Again with the not-so-Great Gatsby
Another day, another Gatsby movie, and I will go out on a limb to predict another mediocrity. They keep trying to make this story into a film, but the book is just too gossamer for that to be done successfully.
And when I write “they keep trying,” I’m not just whistling Dixie:
The Great Gatsby (1926 film), a silent film starring Warner Baxter and Lois Wilson
The Great Gatsby (1949 film), starring Alan Ladd and Betty Field
The Great Gatsby (1974 film), starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow
The Great Gatsby (2000 film), a TV film starring Toby Stephens and Mira Sorvino
The Great Gatsby (2013 film), an upcoming Baz Luhrmann film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire
Of all of these, I’ve only seen the 1974 film, which was hyped to the skies when it came out. It was almost unutterably boring.
I must confess, though, that I’m not objective about this because I’ve never liked Gatsby even in book form. I just don’t get it, and believe me I’ve tried. I’ve actually plowed through the book several times because it’s supposed to be such a masterpiece, but I keep losing my concentration and it becomes a big chore. I find I just don’t care one iota about Jay and his shirts and Daisy and her dreams.
This guy seems to have liked the newest cinematic effort at Gatsby, though it sounds dreadful to me. This very-faint-praise Variety review seems more on the mark: it’s a spectacle without heart and pretty much without point. The clothes are always great, though.
[NOTE: Ouch! I find that a lot of critics agree with me. Rex Reed eviscerates the movie; Kathryn Schulz does the same for the book.]
“Of all of these, I’ve only seen the 1974 film, which was hyped to the skies when it came out. It was almost unutterably boring.”
I’d attach that last sentence to the book, too. Count me amongst the people that just don’t get it.
There remains something compelling, to me, about The Great Gatsby. The story was written about a generation, perhaps two, after the world had started its makeover. The world seemed stuck in the same century for centuries but in that span of two score years came the lightbulb, grammaphone, cars, and planes. The books, plays, ballets, had become bolder and bawdier. Everything had gotten bigger, faster, louder, and more explosive. It had become apparent there was nothing could hold a man back, not class, penury, blood, name — nothing. It was this that interested me in Gatsby, an attraction to a dream. This and the inevitable discovery every man makes — there are women and there are dreams and they’re never seen together.
The new movie was made by Baz Luhrmann and it’s in 3D. a Baz Luhrmann movie in 2D is too much.
It’s Baz. You can expect any of Baz’s films to have style out the wazoo. Substance… mehhhh, not so much.
Of course, isn’t that what Gatsby is all about? All style, all flash, no substance? Isn’t that the supposed summation of The Lost Generation?
So perhaps the reason it seems boring is because that’s what it’s about — the boredom of being a member of the Lost Gen…
To me the Gatsby has always been so boring I am bored by reading about how boring it is.
I’ve never before read `The Great Gatsby.’
I find it interesting that, in spite of several versions of this novel being made, none has become canonical.
Which is to say, when someone says, `Great Gatsby’, no one says, `Yes, the 1974 film with Robert Redford’, in the same way that (for example) someone would think of the Coppola film and not the Puzo novel when referring to the `Godfather’, or the Spielberg film and not the Benchley novel, when someone says `Jaws.’
It is the Scott Fitzgerald novel which remains the definitive version of the story.
I would like to see the new film version, but given the mixed reviews, I would think that the Luhrmann / Dicaprio version will not become canonical either.
I think this has to do with a failure of any particular filmmaker, as with the nature of the story itself, which as I understand it is unremarkable, and the `meat’ of the story is in the remarks about life and human nature made by the narrator.
It is, in some way, untranslatable to the motion picture medium.
I think this is similar to how very popular twentieth century novels, definitive of literature of the era, have either not been translated to the screen or have failed when doing so.
In particular, the works of Saul Below, John Updike, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce and others.
In all these cases, I would suggest, the author was seeking to put down on paper what was specific to the printed medium, what movies or TV couldn’t convey very well or at all, that is insight on human psychology.
I’ve never read the book or seen any of the movies.
So why am I even commenting? Um, never mind. Forget I said anything.
Rex Reed buries it:
The sumptuous, vulgar Gatsby estate, overflowing with gangsters, movie stars, flappers, wisecracking alcoholics, voluptuous tap dancers, people falling from trapezes, clowns, acrobats and an orchestra in the middle of a swimming pool full of inflatable rubber zebras, looks like a high-school costume party on prom night invaded by Cirque du Soleil.
Is it any wonder, in all the slobber and confusion, that the acting is so bad? With the phoniest set of performances this side of an Ed Wood flick, you might as well be watching Plan 9 From Outer Space. As the new Gatsby, Leonardo DiCaprio is hopeless, a little boy in his first After Six tuxedo.
Due to a combination of luck, lethargy, and low cunning, I have managed to avoid most of the books people have said I should read. This is one I know just enough about to be grateful I know nothing more about it.
As to boring; Most things are boring. Even the things that get one person fired up–cold calls when your numbers are down for the quarter–are painfully, prosaically stultifying to everybody else in the entire world except for the individual’s boss and family.
There are exceptions: Being attacked by a bear, being in combat, falling off a tall building.
So here we have a guy trying to fake a new persona including fooling himself by spending money.
Bring in the bear.
BTW. Is it possible that the in-group insist that the most impenetrable–yes, boring–meaningless books are the top of the heap precisely because they can pretend to understand while the more honest among us are looking baffled?
If anybody can get it, there’s no point in getting it.
I like the book, though it’s nowhere near the top of my favorite-novels list. Richard Aubrey: have you read it? If so I’m surprised you would describe it as impenetrable. It’s basically a fairly straightforward rise-and-fall story. George Pal: well said. Neo: I also found the 1974 version dull, though maybe not “unutterably” so. As I recall it had a lot of visual appeal. The new one sounds like it might be interesting in a very over-the-top way, like an action movie with little substance but spectacular special effects.
Count me in on the anti-Gatsby crowd. Thought the book was dull and full of unlikeable people. Kinda like a Democratic convention. I also hate the way Fitzgerald bastardizes the American Dream. The American Dream is not to become a bootlegger, make money illegally, so one can chase after a selfish, spoiled brat. The American Dream is suppossed to be about hard work, sacrifice and building something more lasting than homewrecking.
I got something for you, Neo:
http://greatgatsbygame.com/
Humans are Great. It takes a Fitzgerald to write the story, and then a programmer to code a game that begins with Nick C. battling martini-carrying waiters.
Enjoy.
F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote four terribly over-rated novels.
I just finished “The Beautiful and the Damned.” As I read it, I kept asking myself, “is this a good novel with some bad parts or is this a bad novel with some good parts?”
My answer to the above question is that “The Beautiful and the Damned” is a bad novel with some good parts. Fitzgerald was a gifted writer who was too alcoholic or too lazy to spend the necessary time and effort to improve his early drafts.
I was forced to read “The Great Gatsby” in high school. I hated that damn book. Boring doesn’t even begin to describe it. I haven’t seen any of the films, and don’t plan to.
Some interesting stuff about the book at Wikipedia, like:
When it was first published 1925, it received critical acclaim but sold only 20,000 copies in its first year. Then during a revival of his works right after WWII, 150,000 copies of the book were given to military personnel. This was followed by his friend, the influential critic Edmund Wilson, praising the book, which led to it being taught in high schools.
And, if left to Fitzgerald, the title of the book would have been “Trimalchio in West Egg”; seems we have his editor, Maxwell Perkins, and his wife, Zelda, to thank for “The Great Gatsby”.
mac.
I meant the impenetrable books as a category. If they’re penetrable, there’s no point in talking about them, since everybody can penetrate them.
Gatsby may be penetrable, easily penetrable. So’s the weather report.
Fitzgerald wrote at least one great novel – Tender is the Night, one of my 4 or 5 favorite novels ever. Gatsby I like too, but less so than Tender is the Night. I think he uses the English language brilliantly, that is part of the appeal of Gatsby to me. It’s a real shame he died before he could complete The Last Tycoon, we might have had another great novel.
Now, there’s Dorothy Dunnet. Her Niccolo saga, and Crawford of Lymond. Also “King Hereafter”.
Easily penetrable if you know your history–really know it. And archaic French and Latin. And can keep six subplots in mind, watching how they interact. Marvel at the dialogue. How the most minor characters are economically but uniquely personalized.
Only one error I spotted, where the hero is saved from a war arrow from an English longbow by a mail shirt. Nope. Other than that….
Someone agrees with you Gatsby haters –
http://www.vulture.com/2013/05/schulz-on-the-great-gatsby.html
Over time, I have found that the books with the most fulsome reviews are those I hate the most. Never liked Gatsby. Loved Dorothy Dunnett’s “Game of Kings” but “Niccolo Rising” – not so much. Patrick O’Brien’s Aubrey/Maturin 20 volume saga beginning with “Master and Commander” remains my favorite and those I know who have read it – have read the whole thing many, many times. Historians love it.
Not well-enough known are Kent Haruf’s two books: “Plainsong” and “Eventide”– brilliant.
Richard Aubrey @ 3:12
I was attacked by a bear once. That was exciting.
At some point in high school it was on a list of books we could choose from and read. I chose another, but there was some kind of discussion in class on “The Great Gatsby”. My impression from the discussion even as a teenager was that it was one of those books pushed by liberals to tear down traditional America.
Elephant’s Child.
You have to admit, O’Brian has a genius for naming his heroes.
Dunnet’s main characters are sometimes too much. But the fun for me was being submerged in the world.
My father remarked, after reading “The Name of The Rose”, that there was no way anybody ate. IOW, nobody farmed, ranched, sold food, fished, cooked. Sort of like those ancient maps where cities are represented by crudely-drawn castles assailed and defended by blank-faced soldiers taller than the walls. With nothing in between.
With Dunnet, you think you could manage. Couple of years’ language lessons, riding, fencing, manners, current events. Piece of cake. As, after reading Kipling’s Plain Tales and Kim and whatnot, you think you could manage in India ca. 1890.
Genius.
She did a series of spy/detective stories featuring Johnson Johnson–at the hospital, his father hiccuped when asked the desired name–which are placed in the, say, Eighties and are light and funny. Shame to think of them as potboilers. Maybe they were just fun.
I liked LOTR for a number of reasons, not least being the ability to dive into that world and escape the Sixties–riots, 200-300 dead a week in VN where I would likely go–every third undergrad thinking he was a world-changer if not a pot retailer. Funny to think of the world of LOTR having solidities and verities and values.
Thank you so much, neo! I was just going to look up reviews on the movie thinking about possibiity of going tomorrow, but I decided to check in on the blog first. You saved me the trouble! And I trust in your judgment more than all those reviews one can find online, most of which seem to vary greatly. I usually end up knowing little more than I did when I started!
And Jim Sullivan, I’m with you. I found that movie version boring despite all the hype (Robert Redford was “it” back then, and many of us who were gaga over him really didn’t know much about Mia Farrow other than a) she had been married to Frank Sinatra, b) she did Rosemary’s baby which I was too young to see at the time, and she had a thing for collecting/adopting children from all over the world before it occured to Madonna). And I was just talking to a friend yesterday about reading the book back in high school and how I remembered little more than the time it was set in, fabulous ’20’s costumes, Gatsby, a cool car (from 20’s) and he had a girlfriend. I was remembering that I found it unusually boring and I must have missed something. (Normally I have a startling detailed memory — which does little more than provide me with much useless information!)
I just saw The Great Gatsby. Even though the movie is less than the sum of its parts, it is still a very good movie.
To the extent that the movie has any problems, it is the same problems that plague the book: it is boring too often, and the only really interesting character is not made interesting until the very end. Throughout the the movie he doesn’t do much that is interesting. In this regard, being “mysterious” is not the same as being “interesting.”
Even so, I did enjoy The Great Gatsby.
It’s not just Gatsby, it’s practically all of Fitzgerald. I have tried seven times to read “Tender is the Night” and despite an avid interest in Gerald and Sara Murphy and that milieu, I can never get more than 20 or 30 pages in. Some of his short stories are readable but the novels are a trial.
The Great Gatsby is overrated, and so is The Catcher in the Rye by J D Salinger. Both books are written in the French literary tradition – nothing happens. It’s all about the wording: “une bonne phrase” trumps everything. I can remember those two books as “é¼ber”-boring even three decades after reading them (in English). Compare them to i e Goodbye Mr Chips! which has a good story in it.
Kjell Anderberg,
“The Great Gatsby is overrated, and so is The Catcher in the Rye by J D Salinger.”
From you lips to God’s ears.
While The Great Gatsby bored me to tears, The Catcher in the Rye managed to bore me and irritate me at the same time.
It was a book about alienation, that was written by someone that wasn’t alienated. Alienation, the narcissistic kind most teenagers feel even when they generally get along with their peers. As someone who was bullied, both physically and psychologically, from peers and teachers, who understands true alienation, I found that stupid, shallow book ridiculous in its own bland, yet angsty, monotone.
TGG is one of the finest books of American Literature.
But it is not about the action of the story, which in itself is unremarkable, it is the underlying motive: a man who remade who he was and his place in the world on a vision of a woman from his past. And when he went out and found that woman, he was bitterly dissapointed in his life. His dream of her drove him and motivated him into remaking who he was, of breaking rules, of motivating him beyond anything else in the world. But when the dream met reality it broke him.
This is a Truth (not only for lost loves, but our dreams versus reality in general) and is a Truth of the human condition. This was summed up nicely in one of the last lines of the book:
“It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.”
In other words, we are better to leave our dreams and visions just that, and if we attempt to match them to reality we will be bitterly dissapointed.
If this doesn’t move you, then, no, you are not going to find this good literature.
A suggestion for a future Neo-NeoCon topic: “Books that I was supposed to like but didn’t.”
Y’know, people often cite this as the worst movie ever made, but it truly isn’t even close.
No, not even c-l-o-s-e !!
I mean, the most obvious defense you can make, that anyone can see, is that the camera operator had some concept of how to “pull focus”, that is, the entire picture isn’t in FuzzyVision.
No, I would argue that the worst movie ever made — certainly the worst one I’m aware of — which got any kind of theatrical release, is Manos, The Hands Of Fate
Amongst its many qualifying “features” are:
a) Entirely filmed in full power FuzzyVision. No cameras were properly focused during the production of this film.
b) Most, if not all of the footage is poorly chromakeyed — it’s washed out and dull looking. This impacts not only the overall film, but also makes “c” below even worse…
c) It’s about 30 minutes worth of actual footage/story padded out to 74 minutes by endless — and yes, I do mean truly interminable — shots of passing scenery — along with throwaway scenes of people and events who appear nowhere else in the film and have no relevance to the plot or the story or anything except adding time to the movie.
d) Oh, gad, the dialog is soooo slow and boring you want to rip your ears off just so something interesting will happen.
e) Acting? Wut dat?
f) Music. Ewwww. Just ewwww…. Either the soundtrack was also sold as the intermission music used in Drive-Ins throughout the 60s and 70s, or the other way around.
In fact, it would be hard to list a single redeeming feature ANYWHERE in this movie.
I do not recommend you find an original copy. It’s only tolerable with the MST3k commentary track. In fact, it’s so full of things to complain about and make fun of that this is clearly the only way to watch it — either with friends just as capable as the Mistie writers, or with the assistance of the Mistie writers.
>>> In other words, we are better to leave our dreams and visions just that, and if we attempt to match them to reality we will be bitterly disappointed.
Yeah, it’s the same with sexual fantasies. If you attempt to make them happen, they almost always, if not always, disappoint. Acting out your fantasies is a bad idea no matter what they are.
}}} and she had a thing for collecting/adopting children from all over the world before it occured to Madonna
Including girls named “Soon-Yi”… 😀
The best description of Gatsby appears to be “The movie they sandwiched between the releases of Ironman 3 and Star Trek – Into Darkness”.
The former is an excellent comic-book movie (not quite as good as X-Men:FC or The Avengers, about as good as the best of the Raimi Spiderman films).
The latter has Benedict Cumberbatch as the villain, Khan Noonien Singh. If you’ve seen him play Sherlock, I don’t see it as likely to be bad.
Smock Puppet: “Manos, the Hands of Fate” was a big favorite of ours when my son was small—the Mystery Science Theater 3000 (which was one of our favorite shows) version, that is, the one with the running commentary. It was one of the funniest things ever.
When I read that you found a ‘classic’ unutterably boring, my heart sang. For years I have fretted about my inability to appreciate anything but cops and robbers books. I read the first word of Anna Karenina, closed the book and went to the pub. I struggled through the first page of Wuthering Heights and thought about finding the same and throwing myself off. I fought for weeks to find some interest in Lord of the Rings but finally gave up after one chapter.
Thank you for giving me renewed hope.
George Warburton: there are many classics I don’t like. Someone suggested I write a post on it; perhaps I shall.
But Wuthering Heights I love. However, I can easily, easily see why a person would not share my enthusiasm. It’s a long tough slog, with all that weird dialect that’s almost impossible to decipher. A very dark book, as well. I read it when I was about thirteen, and something made me push through it (probably my love for Jane Eyre, a much more reader-friendly book) and I loved it and still do. But it’s a hard one in every sense of the word.
Japanese light novels are light years more interesting than the Gatsby novel I read a decade ago.
Dropped over from a post today on Books People Claim to Read but Don’t — never thought I would locate other Dunnett lovers! (But it’s perhaps not as strange to find you here as it would be on some other blogs I frequent!)
I practically memorized the Lymond Chronicles in High School and College; loved Johnson Johnson; fought my way through to the end of the Niccolo Cycle (loved parts, hated parts, all of it was brilliant).
Gatsby — meh.