The Great Gatsby

I read “The Great Gatsby” last night.  I think that it was one of the books that I was supposed to read in high school but I was too busy talking and screwing around that I probably skimmed through Cliff’s Notes and decided to wing it, which is too bad because it’s a really great book.   Youth is wasted on the young, right?  It wasn’t on any of my lists in college, but we talked about it occasionally because it’s a good example of a first-person narrative done well.  You should read it if you haven’t, it’s a classic and chances are you were supposed to! 

I love books told in first person because first of all, it’s not the easiest position to take and I respect writers who do it well.  Some writers become the character so seamlessly that you can’t help but develop a relationship with the narrator— to you it’s a real person just telling his story.  Secondly, you can analyze the narrator and question whether the story is true or not.  For example, Nick in “The Great Gatsby” claims himself to be honest from the very beginning—I’m always suspicious of self-proclamations.  I love Holden Caulfield in “”The Catcher in the Rye” for being so honest and confused, and smart and innocent—I loved Holden and wanted to take care of him, but that would be impossible because he doesn’t allow anyone to do that, and he doesn't exist!  Salinger told me otherwise.  I told my teenage cousin, who is reading the book right now, that I had a crush on Holden.  She does too.  My favorite disgustingly, horribly, twisted yet beautiful narrative is Humbert Humbert in “Lolita”.  This is an example of how a narrator can be telling HIS truth the way that he sees it.  There are clues that he wasn’t in reality most of the time.  There were hints throughout that book that Lolita did not feel the same way for the pedophile, but he didn’t know that he was saying anything to make you think that; he thought that he was persuading you.  Now that is a hard book to read because it’s just sick reading through the eyes of a pedophile.  It is written so well though; Nobokov is amazing.  That's really why I read it.  "Rebecca" was told in first-person too, actually.  If you remember, I talked about "Rebecca" last week.  That was such an amazing book and I really hope that someone out there decides to read it.  "Rebecca" and "Fingersmith" by Sarah Waters.....so good. 

I put “The Great Gatsby” with Robert Redford in my Netflix queue.  I can’t wait to watch it; I love Robert Redford.  Actually, Robert Redford quotes a line in "The Great Gatsby" in one of my favorite movies, "Up Close and Personal" which is sort of funny.   I got excited when it jumped off of the page last night.  It’s this: “Her voice was full of money.  That was it.  I’d never understood it before.  It was full of money—that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals’ song of it.”

“Rebecca” just happened to be on my list of 1001 books to read before I die, and “The Great Gatsby” was too.  Only like 8 kajillion left!  I am reading “Lord of the Flies” next, then “Jane Eyre” for the second time.  I’m waiting on my mom to send me “Freedom” by Franzen.  She’s a slowpoke and I keep bugging her about it.  My mom and Greg are leaving their library for me when they die one day, so when she sends me a book she just lets me keep it because it’ll be mine eventually and it's saving a step.  I know that it sounds dark and demented when I say that, but it’s sort of a joke between us because I am the only one of the three kids who enjoys reading.  You should see how many books they have.  It’s insane.  We started a book club one time, but it didn't work out because our schedules were all too crazy.  Greg and I did read "Lolita" together though.  I told him that I needed to read that book with someone because I knew that it would upset me.  We didn't allow my mom to read it; she wouldn't have been able to take it.

Have a great day!  I don't know why the font size is so small!  I can't seem to fix it.  Ah well.  Here's your word for the day:

bushwhack \BOOSH-hwak\, verb:

1. To defeat, especially by surprise or in an underhanded way.
2. To make one's way through woods by cutting at undergrowth, branches, etc.
3. To travel through woods.
4. To pull a boat upstream from on board by grasping bushes, rocks, etc., on the shore.
5. To fight as a bushwhacker or guerrilla in the bush.