About this title: When F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote THE GREAT GATSBY in the early 1920s, the American Dream was already on the skids. Originally based on the idea that the pursuit of happiness involves not only material success but moral and spiritual growth, the dream had by Fitzgerald's time become increasingly focused on money and pleasure--a phenomenon the high-living writer was only too familiar with. In THE GREAT GATSBY, Fitzgerald looks deeply into himself and his milieu to create the story of James Gatz, a self-educated nobody from North Dakota who has amassed a fortune and adopted the persona of Jay ...
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Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Edition: First edition.
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Collier Books, New York
Date Published: 1981
ISBN-13:9780684717609ISBN:0684717603
Description: Fair. No dust jacket as issued. Overall cover wear, corner bumps, clean white pages, tight spine, hug a tree and buy me. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. Scribner Classic. Audience: General/trade. 182 pages. Synopsis: When F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote THE GREAT GATSBY in the early 1920s, the American Dream was already on the skids. Originally based on the idea that the pursuit of happiness involves not only material success but moral and spiritual growth, the dream had by Fitzgerald's time ... read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Collier Books
Date Published: 1981
ISBN-13:9780684717609ISBN:0684717603
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Highlighting/underlining. light wear to cover, price sticker remnant on front cover, some marginal notes and underlinings; text and binding firm. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. Scribner Classic. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons
Date Published: 1953-01-01
ISBN-13:9780684717609ISBN:0684717603
Description: Good. Used library discard stamp on inside pg, clean pgs, wear to cover edgesFirst Class shipping if available for faster service. read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons
Date Published: 1953-01-01
ISBN-13:9780684717609ISBN:0684717603
Description: Fair. Used for class has underlining and notes. No highlighting. Cover shows some wear or creases. Pages yellowed/tanned. You're gonna love this book! read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Collier Books
Date Published: 1953
ISBN-13:9780684717609ISBN:0684717603
Description: Good. Size: 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall; The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald, F. Scott. Collier Books, 1953. Binding: Soft CoverDust Jacket: . NOTES: Showing some exterior wear/creasing, overall clean and tight with no owner markings. Images available upon request. Please email us with any questions. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Collier Books, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada
Date Published: 0000
ISBN-13:9780684717609ISBN:0684717603
Description: Fair. Cover has bumping, marks, heavy chipping, tears-Bumped pgs-Marks & dampstains on edges-Yellowing-Marks on pgs-No pub. date found-Starts at title pg, FFEP may be missing-Lightly cracked hinges-Edgewear dents. read more
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Charles Schreiber's Son's, New York, New York, U.S.A.
Date Published: 1953
ISBN-13:9780684717609ISBN:0684717603
Description: Very Good/No Jacket. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall 0684717603 Renewal copyright date 1953---33rd Printing---pre-1969-has SPN number and not ISBN number and book are in-----Very Good + + Condition------Trade Paperback----pages of book are mildly discolored or tanned from age---No Jacket as Issued------Keywords: AMERICAN FICTION FICTIONAL WORKS AUTHOR----No Cover Creasing. Binding is tight in like unread condition---Very Mild cover edge wear. ----No reading creases to spine-----No loose or missing pages ... read more
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons, New York
Date Published: 1967
ISBN-13:9780684717609ISBN:0684717603
Description: Good. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. Light crease to the spine; rubbing to the corners; previous name to the first flyleaf and block bottom edge; rear cover is yellowed. The Scribner Library. SL1. 182 pages. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, NY, U.S.A.
Date Published: 1953
ISBN-13:9780684717609ISBN:0684717603
Description: Good with no dust jacket. 0684717603. Softbound, light wear/soil, crease at spine, name on front cover, few spots of text markings; 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall; 121 pages. read more
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons, New York
Date Published: 1967
ISBN-13:9780684717609ISBN:0684717603
Description: Very Good. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. Light chipping to the spine joints at the bottom; very little wear. Quite clean. The Scribner Library. SL1. 182 pages. read more
"This was a bookclub read that I've not read for many many years. It was of course assigned reading in both high school and college. I remember pouring over all the various aspects of this book and picking it a part like disecting a frog.
Now that I'm older....much older. This reading broght a whole new light on this book for me. And I'm sorry to say....I think this book is HIGHLY overrated.
This book was never a sucess (either critically or via sales) when it was released and I think that it actually is far from "The Great American Novel". I think this is a case where years of "reading into" this book has made it seem more than it is.
I HATED the book discussion (and kept silent through most of it) while I listened to a few pretencious people spout verbatium the various things I learned when "studying" the book. Trying to sound knowledgable on what Fitzgerald meant by this or that or the other thing.
The bottom line....Fitzgerald is dead and I've not found credible sources from HIM as to what he meant. So I'm left with analyzing this book with my own intellect and now that I'm old enough "to think for myself" and not concerned about the grade I will receive I find this book "coming up short"."
"Like many people, I first read The Great Gatsby when I was too young to understand it. I appreciated the beauty of Fitzgerald's prose and his gift for describing scenes, but disliked quite a few of his characters and couldn't fathom why they inspired in each other the degree of devotion and obsession that they seemed to do. I also found the narrator a bit dull and the ending a huge let-down. In short, I was convinced Fitzgerald was a good writer (I actually went on to check out some of his short stories immediately afterwards), but couldn't see what all the Gatsby fuss was about.
I think I can see it now, having reread the book a couple of times since then. Yes, it's a novel about the American Dream -- a rags-to-riches story about a poor man who re-invents himself as a mysterious millionaire in hopes of winning the heart of the beautiful rich girl he has fancied ever since they were young. But it's also about the shallowness of that dream, and about the corruption inherent in it -- about the lengths to which people will go for success and acceptance, not necessarily in an admirable way. It's about the gap between dreams and reality, between reality and perception, and about how modern, status-obsessed America is increasingly on the perception side of the gap. It's an indictment of materialism, of the thin veneer of wealth which hides the moral decay underneath. And last but not least, it's a story about what makes us who we are. About how we are shaped by our pasts and backgrounds, and how, no matter how far we run and how hard we try to re-invent ourselves, we are what we are, what we always were. It's a depressing message for the would-be self-improvers among us, but a true one, I think.
Of course, the book also works on a shallower level. The Gatsby-Daisy romance is fascinating, even if both of its protagonists ultimately turn out to be rather vapid and deluded. And Gatsby's dream is nothing if not powerful. If it ends up failing, that's because it was based on wrong assumptions -- assumptions arising from ignorance and greed as well as hope. There's a lot of greed and ignorance in the book, and it makes for memorable (albeit heavily flawed) characters. (I actually believe Jordan Baker is the most interesting character in the book. I'd have loved to see a bit more of her, although I guess it's precisely her elusiveness which makes her so fascinating.) For his part, old-fashioned Nick proves to be an excellent narrator, whose 'provincial squeamishness' adds just the right kind of perspective to all the modern goings-on described in the book. Nick may be unspectacular and unreliable, but to my mind, he's one of the best narrators in the history of modern fiction. Now that I've learnt to appreciate the novel, his disappointment and disillusionment will stay with me for ever, as will his sad resignation. (If, in fact, that is what it is. One never knows with this endlessly subtle novel.)"
""The Great Gatsby," is a novel that is loved by many generations of readers and I'm certain that you will enjoy reading it too. It was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald and is known as one of the great American classics of 20th century literature. I really like "The Great Gatsby" because it is a modernist novel that takes place during the Jazz Age. It perfectly portrays the decline of the American dream in the 1920s and exposes the emptiness and moral decay of upper class life on the East Coast. It was first published in 1925, a time when the economy soared and prohibition made millionaires out of bootleggers. The story unfolds through Nick Carraway's point of view. Nick moved from Minnesota to a community for the newly wealthy known as the West Egg of Long Island. He graduated from Yale, fought in WWII and wanted to learn the bond business in New York. He is a honest man and has reserved judgment. People easily trust him with their secrets throughout the novel. In the West Egg, Nick befriends his neighbor Jay Gatsby. Gatsby, a man who dedicated his life to becoming wealthy, is well-known in Long Island for the lavish parties he throws in his mansion. As the relationship between Gatsby and Nick is strengthened, Nick finds out Gatsby is in love with his cousin Daisy. Daisy Buchanan met Gatsby at a training camp in Louisville. They fell in love and she promised to wait for him when he went to war. She eventually gave up on waiting and married a wealthy, arrogant and hypocritical man of the old aristocratic community of Long Island known as the East Egg. I didn't like him because he tended to not live up to the standards of morality he demanded from others. The moral conflicts are revealed when superficial socialites are caught hiding the pain of infidelity. Nick is introduced to Daisy's friend Jordan Baker near the time of his arrival. She is a cynical and self-centered competitive golfer who is eventually set up with Nick. She is beautiful but often bends the truth. Jordan tells Nick about Tom's affair with a lady named Myrtle. Myrtle Wilson is a curvy woman who lives above her husband's auto shop in a place referred to as the Valley of Ashes. The place is an important setting because it defines what the American dream is not. The ruin of the community perfectly reveals the false aspects of the American dream. Myrtle is ashamed to live there because Tom is wealthy. She uses the affair to create a classy and sophisticated image that many people of the 1920s longed to reflect. However, nobody buys the disguise. I think the book is a good read because many people can relate to Myrtle when she pretended to be something she is not. The fast paced style of writing excites the reader and makes you want to flip to the last page to find out how the story turns out. Many can relate to numerous issues the characters face. Nick eventually rekindles the love that Daisy had for Gatsby. This made me extremely happy when I was reading the book. Fitzgerald wrote, "His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy's white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips touch, she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete." Fitzgerald's description of their kiss was so intimate and beautiful that it made me wonder if he took this from personal experience. It wasn't a cheesy love scene we often read in current novels. The phrasing is perfection. I remember reading that part over and over. I'm sure you will too. As the situations and conversations become more heated, things get complicated. When Tom learns of Gatsby and Daisy, things begin to get messy. I enjoyed reading about the loose atmosphere of Gatsby's red-carpet-like parties. It was also entertaining to read about the tension between Tom and Daisy at the dinner table. Some of the details I'm not giving away will really catch you off guard. It's a thrilling adventure. In the end, Nick realizes Gatsby's dream of Daisy was destroyed by dishonesty and money just like the American dream of individualism and happiness has disintegrated into a pursuit of wealthiness. Nick concludes that Gatsby's ability to transform his dreams into reality is what makes him "great" and like Gatsby's dream, the American dream is over. Fitzgerald's great American classic appeals to anyone with good taste. The upbeat social scene of New York in the 1920s is appealing in itself! I think many can make personal connections with some of the conflicts the characters struggle with throughout this lovely novel. I highly recommend this one. It's pretty great!"
"I first read the Great Gatsby when I was sixteen. Gatsby's relentless pursuit of unrequited love was enough to set my adolescent pulse racing and send me to the library with the grand ambition of reading everything Fitzgerald ever wrote. A decade later I am even more awed by the book than I was the first time I followed Gatsby's story through the breathless pages of Fitzgerald's modernist American classic. The story takes place over the course of one summer, not coincidentally beginning just before Independence Day. The narrator, Nick, moves to a peninsula out side of the city called West Egg which looks straight across to its physical double, East Egg. Despite the outward similarity of these two locations, the inhabitants of East Egg are from old money while the prosperity of the citizens of West Egg is due to much more recently acquired wealth. The towns are therefore described as, in actuality, bearing a "bizarre and not a little sinister contrast" to one another. This juxtaposition sets up a narrative of the push and pull of opposites: east versus west, new versus old, truth versus illusion. The two worlds of West Egg and East Egg are brought onto a collision course through Nick who rents the house next door to James Gatsby's enormous mansion and who happens to be the cousin of Gatsby's love interest, Daisy, and friend to Daisy's old moneyed, old fashioned husband, Tom Buchanan. As the summer unfolds, it becomes clear that none of the characters are whom they appear to be, Gatsby is not from a rich family nor is he an alumni of Oxford, as a matter of fact, when he first met and fell in love with Daisy he had almost no money at all. Tom is an outspoken proponent of the traditional family structure while he simultaneously carries on an affair, and Daisy is neither quite as brave nor quite as independent as she would like the world to believe. Even Jordan Baker, Daisy's friend who has an affair with Nick that summer, is a professional golfer who has been accused of cheating and is described by Nick as "incurably dishonest." Each character can also be understood to stand for a different arch type within American society, Tom is the wealthy patrician, carrying in his blood and his bearing decades of privilege and position, yet he has recently begun to read pseudo-science books about the impending fall of civilization. In other words, that civilization which has been shaped and protected by men in Tom's social class is in jeopardy. Daisy is a modern woman, witty and provocative, she has even had sex before her wedding night, but when she announces to Nick that she is sophisticated he feels "the basic sincerity of what she has said." Flappers of the twenties may have looked and behaved unconventionally, but when it came right down to it, most of them married men liked Tom who could provide them with material security. Jordan is more the truly modern woman, a professional who mostly takes care of herself, but she has achieved this position through various acts of dishonesty. Gatsby, of course, is the self made man, the challenge to the established order of society. It is not Gatsby's existence that threatens the world of East Egg, America has always boasted of self-made men, it is the fact that he has suddenly come so close. He is just across the bay and his mansion, while gaudy and tasteless, is nevertheless every bit as big as Tom's. Gatsby is finally in a position to make a claim on Daisy's love, and therefore on Tom's social superiority. He is so close to fulfilling the American dream he can almost reach right out and touch it. Like Fitzgerald himself, Gatsby pursues his dream through the vehicle of fiction. Gatsby invents a new persona for himself in order to enter Daisy's world; Fitzgerald created windows into the lives of the rich and glamorous and through these stories, became a figure of fame and fortune himself. In the end, Gatsby does not succeed in winning Daisy, but it isn't really about her, it's about his dream, his belief in limitless possibilities, that quality of bravery and ingenuity that has come to be known as the American dream. "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 our arms farther...And one fine morning--""
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