'The Great Gatsby'

The Great American Novel.

The Great Gatsby may or may not be this. I do know that it's great, it's American and it's a novel. A beautifully written novel about America at its most glorious and its most vulnerable. The Roarin' '20s showed America at an odd time: Conspicuous consumption mixed with the self-righteousness of Prohibition and those in-between years after the Great War, before the Great Depression and a good 20 years before any able-bodied men were shipped back to Europe for another Great War.

It was a time of innovation. Ironically or not, in terms of this blog, it was pretty monumental. It was high tide for literature, the birth of film and popular recorded music was not far from being in every home as part of a mass medium.

Funny thing, friend saw what I was reading and she noted that she "hated" Daisy. I found Daisy, actually, was probably the most sympathetic character in the entire novel.

She was a product of a mysogonist culture where pretty young females were supposed to "marry up" and just enjoy the ride and ignore the other women. Tom was the real asshole, naturally. Daisy was caught in this trap that it was impossible to get out of. Maybe she was melodramatic or whatever, but she was the real victim. She's the real story here. Gatsby was only "great" because of Daisy.