Gatsby critics Flashcards
America is “worshipping advertising”
Sarah Churchwell
“the prohibition” drives the plot of TGG
Sarah Churchwell
“the queer charm, colour, wonder and drama of a young and reckless world”
William Rose Bennett (contemporary) describing book in general
“Fitzgerald gave us a mediation on some of this country’s most central ideas… the quest for new life, the preoccupation with class, the hunger for riches”
Jonathon Yardley
“Nick wants to portray Gatsby as great and to ignore or to edit anything which might undermine that image”
Claire Stocks
“Gatsby lives in the world of romantic energies and colours”
Thomas Flanagan
“Nick is considered to be quite reliable, basically honest and ultimately changed by his contact with Gatsby”
David O’Rourke
“In one sense Gatsby is the apotheosis of his rootless society… he really believes in himself and his illusions”
AE Dyson
apotheosis = cultivation, climax
“Fitzgerald disposes in these people a means of spirit, carelessness and an absence of loyalties. He cannot hate them, for they are dumb in their insensate selfishness”
Edwin Clarke (contemporary)
“Tom’s restlessness is an arrogant assertiveness seeking to evade in bluster the deep uneasiness of self-knowledge”
AE Dyson
“So much of the meaning of Gatsby come out of its imagery, its texture and the complexity of its motives”
Harold Bloom
“Gatsby is somewhat vague. The readers’ eyes can never quite focus on him, his outlines are dim”
Thomas Flanagan
“A mystical, glamourous story of today”
Edwin Clarke (contemporary)
the novel in general
“An emptiness we see curdling into the viciousness of a monstrous moral indifference as the story unfolds”
Marius Bewley
Daisy
Daisy is “vulgar and inhumane”
Alfred Kazin
“By attempting to maintain his way of life, Tom has reduced whole people to ashes without any thought of consequences”
Christine Ramos
“Everyone wants to be simpler than they really are”
“Everyone is a fantasist, and therefore an actor - a beautiful little fool”
Rothman (New Yorker)
called Fitzgerald a “clown” that “runs to death in 9 chapters”
H L Meneken (contemporary)
“only Gatsby himself lives and breathes… all others are lifeless”
H L Meneken (contemporary)
Gatsby is “morally complacent”
H L Meneken (contemporary)
“The first step that American fiction has taken since Henry James”
T S Eliot
“Fitzgerald adumbrated the coming tragedy of a nation grown decadent without achieving maturity”
Robert Orstein
“Women characters are decorative characters of seemingly fragile beauty”
Kathleen Parkinson
“There is no ebullience here, nor is there any mellowness or profoundity”
Ralph Coghlan
ebullience = cheerfulness, exuberance
