This is part of the curriculum for the BNU Free Course “Writing Fiction with Gotham Writers’ Workshop”, in which I’m currently enrolled.

Simple story, vivid prose.

for my tutorial

I had to read this book in high school but I couldn’t remember if I did or not. It’s a classic so I am definately going re-read it, because I can’t even remember parts of the movie.

I loved it, even if it was assigned reading ;)

I read this in high school and loved it.

I’m re-reading this for the first time since high school. This is simply virtuosity as far as the novel format goes. It doesn’t have an extraneous word or scene, anywhere, that I can find, and it’s almost thematically and emotionally perfect. I had no idea how freaking masterful this book really was in the ignorance of my youth(and I liked it a good deal then.) Yikes. Also, it lives up to its “Great American Novel” billing in that it comes closer than anything I’ve seen to encompassing and explaining the abstractions and appetities that have made America both the greatest, and the most flawed, country of the past century. Gatsby as myth made real, as a man sprung from an idea, echoing a country born from the same. Genius.

the best last line of any book i’ve ever read. “and so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”