Just read Chapter 17 of
Randidangazhi to my dad and have started reading/memorizing quatrains #33-34 of
Mayura Sandesham. I'm sure I'll get to work on my grandfather's diary as well since it's only Friday today and I won't be back at work until New Year's Day.
linguoboy wrote:TheStrayCat wrote:The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
I'll be interested to hear your take on it. I loved it when I read it in high school, but when I reread it a decade or so later, it hadn't held up as well as some other writers' work.
I don't expect this to be a popular opinion since I'm pretty sure at least two people have tried to convince me to no avail that I'm wrong to think this, but could I please just rant about it a bit first? I have been
really hating this book ever since they made us read it in high school and need to get this off my chest. Of course, anyone should still read it if they like by all means since they certainly don't have to share my opinion about it. In any case, it's not the writing I take issue with so much as the fact that it was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald of all people, especially combined with the fact that we were
forced to read stupid pieces of crap like this in school.
As I understand it, he was writing about the faults of the most extravagant, overprivileged people of his time despite being one of the most extravagant, overprivileged people of his time himself. To me, this is the height of hypocrisy, comparable to the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan writing about how horrible it was that black people in the Americas used to be slaves, or something.
Like, hello, do you seriously feel like you can hide your faults behind some character you just made up - and make money off of it,
and achieve fame for it - with no obligation at all to publicly admit that you personally have the exact same problems (or perhaps even worse)? And maybe should pay for them? This is the same problem I have with
Animal Farm and
Night, too. I find it a bit rich that the person writing all about the ills of communism in the first of these two cases was some Brit who used to serve in the Imperial Police (because that was just such a wonderful, democratic institution in contrast to evil communist regimes, right?!). In the second case, well, IMO Elie Wiesel certainly has every right to write about how horrible the Holocaust was in his personal experience, but that still doesn't mean he should just shit on everyone else who went through it, which I honestly feel he did in that book. He also seems to be a person who just likes shitting on people who are less privileged than him in general.
I even have somewhat similar feelings about
Casablanca.