Technical Details
- ISBN13: 9780743273565
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
Product Description
Noted Fitzgerald biographer Matthew J. Bruccoli draws upon years of research to present the Fitzgerald's Jazz Age romance exactly as he intended according to the original manuscript, revisions, and corrections--with explanatory notes. Reprint.Amazon.com Review
In 1922, F. Scott Fitzgerald announced his decision to write "something new--something extraordinary and beautiful and simple + intricately patterned." That extraordinary, beautiful, intricately patterned, and above all, simple novel became The Great Gatsby, arguably Fitzgerald's finest work and certainly the book for which he is best known. A portrait of the Jazz Age in all of its decadence and excess, Gatsby captured the spirit of the author's generation and earned itself a permanent place in American mythology. Self-made, self-invented millionaire Jay Gatsby embodies some of Fitzgerald's--and his country's--most abiding obsessions: money, ambition, greed, and the promise of new beginnings. "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic 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--" Gatsby's rise to glory and eventual fall from grace becomes a kind of cautionary tale about the American Dream. It's also a love story, of sorts, the narrative of Gatsby's quixotic passion for Daisy Buchanan. The pair meet five years before the novel begins, when Daisy is a legendary young Louisville beauty and Gatsby an impoverished officer. They fall in love, but while Gatsby serves overseas, Daisy marries the brutal, bullying, but extremely rich Tom Buchanan. After the war, Gatsby devotes himself blindly to the pursuit of wealth by whatever means--and to the pursuit of Daisy, which amounts to the same thing. "Her voice is full of money," Gatsby says admiringly, in one of the novel's more famous descriptions. His millions made, Gatsby buys a mansion across Long Island Sound from Daisy's patrician East Egg address, throws lavish parties, and waits for her to appear. When she does, events unfold with all the tragic inevitability of a Greek drama, with detached, cynical neighbor Nick Carraway acting as chorus throughout. Spare, elegantly plotted, and written in crystalline prose, The Great Gatsby is as perfectly satisfying as the best kind of poem.Similar Products
Customer Reviews
2010-10-06
By Lori Holland
I have over 200 books but I somehow managed to skip buying The Great Gatsby. I'm an idiot! What a terrific book! I breezed through it so quickly that I'm sure I skipped something important. I'm planning to re-read it as soon as I get some free time. Thank God for Amazon and it's incredible books at reasonable prices. Amazon makes reading the classics easy, accessible and affordable. What more could I ask for?
2010-10-03
By Amy Campione
This is perhaps the most boring book I've ever been forced to read. Each of the characters is dull and predictable; you can guess in the beginning what the end will be. Save your time and money and buy a book that will actually keep you awake.
2010-10-02
By Douglas Russell Black
This book is a beautiful masterpiece. Fitzgerald gleefully dances the line between prose and poetry in an intriguing and delightful manner. He creates a collage of the human condition: love, romance, hatred, kindness, evil, deceit, loneliness, emptiness. The book also has great humor, unforgettable characters and an interesting plot. It's real miracle though is Fitzgerald's unassailable command of the English language. If you buy it in kindle form don't buy the cheaper version. It's words are broken up and all over the page. It will drive you crazy trying to read it.
2010-09-30
By Howie (North by Northwest)
This is one of my favorite books. It is a short book, less than 200 pages, and the writing is fluid, so you can easily finish it in a couple of hours. On the surface it is about rich people's folly -- Gatsby's failed attempt to resurrect the past with money. But it is more than that; it cuts deep into the pitfalls of the Jazz Age: that easily gotten money is easily parted with, that money can buy everything. It is interesting to know that Fitzgerald wrote this book in the middle and at the height of the roaring 20s, portentous of the house of cards that was about to crumble in the next decade. The writing in this book has a liquid, even luminous quality to it, and it is quite remarkable that after more than 80 years it still has a degree of modernity and it does not feel antiquated at all.
2010-09-22
By N. Meloon
The Great Gatsby is one of the greatest books of all time. It is a classic not just of American literature, but of world literature. It has meanings on so many levels. If there was only one fiction book that I was able to read for the rest of my life, this would be it, because every time you read it, it has a different meaning.
This book also brings up many different questions that the reader must answer for himself and the book also never satisfies the reader, which causes you to read it again and again.
