THE GREAT GATSBY

On Tom Buchanan: "'Now don't think my opinion on these matters is final,' he seemed to say, 'just because I'm stronger and more of a man than you'"--THE GREAT GATSBY

After finishing WHAT A YEAR! I decided to read THE GREAT GATSBY again. (I read it twice, when I was 19 and 24 respectively.) I guess I'm still interested in the 1920s.  And a new movie of this oddly unfilmable novel is coming out soon, and Matthew may make it the subject of a book club event in his Meetup group.  And I want to recite part of it when ROLT has an event involving love-related writing.

We've sold our copy online, so I found a cheap Penguin edition at Book City near the Bathurst station.  I also picked up some well-discounted books:  an issue of GRANTA about the American view of foreign countries, an illustrated guide to the history of ancient Greece, and Studs Terkel's survey WORKING. (I enjoyed HARD TIMES and 'THE GOOD WAR', his oral histories of the Great Depression and World War II.)

Fitzgerald's writing is delicate and sharply observed.  Yet in a self-pitying moment he wrote, "There are no second acts in American lives." Yet all the most remarkable American lives are distinguished by their second acts:  even his own life and writing had an interesting second act in the 1930s. (I may have posted that before, but it would take forever to confirm.)