over a month ago and no longer need the book for my class has already read it in its entirety
>> The Roaring Twenties
4 stars means It was a great book and I would recommend it to almost anyone
This novel best epitomizes the 1920s in New York and the U S as a whole Although it starts moderately slow as a lot of classics sometimes do at least to the modern reader it is a engaging read with genuinely interesting and extremely complex characters
On the characters Few novels manage to create this depth of personality in such a large number of characters over so few pages You come to if not like at least be interested in the fate of everyone in the novel Although there are very few people you could honestly root for this becomes part of the fun of the book
The party scene is a seminal moment in fiction It is one of the best captured moments through so few words
The prose is not fluffy but well crafted and meaningful Fitzgerald manages to illuminate deeper issues in the plot through brilliant diction and subtle analogies
This and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button are the only works of Fitzgerald which I have read but both have made me want to enjoy more of them I would recommend it to anyone interested in a good but not to easy read
