151–160 of 182 posts
No wonder Gatsby is frequently misunderstood: Most people won't have the experience needed to understand it until they're in their 30s, but we prescribe it for high schoolers year after year.
I hate this sentiment. The book isn't "about" a thing in particular, neither does it "mean" any specific thing. It may have been written with some ideas in mind, and there may even be overt indications as to those ideas. Everyone has their own relationship with each and every piece of art, and may sometimes choose to include the artist and/or their intentions, but may also choose to exclude them. The article even dis…
> To say it could possibly be misunderstood is to say that there is a wrong way of understanding, but clearly there are at least multiple correct - or at least not incorrect - understandings! There are multiple correct understandings but there are also understandings that are completely incorrect, no? You’re saying any interpretation is valid, even ones that are clearly nonsensical?
If your definition of "interpretation" involves making claims about the author or empirical details, it is clear you can be incorrect. Otherwise, I think everything else is permissible.
I hate this sentiment. The book isn't "about" a thing in particular, neither does it "mean" any specific thing. It may have been written with some ideas in mind, and there may even be overt indications as to those ideas. Everyone has their own relationship with each and every piece of art, and may sometimes choose to include the artist and/or their intentions, but may also choose to exclude them. The article even dis…
If the meaning of the book and the intention of the author diverges then the author has done a bad job. If you can interpret a book however you want, what's the point of reading? I can just reject the author's intended meaning and substitute my own, but I can do that without reading at all, so why bother?
The point, in my view, of art is to form personal relationships with the artwork. I can read Notes From Underground with no background on the era or the author, and pass my own judgements on the characters. I can read the thoughts of the Underground Man and feel them in any which way that strikes me. The point isn't that Dostoevsky is telling me something, rather he has presented an opportunity for me to explore something I've not explored before. How guided and directed that exploration is remains mostly in the hands of the author, but sometimes all it takes is a presentation of a character and the rest of the work is the reader trying to integrate that character into their own worldview.
The most boring art is the art where the author stands next to it and describes what it's about. That's the art where I think "what's the point of reading": the author has summarised the intent of his work, presented the canonical reading and disparaged other readings. You might as well just have the intent summarised on a post-it.
The most powerful art can be the most "meaningless", the art where most of the work is by the reader, searching for connections between what's on the paper and what's in their head. Have you never spent hours with a poem or piece of music, and each retread sparks some new attachment to an experience or feeling? Perhaps the author never even considered their work to relate to how you related to your friends as a child, but I see it as totally wrong to claim that either you or the author have erred in that reading.
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If the meaning of the book and the intention of the author diverges then the author has done a bad job. If you can interpret a book however you want, what's the point of reading? I can just reject the author's intended meaning and substitute my own, but I can do that without reading at all, so why bother?
This is essentially why I didn’t do English Lit at uni (which had been my initial thought). Up to age 18 I did well at English Lit by discovering that the more outlandish and fabricated the things I wrote, as long as I could find some tenuous hook for them, the more ‘sensitive’ I was praised for being for detecting them in the work. In other words, everything was true and nothing was true. I worry that the same is ro…
The real question is: who are you fooling? In a field where there's no right answer, the only person being fooled by you avoiding an honest reading is yourself. If you can make the right noises to trick someone into thinking you've considered the story, why not expose yourself to art and actually consider the story?
Personally, aside from Russian literature, I now prefer American literature, which I think is underestimated in China. I really like that film adaptation, but what the film expresses is something else, not the same as the novel’s core theme. My own understanding is that American literature has at least three themes that are very distinctive and different from Europe(or other countries). One is the depiction of desola…
Jay Gatsby (James Gatz) is probably Jewish.
Nick Carraway is probably gay, but at least bisexual.
Both of these traits forced people into lower castes this era in high-status society. To me the lens of the book is repeatedly the failure of "if only I can win them over" slowly becoming the unsatisfying "these people were always assholes." Whether it's parties, a potential spouse, or important friends, the entire concept of class structure is poison. If people are good people, it shouldn't matter how they present themselves... that's just what I've always taken away from it. It seems like a theme that someone with Fitzgerald's background would want to convey, especially someone with that background who enjoined the company of people like Hemingway. And I think that's been a theme of American culture since reconstruction.
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Based on the photos I’ve seen of the Epstein sexual trafficking case - he and everyone in his circle saw Lolita’s protagonist Humbert Humbert as a role model for behavior - they openly call the female kids they abused variations of terms of endearment used for Dolly, the twelve to thirteen year old victim in Lolita and use quotes from the book in captions and notes. It’s a very short book and possibly because it is e…
See also: Musk’s naming things after Culture ships, Trump’s music picks like “Fortunate Son”, or complaints that Star Trek recently went “woke”.
While I'm not an American, I read a bit of American literature, and sometimes I feel that many American children/teenagers are exposed to the classics slightly early, before they can accurately pick up nuances, understand the social structure of the setting, and are able to grasp the different strengths and foibles of human beings, both real and fictional. This tends to make them either misunderstand the text, read i…
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Perhaps George R. R. Martin will finish the books some day, and we'll find out how he thinks it should end.
I’m starting to think he was honest that this was his intended ending, and he’s given up as a result.
At minimum they needed a full extra season and a full final season, if not more. But without GRRM handholding them throughout the entire plot they completely lost the path.
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As a Chinese-American, in my humble opinion the Great Gatsby is the 1920's version of "On the Road", "American Psycho" and "Liar's Poker". In another words, it is about the American spirit to chase money/success/glamour in spite of the protagonist's preconceived understanding that doing so would end up ultimately futile and empty. "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgasmic future that year by year recedes befo…
Totally disagree about "On the Road". They don't chase money, success, or glamour. In fact, they're chasing the complete opposite of what Gatsby was chasing: spirituality. Their relationships are honest. They have no desire for money to influence. In fact, on most spectrums, American Pyscho and On the Road are on totally opposite ends. Sure, they share some themes like disillusionment and emptiness, but their core me…
>Teresa (who is from Mexico/o la conquista sexual temporal de nuestro supuesto héroe en "busca de la verdad") didn’t want Sal to leave, but he told her that he had to. He had sex with Teresa in the barn his last night in the area, and the next morning Teresa brought him breakfast. They agreed to meet in New York whenever Teresa could get there, though Sal says they both knew this wouldn’t happen. Sal left and hitchhiked back to L.A., arriving in the early morning. There, he bought a bus ticket to Pittsburgh and spent most of his remaining money on food for the trip.
My reading of "On the Road" is Jack Kerouac's ultimate realization that their restless wandering is really a pursuit of narcissism of sex, jazz and drugs to fill up their empty inside. Look at the real personal lives of the Beatniks and Kerouac's later readings (e.g., Dharma Bums) for the confirmations or disconfirmations. Or look to the spiritual children of the Beatniks, the Western backpackers or the spiritual seekers to Mexico or Thailand (privileged, naive and ultimately exploitative and conformist when the chips are down).
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Totally disagree about "On the Road". They don't chase money, success, or glamour. In fact, they're chasing the complete opposite of what Gatsby was chasing: spirituality. Their relationships are honest. They have no desire for money to influence. In fact, on most spectrums, American Pyscho and On the Road are on totally opposite ends. Sure, they share some themes like disillusionment and emptiness, but their core me…
Mi Mexicanito, sinceramente de este chinito, "On the Road" is imho about all about these gringo's chase for cultural/spiritual accumulation - just with beatnik fashion/prose than with a briefcase. >Teresa (who is from Mexico/o la conquista sexual temporal de nuestro supuesto héroe en "busca de la verdad") didn’t want Sal to leave, but he told her that he had to. He had sex with Teresa in the barn his last night in th…
I don’t think the novel supports “narcissism” as a central answer that explains everything. The book is much more about restless hunger for experience and living in the moment. And jazz in particular isn’t framed as a symptom of emptiness; it functions as an aesthetic ideal that they’re trying to model their lives on.
Also, there is no ultimate realization in the book. There's ambivalence and fascination with Dean and the road, as well as increasing awareness of the costs and disappointments that life can bring, but it's not an ultimate indictment on it.
> Or look to the spiritual children of the Beatniks, the Western backpackers…
I'm not really interested in how it was interpreted later by various groups of people.
> privileged, naive and ultimately exploitative and conformist…
Conformity is neither something they desire not something they end up doing. In fact, their defining trait is the refusal of conventional stability.