Great Gatsby Read-Along: Chapter II

Gatsby may be "the man who gives his name to this book" (p. 2), but he's nowhere to be found in this chapter.  Oh, he does get name-checked, but we spend this chapter learning about the very broken people living near Gatsby, and near Nick.  And we learn some interesting stuff about Nick too.

So what is up with this Tom Buchanan guy, huh?  He's met Nick a couple of times over the years, and today he invites Nick to go hang out with him and his mistress, Myrtle, in their little love nest in the city.  Just like he brings Myrtle to restaurants to force his friends and acquaintances to acknowledge that he has a mistress, he has to flaunt her in front of Nick too.  I get the feeling that Tom is somehow trying to show everyone how powerful he is -- he has the power and right to have a mistress, and no one can stop him.  Which makes me suspect he's trying to convince himself of his power, more than anyone else.

And what's up with Nick, come to think of it?  He's Daisy's cousin, for Pete's sake, but he gets invited to hang out with her husband's twinkie-in-the-city?  I mean, he gives us readers the distinct impression that he finds this whole Tom-has-a-mistress thing distasteful, even icky, but he totally goes along with Tom and Myrtle to their place.  He says he wants to leave, but when he gets sent out to buy cigarettes, thus being given the perfect exit -- he could just take the train home -- he comes back.  And he doesn't just come back, he hangs out in the living room alone while Tom and Myrtle get it on elsewhere in the apartment.  Later, he insists, "I wanted to get out" (p. 37), but every time he tries to leave, people get in an argument and he ends up staying, so I'm not all that convinced that he actually wants to leave.

I see Nick as an observer.  He's happier watching life than participating in it, I think.  He finds Tom and Myrtle yucky, but he wants to watch them.  He'd rather watch people having an affair than have one himself -- remember in the last chapter, he said he'd recently abandoned a relationship with a woman people thought he was going to marry.  It's like he finds life and relationships messy and weird, and doesn't want to touch them, but he also finds them fascinating and wants to look at them.

And I think Nick also hates being alone.  He's almost always hanging out with someone else in this book.  He was supposed to be sharing his rented house with someone, but that person decided at the last minute not to live there, so now he's lonely.  So he gravitates toward people.  He's got nobody else to be with that day, so he stays with Tom and Myrtle and their increasingly drunken bunch of pals rather than go home alone.

As for Myrtle, I feel very sorry for her.  She doesn't respect her husband, she clearly only likes Tom because he gives her a good time and has lots of money, and nobody takes her seriously.  And then to top it off, her "sweetie" (as Myrtle's sister Catherine calls him) is an abusive drunk who breaks her nose.  Why?  Because she wouldn't do as he said and stop saying his wife's name.  Tom wants to control everyone and everything -- remember how he moved Nick around like a checker on a checkerboard in chapter one?  At the beginning of this chapter, Nick says, "his determination to have my company bordered on violence" (p. 25).  If people don't willingly do as Tom says, he will make them do it.  Swell guy Daisy married.

So anyway, one theme in this book that intrigues me is the idea that appearances are deceiving.  Nick appears to want to leave, but really he wants to stay.  Myrtle married Mr. Wilson because she "thought he was a gentleman" (p. 37), but when it turned out that he married her wearing a rented tuxedo, she realizes he wasn't what she thought.  His appearance deceived her.  Myrtle appears to want to own a dog, but really she just wants to show off to Nick that she can get Tom to buy her anything she wants.  We'll see this theme crop up again.

Have you been paying attention to the colors used in this book?  Blue and yellow get mentioned a lot, often together.  So do red and white --  Tom and Daisy live in a red-and-white house, and here Myrtle's sister has red hair and a white complexion.  And we get two instances of blue and yellow being paired up.  First is that freaky billboard with the giant eyes.  Giant blue eyes behind giant yellow spectacles, peering out at the world in silent omniscience.  Second is Mr. Wilson, Myrtle's husband, who has blond hair and light blue eyes.  Not entirely sure why these colors get paired up a lot, unless it's pointing to a certain blue car and a certain yellow car that will be important later on?  Any ideas?

Favorite Lines:

At 158th Street the cab stopped at one slice in a long white cake of apartment-houses (p. 30).

I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life" (p. 38).

Possible Discussion Questions:

Myrtle tells Nick that her sister Catherine is "said to be beautiful by people who ought to know" (p. 30).  Similarly, Jay Gatsby is said to be "great" by Nick Carraway, a person we assume ought to know.  We spend this whole book being told about people by Nick, rather than seeing them for ourselves.  Why do you think Fitzgerald chose to filter his characters through a narrator this way?  How would the story be different if it were told in third person?

From the 1949 film version starring Alan Ladd as Jay Gatsby

Great Gatsby Read-Along: Chapter I

(The original cover image)

Yes!  Here we are at last, ready to embark on our voyage of learning about dreams, disillusionment, love, and loss.

Sounds cheerful, doesn't it?

So while I'm reading this, I'm also reading So We Read On:  How The Great Gatsby Came to be and Why it Endures by Maureen Corrigan, and I'm going to dip into Careless People:  Murder, Mayhem, and the Invention of The Great Gatsby by Sarah Churchwell too.  I had hoped to have at least one of those finished before I started this read-along, but other reading commitments got in the way, so whatever, let's just start this!

No wait, first I need to let any newcomers know how this works.  I'll post about each individual chapter, about one every three days.  You can read my thoughts before or after you read the chapter, it doesn't matter.  I don't mark most smaller spoilers, though sometimes I'll mark major ones.  Comments are a free-for-all, and spoilers don't need to be marked there.  I will include discussion questions for you, and you are free to comment on them if you want to, or not.  You can comment about anything I wrote about in the post, your own thoughts on the chapter, lines you loved, stuff you've learned about this book, etc.  I encourage you to read and respond to each others' comments too!  We get some really cool discussions going that way.

Okay, NOW I'm going to dig into the book.

I had entirely forgotten that Nick Carraway, our narrator, is also from a wealthy family.  I remembered that he's a Midwesterner, though.  Perhaps that's what sets him apart from the other born-to-riches characters, rather than his monetary background?  Somehow, despite his time overseas during WWI and his restlessness after the war ended, he's also got this innate decency and honor and moral uprightness that most of the other characters lack.  I'm really very fond of Nick.  Can you tell?  (Yes, I'm also a Midwesterner born and bred, though like Nick, I don't live there all the time.)

Then there's Daisy, who comes from Southern money, like Fitzgerald's wife Zelda.  Daisy and Jordan spent their "white girlhood" in Louisville, KY (p. 19).  She's Nick's second cousin, and they barely know each other, but Nick gets invited into her life just the same.  I think because Daisy is bored, don't you?  Daisy and Tom and Jordan are all bored.  That's why Tom runs around on Daisy, why Jordan enters all these golfing competitions.  Why Daisy later jumps at the chance to get involved with Gatsby.  They're filthy rich, especially the Buchanans, and they have nothing at all they have to do, so they're bored.  Nick's not bored, because he's learning about stocks and bonds.  He comes from money, but not old money like Tom -- his grandfather's brother started the hardware business that Nick's father still manages today.  They're rich, but because they've worked for it, not because they were born into the lap of luxury, so to speak.

People call The Great Gatsby "The Great American Novel."  It's certainly great, particularly the way Fitzgerald puts sentences together.  I don't know about you, but I have underlined something in almost every single paragraph.  I've got notes in the margins and stars and hearts and circles.  I can't read this book quickly.  I have to savor the language as well as read for the plot and characters.

But it's also very American, isn't it?  This book delves deeply into the whole idea of "the American dream."  That someone can rise from poverty to wealth by dint of their own hard work.  That one person is equal to another person.  That it's each person's actions that determine their destiny.  We'll see all those ideas pulled apart, twisted, examined, and ultimately either rejected or accepted by the end of these nine short chapters.

Oh my goodness, I have So Many Things To Say about this chapter, and I can't even seem to get around to saying them!   Okay, I will try to get some of them down.  First posts for read-alongs are always kind of long, for me.

Isn't it interesting that Gatsby only barely makes it into the first chapter?  He gets mentioned at the beginning, name-checked in the middle, and then he appears wordlessly and almost unknown at the very end.  I love the way Nick describes him at the beginning, though:  "Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn" is also the possesser of "some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life," "an extraordinary gift for hope" (p. 2).  Gatsby should come off as a poser, as a wannabe, and instead, he's the most hopeful, romantic, responsive person Nick has ever met.  Such a paradox.  We're fascinated by him before we even see him in the full light of day.

One of the most famous lines in this book is what Daisy says she said about her daughter when she was first born:  "I hope she'll be a fool -- that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool" (p. 17).  Nick lets us know that she's somehow teasing or testing him with her whole "I'm so tired of the world" schtick, and yet, I think there's a lot of truth behind this declaration of hers.  I think Daisy wishes she were still "foolish," still young and innocent and trusting, with hopes and dreams that reality hadn't punctured yet.  She's married to an abusive philanderer.  She's got a daughter she barely sees.  She's bored.  How she must look back at the past, at herself in her beautiful girlhood, and wish she was still that happy and carefree and trusting.  Foolish, but happy.

And at the end of the chapter, we get that indelible image of Jay Gatsby standing alone at the back of his mansion.  There he is, "stretch[ing] out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way" (p. 20), reaching for that "single green light" across the water.  Or is he reaching for the water itself?  In So We Read On, Maureen Corrigan writes, "Almost every page of the novel references water.... Fitzgerald didn't just stick his toes in the water here; in this, his most perfect meditation on the American dream and its deadly undertow, he dives in and goes for broke" (p. 36).  Be on the look-out for all the places that water is mentioned and is important!  (Mild SPOILER here)  Gatsby's supposed to be reaching ineffectually for that green light, but the book specifically says he's stretching his arms "toward the dark water."  If you know how this book ends, this really seems like a bit of foreshadowing, doesn't it? 

Favorite Lines:

Instead of the warm center of the world, the Middle West now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe (p. 3).

I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer (p. 4).

A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it as a wind does on the sea (p. 8).

It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down, as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again (p. 9).

Tom Buchanan compelled me from the room as though he were moving a checker to another square (p. 11).

Possible Discussion Questions:  

Nick Carraway says, on page 2 of my edition, that "Gatsby turned out all right at the end."  Why do you think he begins his story by telling us how the protagonist is going to end up?

Come to think of it, do you think Gatsby or Nick is the protagonist of this book?

"Five Poisoned Apples" Cover Reveal and Contest Info

Today's the day you've been waiting for!  The day that Rooglewood Press announces their final fairy tale retelling contest!  And I get to be part of the reveal, so here it is:

I think this is the prettiest cover yet.  If you're curious, the photo is by Wynter Clark, and the design is by Julia Popova, who also designed the previous covers in the series.

If you're interested in entering the contest, the official page is right here.

You all know I won the last contest with my story "The Man Buckskin Horse," which is now available in the Five Magic Spindles collection.  I'm excited to also announce that I'm going to be involved in the publication of Five Poisoned Apples too -- but this time as a judge!  That's going to be such fun.  I'm looking forward to it so much, I'm posting about this on both of my blogs!

"Hood" by Stephen R. Lawhead

So, I'm in a little bit of an awkward position here.  A friend loaned me this book, and the two others in the series, about 4 months ago.  She said, "I just know you'll love these!  Here, you can borrow them."  And I was excited, because two years ago when I was doing My Year with Robin Hood, lots of people recommended these books to me.  So as soon as I'd finished my mountain of books from the library, I started in.

But... I didn't love Hood.  I liked parts of it, but not all of it.  

If a book doesn't grab me right off the bat, I usually give it 10 chapters or 100 pages, whichever comes first.  If it hasn't hooked me by then, I feel justified in quitting it.  Because this was loaned to me by a friend and I wanted to give it a very fair shake indeed, I decided to give it 150 pages.  And right around page 130, I started to get interested.  At least, interested enough to be willing to finish the book.

However, having finished this volume, I'm not at all sure that I care enough about these characters to spend another thousand pages or so with them.  I don't even like most of them much, aside from Tuck and Iwan.  

But that's not the main problem.  I mean taking 130 pages to get interesting, and only having two characters I like -- those are huge problems.  However, the main problem for me was the fact that, as I mentioned on my other blog a few days ago, I have come to realize that I need Robin Hood to be merry.  You can be dark and gritty, and I'm fine with that.  But Robin Hood himself, or whatever you're calling him (Rhi Bran Hud, for instance) -- he needs to be a cheerful, plucky fellow.  Don't get me wrong, I still love Byronic heroes.  Always will, I'm sure.  But I don't want Robin Hood to be Byronic.  Not at all.

So yeah... I didn't have a problem with this being set in Wales (I like Wales!  Ioan Gruffudd and Luke Evans and Richard Burton are Welsh.)  I didn't have a problem with it being set a long time earlier than most Robin Hood legends.  I didn't have a problem with all the not-quite-usual names.  I just Did Not Like the Robin Character.  And I kept getting bored.

I'm kinda bummed that I didn't like this book, because I really was expecting to dig this series.  Sigh.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG-13 for a smattering of bad language, quite a bit of violence, some creepy moments, and a very mild bit of innuendo.

This is my last contribution to Robin Hood Week hosted by Meanwhile, in Rivendell...  

And this is my fifth book read and reviewed for the Adventure of Reading Challenge.  Yippee!

Robin Hood Week Tag

As part of the Robin Hood Week festivities, Olivia has kindly provided us with a tag.  I love tags, did you know that?  Yeah, if you've been reading my blogs for more than about two minutes, you probably did.  Anyway, here goes!

What was your first exposure to Robin Hood?  It was the little read-along book and vinyl record put out by Disney, retelling the 1973 animated film.  I got that when I was 2 or 3, and I listened to it over and over during my childhood.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how big a fan are you?  Can I say 11?  No, because I haven't seen/read every single version of Robin Hood ever.  Guess I'm just a 10.  Robin Hood is a very important character to me, and has been so for as long as I can remember.  I'm continually inspired by his dedication to helping others at expense of his own safety.

How many versions and spin-offs of the legend have you experienced?  Hmm.  I've watched The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men (1952), Robin and the Seven Hoods (1964), Robin Hood (1973),  Robin Hood:  Prince of Thieves (1991), Robin Hood:  Men in Tights (1993), Princess of Thieves (2001), and Robin Hood (2010), so that's 8 movie versions.  I've also watched two different versions of Ivanhoe (1952 and 1982), and Robin Hood is a pretty important part of that story, so let's add those as well.  And I've watched scattered episodes of the BBC series, as well as part of the 1950s TV series starring Richard Greene.  And an ep of The Time Tunnel called "The Revenge of Robin Hood."  So I think that means I've watched thirteen versions.

As for books, I've read Henry Gilbert's Robin Hood and Howard Pyle's The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood.  Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott.  Plus a few other young adult or junior fiction adaptations now and then too.  I'm working on Hood by Stephen Lawhead right now, and but I don't think I'm going to finish it in time to review it for this week's festivities.

So... lots.  That's my answer:  lots.

What is your favorite version of Robin Hood (can be book, movie, TV series, anything)?  Goodness me, how can I choose?  I think it's a toss-up between the animated 1973 movie and the Howard Pyle book.  So difficult to decide!  Let's just say those are my favorite movie and book versions, and leave it at that.

Are you one of the lads? (Meaning, have you watched/are you a fan of the BBC show?)  I've seen half a dozen episodes and would really like to see the rest.

Who is your favorite Merry Man?  You mean besides dear Robin himself?  Generally Little John or Will Scarlet.  Depends on the movie or book!

Do you have a favorite portrayal of Lady Marian?  Probably Olivia de Havilland in the 1938 Adventures of Robin Hood.  She is equal parts strength and grace and fervor and sweetness.  Everything I love in a female character!

Do you have any interest in or aptitude at archery?  Interest?  Yes!  Aptitude... I haven't shot a bow for years, so I don't know.  I'd like to take it up at some point, and with more than a toy bow and arrow set.

Fact or fiction -- which do you think?  I think there has to be some basis in fact, but that the real people who inspired it were probably not nearly as wonderful as the character we now know.

Do you think Robin Hood has been "done to death," or are there still new twists that can be found?  I think a character who has been explored in so many varied ways is definitely rich enough to be interpreted in more ways.  Robin Hood still has plenty to give us.  There's a version coming out next year with Ben Mendelsohn as the Sheriff of Nottingham that could be cool!

Don't forget to enter my Robin Hood giveaway over here, and to visit Meanwhile, in Rivendell... for the fun Olivia has planned, as well as links to other people's participatory posts.

"I, Robot" by Isaac Asimov

I'm quite sure I've read this before, back in my twenties, but the only story I remembered at all was "Robbie."  That makes sense, though, as it has a Cinderella thing going on, and I love Cinderella.

I, Robot is a collection of 9 short stories concerning robots, written by Isaac Asimov and originally published as short stories from 1940 to 1950, according to Wikipedia.  They're strung together with a loose framing device of a narrator interviewing Dr. Susan Calvin about the early days of robotics.  I got this from the library because I was having my niece read "Robbie" for her ninth grade lit course and I needed to reread it myself so we could discuss it.  And I decided to just reread the whole thing because I really couldn't remember it.

My favorite story is still "Robbie," about a robotic nanny devoted to its childish charge, so much so that the girl's mother becomes jealous and demands the robot be removed from the household.  

I also really liked "Liar," in which a robot who can read minds obeys the First Law of Robotics (no robot can cause harm to a human, or allow harm to come to them by inaction) in a creative and disastrous way.

In fact, I noticed that my enjoyment of the stories in this collection was directly related to the amount of human emotion involved.  The more the story involved humans emotionally engaged with each other or robots in some way, the more it interested me.  And the stories that were more science-oriented, I just read through without much real enthusiasm.  They were interesting, but they didn't grab me.  I'm pretty intrigued by this insight into my reading, as I hadn't realized before that the emotional engagement of characters mattered that much to me -- I'm going to have to ponder this!

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG for some mild bad language and suspenseful situations.

This is my fourth book read and reviewed for Adventure of Reading Challenge, and my ninth for my second go-round with the Classics Club.

Top Ten Tuesday: More, Please

Today's topic from The Broke and the Bookish involves things we want to see more of in books.  It's been a while since I tackled one of these lists, but this is such a fun and different topic, I had to find time to do it.

Here are my top ten things I want more of in books!  I thought it would be hard to come up with ten, but once I started thinking this through, I actually had trouble narrowing it down to ten options.  Hee!

1.  Cowboys.  But, real cowboys, not just dudes dressed up in jeans and boots that say, "Howdy, Pardner" a lot.  Basically, I want more historical fiction set in the wild west.  I realize there is plenty out there, but we can always use more.

(Maybe I would say "generally" instead of "always.")

2.  Non-graphic mysteries.  I love mysteries.  Favorite genre, right there.  But... do so many modern mysteries have to be stomach-churning with the descriptions of gore and brutality and weirdness and general ick factor?  One of the things I've been loving about the books I'm reading for the INSPY awards is that they're really great mysteries, but so far, none of them have crossed into the Ishy Zone.

3.  Strong female characters who aren't bossy and/or brassy.  I'm a woman.  I have two daughters.  I realize the importance of having strong female characters, ones who don't sit around waiting for a man to rescue them or capture them or notice them, and so on.  However, too often writers (and moviemakers) use character traits like bossiness or brazenness to convey "strong."  No, that's annoying.  If it would be annoying in a guy, it's also annoying in a girl.

(Strong, opinionated, gutsy, but not bossy or over-bold.)

4.  Romances based on characters getting to know each other, not insta-love feelings.  I'm not saying love at first sight can't happen.  Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut I think that lust at first sight is way more common, and people mistake that physical attraction for love.  Anything that springs up quickly can die away quickly too without something more substantial than feelings to build on.  You see someone and they're attractive and you kind of crush on them a little and you flirt and you think about them a lot -- that's great.  That's fun.  But don't call it love.

5.  Hard-boiled detectives.  Just because I love them.  I can always find room in my heart for another.

Alan Ladd in The Blue Dahlia (1946)

6.  Characters who love to read.  Katherine Reay does this really well -- writing characters who read books, and using their book choices to help define them.  I want more of this.

7.  Fairy tale retellings.  Not getting tired of these yet.

(Source)

8.  Intelligent children who obey their parents.  I'm really tired of stories about kids who are so smart, they just have to disobey all their superiors in order to save the day or whatever.

9.  Intelligent parents.  While we're at it, let's do away with the "stupid parents who are incapable of simple reasoning and should not be allowed to drive or hold jobs" thing that shows up in kids books.  Especially kids mysteries.  Making the parents dumber does not make the kids look smarter.  It makes the author look lazy.

10.  Nice stories about nice people doing nice things.  And something goes a bit wrong now and then, but everything turns out well in the end.  Does anyone write books like this anymore?  They should.  I will read them.

(I will also love those books, and hug them, and be their new best friend.)

That's all I've got for today, bookish friends!  Are any of these things you'd like to see more of?  Did you do a TTT this week?  Please share and discuss!