Customer Reviews
Not good Driving material. - By: T. Patmore, 21 Nov 2008 
It's hard to know sometimes whether something is rubbish, or you just don't get it. For the sake of tact, I will go with the latter & believe that this book is like marmite, as the cliche goes (you either love it or hate it).
Listening to it, I could find no flowing narrative or storyline to be latched onto. I also couldn't find any little gambits or sub-plots to go with - it just seemed like swimmingin treacle.
Again, it could just be me, but I did ask other people their opinion of the novel & they said either that they hated it, or that it was an acquired taste. Either way, I think it is the type of novel that needs reading or 100% concentration to be appreciated fully. Even then, a few listens are probablyin order.
One thing I can acclaim, though, is the narrator: William Hope. Despite the difficult plot, Mr Hope has an amazing, compelling voice, that makes you think yourself wrong for not understanding him.
However, if you are like me & listen to a lot of audio books, then try his joint narration of 'Time Traveler's Wife' (with Laurel Lefkow), it is very enjoyable!
The social life of the rich in the Jazz Age - By: Dennis Littrell, 04 Nov 2006 
Gatsby was a bootlegger & a penny stock hustler. He was "great" onlyin a delusive sense. Thus the title of Fitzgerald's celebrated novel is ironic, & that is something to keepin mind when reading it.
But Gatsby is seen as a step above the tony East Egg society that livedin their plush estates across the Long Island sound from his nouveau riche mansion--at least that is the revelation that narrator Nick Carraway eventually comes to as we learn from his famous line, "They're a rotten crowd. You're worth the whole dam bunch put together."
It is ironic & proper that Daisy Buchanan, the wispy, languid & privileged beauty escapes blame for the tragedy near the end of the novel. It is her class that had always escaped blame, that had always lived onin its narrow-minded, greedy luxury. We can see their class--the Buchanans & their crowd--as Eloi-like children of the robber barons. Although Gatsby was dishonest & a criminal at least he had some gumption. Andin the end we see he had some sense of integrity & courage as well.
He is "great" then as compared to the listless, privileged people who had inherited much of the vast wealth that this young nation had accumulated during the westward expansion following the Civil War. Gatsby's failing & the failurein general of the rich was that they knew not what to do with their leisure & privilege. Gatsby threw lavish parties & affected an air of mystery while the Buchanans indulgedin racist & class war philosophies while they pursued adulterous affairs & the mind-numbing qualities of drunkenness.
When I first read this as a young man I thought it was a rather mediocre novel. The infidelities that so drove the story were commonplace to me at a time past mid-century, & I really missed the deep irony that Fitzgerald intended. The Great Gatsby was not "great," that much was obvious; but that he was great relative to the Buchanan crowd was what I missed. He serves not only as the "up from poverty" character so often seenin Jazz Age & depression novels, but he is a more deeply realized character. Not a brutal man like most bootleg operatives, instead he is almost a dilettante bootlegger, yet a hugely successful one, so much so that hardly any of the details of his business now occupy him; indeed one of the reasons that I mistook his character upon a first reading is that the actual reality of the lifestyle of those who fed the speakeasies is notin the novel. Fitzgerald was more interestedin the social life of the degenerates & how they looked upon social climbers like Jay Gatsby.
Nick the modest narrator is in-between. An educated man of the upper middle class, a graduate of Yale, he represents the objectifying devicein the novel. We see everything through his eyes & through his sensibilities. Initiallyin ambivalent admiration of both his cousin Daisy & Gatsby, Nick eventually becomes disillusioned with their differing but shallow lifestyles & their shallow values while he comes to realize that while Gatsby is a cut above, he is still a man with a tragically limited vision.
In short, The Great Gatsby is an indictment of the Jazz Age & its easy money mentality with attendant moral corruption. Perhaps this is why it did not sell well when it was publishedin 1925--the jazz agers were not interestedin self-portraits--but now has become a stable of American literature, & certainly Fitzgerald's most read & most celebrated novel.
Fitzgerald the man may have borne witness to the excesses of the Roaring Twenties but he did not learn its lessons. He died youngin Hollywoodin 1940 of a heart attack, an alcoholic trying to write pot boilers for magazines & scripts for B movies. The tragedy of Jay Gatsbyin some strange way may have foreshadowed the tragedy of F. Scott Fitzgerald.
WOO HOO - By: , 13 May 2003 This book is great!!! It is a must read. It is full of suspense & makes you want to keep reading. And plus the ending is very shocking.
