The early 1920s was a very special time in American history. The Great War was over, and it was a time of celebration. Prohibition was the law of the land and bootleggers and gamblers were making fortunes as everybody partied with illegal booze and speculated in the stock market. In retrospect, we readers know that it all came to a crashing end later, but that was after the book was published and so the book captures the era in its own time.

The narrator is Nick Carraway, a young man who, like Fitzgerald himself, was raised in the mid-west and is working in the stock market in New York City. His own financial circumstances are modest but he rents a house in Long Island next door to the flamboyant and wealthy Jay Gatsby, who throws lavish parties and whose background is shrouded in mystery. As a New Yorker myself I must say I cringed at his geography, but the rest of the book transcends these minor physical details.

Slowly, we learn of Jay Gatsby's obsessive love for the wealthy Daisy, now married to the snobbish Tom Buchanan who is having an affair with a garage owner's wife. Nick is a friend of this cast of characters, participating in their lives but yet standing back and observing. He's a man of his times as well as a person who understands human character and foibles. How the story plays out is a complex drama filled with passion and tragedy and including elements worthy of Shakespeare or classic Greek theater. This is more than just a good story. It's an emotional ride in expensive cars to an era filled with people we can all identify with.

I give this book by highest recommendation. It rises above a mere good read and dwells in the realm of great literature.

While the characters in the novel remain ultimately unknowable at their indefinite cores, Fitzgerald does a great job tying his characters to their historical setting. The protagonist of the novel, to my mind, is Nick Carraway, the narrator. The hero of his story, which frames the novel, is the legendary Jay Gatsby - a legend in his own mind. Although Carraway's narration is often heavily biased and unreliable, what emerges are the stories of a set of aimless individuals, thrown together in the summer of 1922. Daisy Buchanan is the pin that holds the novel together - by various means, she ties Nick to Jordan Baker, Tom Buchanan to Jay Gatsby, and Gatsby to the Wilsons.

The novel itself deals with the shallow hypocrisies of fashionable New York society life in the early 1920's. It is almost as though Fitzgerald took the plot of Edith Wharton's 'The Age of Innocence' and updated it - in the process making the characters infinitely more detestable and depriving it of all hope. Extramarital affairs rage on with only the thinnest of veils to disguise them, the nouveau-riche rise on the back of scandal and corruption, and interpersonal relationships rarely signify anything permanent that doesn't reek of conspiracy. The novel's casual allusions to beginnings and histories often cause us to reflect on the novel's historical moment - when the American Dream and Benjamin Franklin's vision of the self-made man seem to coalesce in Jay Gatsby, a Franklinian who read too much Nietzsche.

No matter how you read it, 'The Great Gatsby' is worth re-reading. M.J. Bruccoli's short, but informative preface, and C. Scribner III's afterword are included in this edition, and both set excellent contexts, literary, personal, and historical, for this classic of American literature.

Do you enjoy the poetry of Keats and the other Romantic poets? Do you enjoy Shakespeare's sonnets? Then you'll LOVE this book. It BREATHES, it shivvers with vitality and lyricism. I've read the entire book twice, and individual stories like "Rich Boy", "Babylon Revisited", "Absolution"; which many consider as a trial for the "Great Gatsby", "Jacob's Ladder", "Winter Dreams", etc., too many times to recount. THERE IS BEAUTY AND POETRY IN THE WRITING! Does the plot always nail us to our chairs? No, not even in Gatsby; but the writing does. That is why I agree with Gertrude Stein's assesment of Fitzgerald vis-a-vis Hemingway: That his flame burns a little brighter. She was so enraptured by "Gatsby", that she drew a line on her wall, with the request to "please, next time, write one THIS thick".

Are they all great? Well, to a degree, greatness is in the eye of the beholder. SOME individual stories which are raved over by critics and readers alike leave me relatively cold. "Benjamin Button"; the case of a person born elderly and "aging" in reverse, to me reads like bad science fiction. "Diamond as Big as the Ritz", is interesting only in several short sections in which Fitzgerald is trying to describe the most opulent scene which his fertile imagination can create. The rest of if to me is more farce than satire; and what precious little satire is available, seems a bit threadbare.

BUT IF YOU HAVE A SENSITIVITY FOR PURE POETRY, you can not help but be moved by this book. Look at it this way, Hemingway wrote "Moveable Feast", BECAUSE HE WAS INTIMIDATED BY FITZGERALD. Did Fitzgerald drink too much? Sure he did, but so did Joyce, Faulkner, Lardner, and Hemingway himself. It's nothing but lamentable, but we can't start disregarding writers because of their personal habits, or we're all going to be reading O Henry and James Whitcomb Riley.

Did Fitzgerald flunk out of college? Yes, that is true also, but Hemingway didn't even GO TO COLLEGE, and has a memorable quote in a short story that "education is an opiate of the people". Edmund Wilson was a fantastic scholar--and a boring writer. Don't judge the EXTRANEOUS, judge the writing itself. Don't confuse brilliance with being an academic. Einstein himself was a "C" student.

Too much is made about Fitzgerald's own negative assessment regarding his short stories. Scott could never handle pressure. He attributed this facility for "wavering at the critical moment" as a bequeathal from his father. It may have made him feel better to belittle the work he did everyday to earn his bread--so at least he could not be held to his own impossibly high standards for something so mercenary, or so goes the logic. But he was craving desperatly for money during much of his life, so doesn't logic also imply that if he could earn more money for ONE story than the years of labor that went into "Tender is the Night" , that he would put forth something VERY CLOSE TO HIS BEST? When he was flat broke and his daughter and wife needing support and if his story wasn't accepted by a major magazine of the time, they would suffer terrible consequences? I can guarantee you that he tried and very hard. The proof as they say is in the pudding.

This book deserves a PROMINENT PLACE in any library where the premium is paid to writing for its own beauty and elegance. You too will wish this book of short stories was a little "thicker" by the time you finish it.

For God's sake, you should by this book if for no other reason than to honor the man's life. The fact that it IS so good, is more of a break than we typically get in life.

Hemingway's reaction has always interested me. It was also a source of frustration as I tried without success to get through "Tender is the Night". At first I thought my abandonment of the novel was due to the introduction of too many characters too early in the book, but Bruccoli's very fine companion has made me re-evaluate this view. I think my earlier frustration was a direct result of my unfamiliarity with many of the places and people that Fitzgerald alludes to throughout the novel. Bruccoli gives succinct descriptions of people and places that may not be familiar to modern readers, but he also goes further. He points out logical inconsistencies, chronological errors, and outright mistakes that can distract (or confuse) the reader.

Is this effort worth it? Most definitely. Bruccoli's work pays off handsomely, helping to bring into focus a beautiful, intricate novel.

Just ask Papa.

Well said. _Understanding Raymond Carver_ is the kind of thin textbook you would expect to read in an undergraduate Figures of Literature class at a public liberal arts college. Saltzman only scratches the surface of literary criticism and interpretation regarding Carver, but adequately. For students: you will find decent quotes to support your research papers. For nonacademic readers: you will find brief critical analyses of your favorite stories.

Here's an illustrative section:
"Because Carver's locations are unexceptional, they are deceptively lulling, seeming immune to eventfulness; yet all the while, in familiar homes and neighborhoods, acts of brinkmanship regularly take place. What, for example, could be less precipitous than a waitress serving a customer? Yet in 'Fat' the event looms monumentally in her consciousness. Breathless and repetitive, the narrator anxiously tries to 'sell' her friend on the significance of the tale of her incredibly fat customer as if she had just been implicated in some vague parable. However, she cannot pin down the reason its having unsettled her so: 'Now that's part of it. I think that is really part of it.' 'I know now I was after something. But I don't know what.' 'Waiting for what? I'd like to know.' "

"Perhaps it is the surprising dignity and pleasantness of the fat man that is so remarkable -- one can easily surmise what sort of course [sic] treatment she is accustomed to -- and that causes her to defend him against the rude remarks of her co-workers. Perhaps his use of the royal 'we' to refer to himself, as though he needed to measure up verbally to his size, makes her realize how dwarfed and submissive she has been. Or perhaps the jokes about her being 'sweet' on him lead her to evaluate her relationship with Rudy, who is similarly incapable of appreciating feelings she can hardly approximate. (During their lovemaking, she imagines herself to be so astonishingly fat that Rudy disappears within her bulk.) Her inarticulateness stakes out the limits of her growth of consciousness. Significantly, although she believes her life will change -- the meeting with the mysterious fat man surely heralds it -- she characterizes herself as passive, waiting for a transformation. 'Fat' concludes with the narrator prepared for something different but at a loss as to what that 'something' could be or how she would go about initiating it. Insight extends no further than dissatisfaction."

Saltzman provides an overview of Carver's style and themes; has a chapter for each of the four major collections (_Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?_, _Furious Seasons_, _What We Talk About When We Talk About Love_, and _Cathedral_); and one for selected poems. His conclusion "feels" dated (the text was published in 1988), but is otherwise adequate.

Overall, this is a good text, worth having if you are a dedicated Carver reader.

There is a scene where the central character and his sexually-repressed wife are in the sack ("Her." "Him", "Her", "Him." )...the instructions on how to program my VCR were more stimulating. Give me a break.

Maybe by today's overly PC standards this book could be considered mildly racist and bigoted, but I fail to see where. Catholics do take it on the chin, however.

This was almost a good novel. John Cheever does this type of thing much better.

By Love Possessed chronicles an eventful weekend in the life of Arthur Winner, leading attorney and citizen in the small town of Brocton. No grasping uncouth Snopes, this Winner serve as living proof that virtue is not necessarily its own reward. When lesser lawyers offer a quid pro quo, he deigns to accept only with silence.

The novel's narrative frame begins and ends with Amor Vincit Onmia, frozen forever and eternally ambiguous. The intriguing characters surrounding Winner in this modern Man of Lawe's Tale range from pillar of legal acumen with something to hide to an unfaithful wife converting to Catholicism to a precise drunk who becomes a victim of petty theft. In the end, one wonders if the most important character in By Love Possessed is not the raccoon that freezes in Winner's headlights and is run over with only a thump to mark its passing.

The high point of By love Possessed is a masterly courtroom scene that strikes at the heart of what it is to be a parent. The novel is full of murder and suicide (intentional and unintentional). Events between the sexes range from a first date to a distasteful allegation of rape. In the end, when an untimely death reveals legal matters best left in darkness, Cozzens concludes that self-interest conquers all, at least in the world of small-town privilege.

By Love Possessed moves through so many beginnings and endings that the novel seems somehow complete by its end, although all loose ends are left hanging. Read this book; it certainly does cure nostalgia for the 1950s.

Cozzens' novel covers 49 hours in the life of Arthur Winner Jr., a small-town Pennsylvania lawyer who has prided himself for living his life according to a strict regimen of reason and yet finds all those around him seemingly throwing their lives away to emotion. Rape, suicide, jealousy, and greed mark the behaviour of his friends and relatives, much to his consternation. Not until the end, when a deep secret is revealed, does Arthur Winner realise that an emotional reaction is sometimes the only recourse to an unreasonable situation; indeed, it may be a neccessary reaction.

Because of its style and conservative stance, I've always been surprised that By Love Possessed was such a huge bestseller when originally published; perhaps its title and small-town setting confused readers that it was another Peyton Place (which, ironically, it replaced at #1). But it IS an incredible book, very influential (just read anything by Scott Turow), and a must read for those who want to understand the mindset of the middle-class American male in the mid-20th century. Personally, I find Cozzens' prose fascinating--the more a book makes me reach for the dictionary the better. And as a gay man, I take less offense at Cozzens' occasional prejudices than I do with those politically correct readers who only blindly see bigotry and not a man truly trying to understand the world around him.