It feels so validating hearing this critique from you. I read the book few years back. I was bored, and the excesses of wealth and opulence and overall bad behaviour just turned me off completely. I could appreciate the penmanship, I remember stopping quite a few times to appreciate the writing- this guy could write, but oh so boring.

I like your comment about the characters feeling hollow, and that's part of why I love the book. I recently read it for the fourth time and that stood out, because it seems like the "loves" in this book are incredibly hollow and materialistic. When Gatsby says that Daisy's voice sounds like money, that's when you realize it's all about wealth and status. Everyone's life is totally consumed by wealth and status, and everything else is just a means to that end. The greed ends up being lethal in the end and the boring lives are cut short by the excess that got them there.

I've always seen the book as a study of longing. Gatsby wants the past to return - but it's gone, and it ain't coming back, no matter how hard he tries.

I think reading this book when younger is a tragic disservice to the novel. It should be read when you've lived a life and can look back on a time and place with certain people and would give anything to get that back; when you had everything still in front of you; of looking back on that in denial of what is irretrievable, that you can still recapture it, even to the point of believing that you love someone, whom you don't actually love, because of how they made you feel. It's a book about hopeless reflection and aching nostalgia

I like the way Fitzgerald casually describes the absurdity of wealth.

The best written piece in this book, for me, is what he says about Wilson: “ he was his wife’s man, but not his own.”

One of the key components of the novel, at least in my opinion, is the attempt by Nick Carroway in the narration to relieve himself of any kind of culpability. Once you notice the entire novel is an affectation, a perfectly sculpted front to hide the real, judgmental, selfish person underneath the good old boy innocent affect, the whole thing comes alive. And you only get to find it by putting every sentence under scrutiny.

When you get rid of all the commentary, significance, baggage, history, and money that's been made on account of The Great Gatsby, and just look at it for what it is, it's quite remarkable. I wonder if it is possible though to step back and look at it on its own terms?

I think an important aspect to the novel is that it’s fundamentally an American fairy-tale. The characters do not function so much as unique individuals but as symbolic of different facets of American culture. Carroway is the boring middle class man drawn to wealth, but distant from it culturally, Tom is symbolic of the arrogant and sneering old wealth, whereas Gatsby, the rugged individualist born in poverty, part debonair socialite, part outlaw is the American dream herself

I didn't like it on my first read when i was 19, but it stuck with me, i re-read it and now i read it every year at the very least once.

I liked the Owl-Eyes character the most. He’s just like ourselves looking at books, curious about this Gatsby-fella’s life and he is one of the few at Gatsby’s funeral feeling pity for this man who had a full life but didn’t find what he truly looked for.

I loved this novel. I too read late in life and it reignited a passion for literature I thought I had lost.

Recently subscribed and let me just say, this channel makes me excited to read more books. I love the fluid yet substantive way you review

the great gatsby is my favorite book of all time and I fall in love with it every time I read it... I own many earlier copies of the manuscript and read many literary discussions around it, including "So We Read On" by Maureen Corrigan.

Love your videos, always informative, always entertaining. I get so many suggestions for my TBR list from you. Keep up the great work.

so glad to find reviews which are note just narrating the story line. Nice done !

The Great Gatsby is up there as one of my favourite books and a book I always mean to re-read every year. I have to admit that my reason for loving it so much is dependent on when I read it. I was a teenager when I first read Gatsby and I was immediately touched by one of the harsh truths revealed by Nick - that the life we desire and the people we desire to be around are not always as appealing as they appear from a distance. Gatsbys lust for Daisy and desire to live a certain life and be a certain kind of man even in the face of the obvious degeneracy and rot of the people he wanted to be was so interesting and it made me rethink my own goals in life.

I feel like the characters are meant to be caricatures of the tropes or qualities we often glorify in our perception of the American Dream. The immediate dislike upon the first read is something I associate with feelings of the uncanny or the way we attempt to disprove Freudian thinking: Neutral disagreement is one thing, but to vehemently or passionately oppose an idea only serves to reinforce it through the idea of repression (i.e., that we recognize something almost human, almost US, in this thing that we cannot help but to turn that discomfort into contempt or even disgust).

I'm angry at myself that I only found this channel this month. Thank you for the best reviews out there man! Love from the Philippines.

“In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.