Did Fitzgerald write like a hack in The Great Gatsby?

Cafe Society
1

I have not read anything by F. Scott Fitzgerald in probably ten years. I never really liked his writing. But over Christmas my sister-in-law asked me what I thought about The Great Gatsby since she would be teaching to a high school class this semester. I said that I did not really remember the book, but what I did remember of the experience of reading the book was that I hated it. I told her I would re-read it at some point and let her know what I thought.

I just read the first chapter and Fitzgerald’s style is annoying the hell of me. He hardly ever just uses “he said” or “she said.” There are often totally unnecessary adverbs attached or he will uses something like “he confirmed” or “I exclaimed” which is just really intrusive and calls way too attention to something that should just go right by.

Some examples (all pages Scribner trade paperback edition 2004):

“Do they miss me?” she cried ecstatically. page 9

Then she added irrelevantly. page 9

“Never heard of them,” he remarked decisively. page 10

"You live in West Egg,: she remarked contemptuously page 10

“Gatsby?” demanded Daisy. page 11

And it just goes on like this. There also seems to an overuse adverbs ending in -ly. Nobody ever just something, they do it is some particular way that does not really seem necessary.

Maybe all of this is why I hated the novel so the first time. It really needs the work of an editor. Does anyone else have this problem with The Great Gatsby?

2

*“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” *

That one last sentence makes up for any imperfections that you will find.

3

Different times had different writing styles. You’re expecting him to write like a 21st Century author, but back when he was writing, those weren’t considered flaws. Complaining about this is akin to complaining that Victor Hugo is a terrible writer because he wrote in French. Fitzgerald was just using the writing style of his time and it’s unreasonable to expect him to using the writing style of 2008.

4

[QUOTE=RealityChuck]
Different times had different writing styles. You’re expecting him to write like a 21st Century author, but back when he was writing, those weren’t considered flaws. Complaining about this is akin to complaining that Victor Hugo is a terrible writer because he wrote in French. Fitzgerald was just using the writing style of his time and it’s unreasonable to expect him to using the writing style of 2008.
[/QUOTE]

Willa Carter, Katherine Anne Porter, Jean Toomer, William Faulker, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, and Eudora Welty are all contemporaries of Fitzgerald and none of them use these heavy-handed techniques.

5

Wow - just wow. Fitzgerald was a brilliant writer; one of the best America has produced. You are welcome to take issue with what you see as florid verbs, but you are really missing one of the most beautiful forests based on a pretty trivial tree.

IMHO, Gatsby is THE “Great American Novel” of the 20th century, to go along with Huck Finn for the 19th…

6

I just recently finished reading Tender is the Night for the first time and noticed this too.

Most of the action statements with quotes and overall floridity and overall writing style I took as a style 'o the times, and insight Fitzgerald was obliquely supplying into the station, personality and emotional state of the characters.

7

I’ve read Gatsby several times, and each time I am struck by the beauty of the prose.

I find the adverbs literally invisible. If they’re all that you’re seeing, you’re missing some of the greatest writing of the 20th century.

8

[QUOTE=Exapno Mapcase]
I’ve read Gatsby several times, and each time I am struck by the beauty of the prose.

I find the adverbs literally invisible. If they’re all that you’re seeing, you’re missing some of the greatest writing of the 20th century.
[/QUOTE]

Damn - I meant to say adverbs!! :slight_smile: :smack:

9

The writing is florid in places, but it’s my favorite novel, so no- I don’t think a few adverbs makes it the work of a hack.

10

It’s been a while since I’ve read Gatsby, but I don’t remember any issues with the prose. Even if so, Fitzgerald probably wouldn’t be the first writer whose literary skills far outshone his technical ones.

11

[QUOTE=WordMan]
Wow - just wow. Fitzgerald was a brilliant writer; one of the best **America ** has produced. You are welcome to take issue with what you see as florid verbs, but you are really missing one of the most beautiful forests based on a pretty trivial tree.

IMHO, Gatsby is THE “Great American Novel” of the 20th century, to go along with Huck Finn for the 19th…
[/QUOTE]

You misspelled “human history” in the bolded section.
Brilliant does not come close to describing Fitzgerald.

12

Stay far, far away from Cormac McCarthy! If you don’t like Fitzgerald (that’s a hangin’ offense, as far as I’m concerned), you’ll crap your pants in rage at McCarthy’s purple prose.

Fitzgerald is one of my favorite writers of all time. Here’s the single greatest thing I have ever read written by anyone ever. Yes, I mean that.

“…one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced–or seemed to face–the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.”

13

[QUOTE=ForumBot]
Stay far, far away from Cormac McCarthy! If you don’t like Fitzgerald (that’s a hangin’ offense, as far as I’m concerned), you’ll crap your pants in rage at McCarthy’s purple prose.

Fitzgerald is one of my favorite writers of all time. Here’s the single greatest thing I have ever read written by anyone ever. Yes, I mean that.

“…one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced–or seemed to face–the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.”
[/QUOTE]

Heretic! :stuck_out_tongue: I have opened another thread to show you what the greatest thing ever written is.

14

[QUOTE=Two and a Half Inches of Fun]
Willa Carter, Katherine Anne Porter, Jean Toomer, William Faulker, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, and Eudora Welty are all contemporaries of Fitzgerald and none of them use these heavy-handed techniques.
[/QUOTE]
<shrug>They wrote in a more modern style. Fitzgerald wrote in an older style. You’re just complaining that he’s not writing like a 21st century author (as the others did). It’s more a flaw in your critical outlook than in Fitzgerald.

15

I just find it odd that anyone would find Faulkner more readable than Fitzgerald. :wink:

16

[QUOTE=Two and a Half Inches of Fun]
Willa Carter, Katherine Anne Porter, Jean Toomer, William Faulker, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, and Eudora Welty are all contemporaries of Fitzgerald and none of them use these heavy-handed techniques.
[/QUOTE]

Very minor nit, but it’s Willa Cather.

And if you want to pick a writer who was a brilliant storyteller, but not a great technical craftsperson writer out of your list, you have to go with Steinbeck. I grew up close to Cannery Row, and I love, love, love Tortilla Flat, Cannery Row and many other of his works, but he was all about the characters and plot. You could strip out 40% of his writing and have a tighter story.

Faulkner and Hemingway (well, before To Have and Have Not) were brilliant technicians but didn’t have the empathy that Fitzgerald and Steinbeck had. Faulkner was capable of it, but was too busy sarcastically mocking the antebellum South to use it to tug at our hearts.

Read Sinclair Lewis - e.g., Babbitt, Main Street, Arrowsmith, Elmer Gantry and a few others - if you want some fun, florid prose in service to deeply insightful commentaries on America.

Just as an aside: Fitzgerald worked with Maxwell Perkins as his editor at Scribners. He would write short stories, to be published in Harper’s, The Saturday Evening Post, etc. to both earn money and to work out characters and themes. He would publish a novel, and then they would package up the short stories he had written as he was developing the themes and characters of the novel and release them the following year. The “Gatsby Cluster” stories were published in All the Sad Young Men, in 1926 the year after Gatsby came out. Read Winter Dreams - IMHO, one of the finest, tightest, most moving short stories ever written. Along with Hemingway’s The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, they are the two best short stories I have ever read.

17

[QUOTE=WordMan]
Very minor nit, but it’s Willa Cather.

[/QUOTE]

D’oh. I knew that.

18

Here is a specific passage:

[QUOTE=F. Scott Fitzgerald]

“This Mr. Gatsby you spoke of is my neighbor-” I said.
“Don’t talk. I want to hear what happens.”
“Is something?” I inquired innocently.
"You mean to say you don’t know? said Miss Baker, honestly surprised. “I thought everybody knew.”
“I don’t”
“Why-” she said hesitantly, “Tom’s got some woman in New York.”
"Got some woman? I repeated blankly.
Miss Baker nodded.
“She might have the decency not to telephone him at dinner time. Don’t you think?”
Almost before I had grasped the her meaning there was the flutter of a dress and the crunch of leather boots, and Tom and Daisy were back at the the table.
[/QUOTE]

Does anyone want to argue that the words in italics add anything except to beat the reader over the head with information that is already clear? The use of hesitantly is especially unnecessary after the dash.

19

[QUOTE=RealityChuck]
<shrug>They wrote in a more modern style. Fitzgerald wrote in an older style. You’re just complaining that he’s not writing like a 21st century author (as the others did). It’s more a flaw in your critical outlook than in Fitzgerald.
[/QUOTE]

I would say the others wrote in a 20th century style.

However, even if we go further back, I do see this heavy handed style in Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser, or, Edith Wharton. Just what older style are you referencing? Who are some writers that used this style?

20

[QUOTE=ForumBot]
Stay far, far away from Cormac McCarthy! If you don’t like Fitzgerald (that’s a hangin’ offense, as far as I’m concerned), you’ll crap your pants in rage at McCarthy’s purple prose.
[/QUOTE]

I love McCarthy and do not see any of these problems in his writing.