The Great Gatsby 15th January, 09
The Great Gatsby is one of many books on my reading list before I will start to write the book in March - with my E’s and F’s on my English exams in high school it would be quite a stupid idea. That’s the reason why, my European fellows, you will be introduced to American Classic literature by someone who has no idea about it as much as you do.
Lorena gave me a couple of books she read in school for Christmas, and one of them was…
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The Great Gatsby
The story is narrated in first-person by a man named Nick Carraway. He is in his late twenties and comes from a West coast middle class family (I always imagined him, for some reason, as a teenager from a working class coal mine family).
He wants to stay a year on the East coast, rents a run-down minimalistic house at the seaside north of New York City and takes low-paid job opportunities. His shelter is located between two large mansions, one of which a mysterious man named Mr. Gatsby lives in. He gradually gets to know this rich young man who claims to have inherited most of his fortune from his family. Gatsby happens to know the second cousin of Nick, a beautiful girl named Daisy, who is the only reason Gatsby lives in this area.
During the book we find ourselves caught in numerous love affairs which involve a lot of adultery.
Our protagonist is acting like a bystander and observer throughout the whole book, his role in the story is more the one of an ambassador and facilitator. I am not very fond of the story, for me it’s one of those oldschool hookup-dramas where everybody has something with everybody and inevitably something goes wrong.
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What makes this book unique is its writing style. Fitzgerald has an enormous vocabulary with splendid, innumerable ways of using it. His expressions and phrases to describe social situations are to a big part completely made up, but with such a wit that I was convinced and really entertained by it. The book is a pretty quick read and definitely never gets boring. F. Scottie’s balance of description, dialogue and action is solid like thousand Coca Cola cans munched into a dense aluminum cube by a shredder.
If you plan to supersize your vocabulary or want to find more eloquent ways to tell someone that he is a moron - then go and get that book!
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filed under Review, You can say You to Me |
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5 Responses to “The Great Gatsby”
on January 15th at 3am
Hi Tobi,
Das englische Wort für Ego-Perspective ist “first person narrative”…. Auch wenn Du das sicher nicht so schnell brauchen wirst, wenn Du das da oben nicht ersetzen willst.
Du setzt immer noch zu viele Kommas und manchmal wäre es einfacher in Deinem Text einen Punkt zu setzen und den Satz zu beenden - einen weiteren kurzen Satz zu schreiben - als ein Verbindungswort zu suchen.
Aber bei Deinem aktuellen englisch - wieso warst Du so schlecht in der Schule? Konntest Du nicht interpretieren oder war es echt so viele Welten von Deine aktuellen Kentnissen entfernt?
Grüße aus Dresden,
Stefan
on January 15th at 8am
Gracias, werds ausbessern!
Die zu vielen Kommas, jap … daran arbeite ich noch.
Hmm, weshalb ich so schlecht in der Schule war?
Ich denke, es lag damals an der total unzureichenden Praxis. Ist einfach todzach, dass man schreiben lernt, aber sein Vokabular nie wirklich mit reden ausreizen kann (reden-schreiben Gewichtung in unserem Unterricht war etwa 30-70 oder so)
on January 15th at 8am
noch was:
Die Temperaturanzeige oben ist wirklich in Grad? Dann erfieren Dir sicher die Finger am Rechner… Mein Beileid!
on January 15th at 8am
Jawill, in guten alten Celsius!
Das sind allerdings nur die echten Grade, die gefuehlte Temperatur (Wind, Luftdruck, Luftfeuchtigkeit) ist da noch nicht mal inklusive
on March 11th at 1pm
[…] I like this. The journey to New York will last about seven hours, so I give her a book to read: The Great Gatsby. In the meantime, I start reading a book as well. Lorena gave it to me for Christmas. It is […]
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