"In The Great Gatsby Fitzgerald brilliantly captures both the disillusion of post-war America and the moral failure of a society obsessed with wealth and status. But he does more than render the essence of a particular time and place, for in chronicling Gatsby's tragic pursuit of his dream, Fitzgerald recreates the universal conflict between illusion and reality."

Posted today for some wishlist RABCK.
Enjoy!

Received today. Thank you!

Stay safe from fires down there!

Finished this one. The writing is beautifully crafted, but the story deeply disturbing. I longed for even one character whom I could trust, but they all seemed to range on the spectrum from superficial to criminal. What a bleak picture of the lives of the wealthy in the Jazz age! I couldn't help but think that Jay Gatsby is the exact opposite of Ptolemy Proudfoot, Wendell Berry's fictional character who would have been 'alive' at the same time in history. Proudfoot is honest to the core, faithful to his wife, utterly contented and unambitious:

'He was not an ambitious farmer - he did not propose to own huge acreage or to become rich - but merely a good and gifted one. By the time he was twenty-five, he had made a down payment on a little farm that he husbanded and improved all his life. It was a farm of ninety-eight acres, and Tol never longed even for the two acres more that would have made it a hundred.'

How can such a 'uninteresting' couple create a gripping story? Sounds a bit boring doesn't it? Doesn't there need to be a bit of scandal to fill out the plot? Ha! that's where you're wrong. Simone Weil wrote,

'Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.'

But I digress. It is interesting though, that Wendell Berry is very much like a character from one of his stories. Sadly, F. Scott Fitzgerald was too, according to Hemingway’s account, anyway.

I'm now reading The Full Cupboard of Life, by Alexander McCall Smith

Left on a bench at the Transit Centre. Happy travels!

I'm now reading Another Life is Possible, by Clare Stober.