![]() ![]() But for the reader, however, who goes to fiction for entertainment and diversion the ‘importance’ that may attach to a work is a relatively minor, or ‘second order’ matter. Scott Fitzgerald.Ī pupil at a school where I recently gave a talk about Fitzgerald asked me a difficult question: Did I think The Great Gatsby would become ‘out-of-date’? My initial answer was the obvious one: ‘I don’t know.’ My next answer was more along the lines of an intelligent guess: ‘Well, Gatsby now is nearly a century old and yet re-reading it the world it evokes remains very modern: people drive cars, read newspapers and magazines, go to the cinema, listen to pop songs, go shopping, use kitchen gadgets, play golf, and more.’ This familiarity helps us ‘feel ourselves’ into the characters of the novel and thus to respond appropriately to the unfolding drama.Ĭriticism, of course, particularly academic criticism, often seeks to attach importance to works of fiction, most obviously to make them expressions of the ‘national character’, or to see them as offering significant social, historical, or political commentary, and The Great Gatsby, above all of Fitzgerald’s works, has suffered this fate. Scott Fitzgerald Henry Claridge writes on the pleasures of reading F. ![]()
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