Happy 85th Birthday to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. May the green light always shine at the end of Daisy’s dock, and may we always reserve judgment. (Quoted courtesy our Assistant Editor, Pattie Reitz)
I remember when I first read The Great Gatsby. I was in college, reading it for enjoyment, not for a class. For the first twenty pages or so I was appalled at how self-absorbed the main characters were, and was tempted to throw the book across the room.
Very soon, though, Fitzgerald’s writing style drew me in, and I was hooked. His poetic and lyrical prose, his vivid descriptions — they blew me away! He could describe a sunset in such a way that no film version of this novel can compare. In fact, most film versions of this story have been highly unsuccessful, and I believe this is because the written words are what make this story so powerfully beautiful.
As such, this great American novel is one of the few that made me say, “I want to write like that!”
