You know that BYUTV show, "The Song That Changed My Life"? Fitzgerald is The Author Who Changed My Life. And Gatsby is The Book that Changed My Life. (Link to Goodreads review.)
I, too, reread it a decade out of high school. And it was like a splash of ice-cold water in the face, but in an awesome way.
I'm obsessed with Jazz Age literature in general (I spent the last of a paycheck on a copy of The Last Tycoon), and I read his complete oeuvre: This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and the Damned, Tender is the Night.
This Side of Paradise is the best bildungsroman evah. I felt I could really relate (He was a not-rich kid at a rich prep school! He dropped out of college! He had grandiose notions of himself as a writer!) It's so inspiring how much success he had writing in his mom's attic living on Coca Cola and cigarettes (I only share one of those vices).
TB&tD has the most realistic portrayal of depression I've ever read. When she talks about the black wave of despair (starting at "Gloria winced at this uncalled-for use of her first name," you can get it at Project Gutenberg), I, for the first time, felt truly IMMERSED in a character. That Gloria is real, and this incredibly unsympathetic person gets down in your bones somewhere.
Fitzgerald is a master of simile:
"heavy and lifeless as her soul,"
"forcing herself through the silence ahead as though it were a tangible barrier before her."
"gay as the dawn in her elation"
Are there any similes that struck you in your fiction reading this week?
And NO I'm not excited for the movie AT ALL. ;)
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