>only popular because the government forced soldiers to read it for some reason
>>24872268Or because its prose is divine and the themes and vocabulary are perfectly suited for the average high school student.
>>24872967>>24872268This "book" is so shit that I know AI could write better
>>24872976Literally true.
>>24872268>>24872976>>24873531What should I read then?
>>24872967I think "divine" is going quite a bit too far. It has its moments, but for the most part is relatively mundane, prose-wise.
>>24873543
>>24872268only popular because of the cover you mean
>>24872268Read "This Side of Paradise." Was eternally goated.
>>24873577>only popular because his CIA friends were promoting modernismTry again
>>24873682He died decades before the CIA was formed or even needed to be formed.
>>24873682But that novel was published almost half a century before the CIA was created.
>>24873712>>24873717glowies have been dispatched. I repeat, glowies have been dispatched
>>24872268http://www.google.com/search?q=great+gatsby+reference+lothropp+stoddard+rising
>>24874012fucking LOL
>>24872268The first chapter is fantastic and a million times better than the rest of the book.It completely carries the work.
>>24872268I can never look at this book the same after knowing Fitzgerald wrote this about his first love who he never stopped thinking about his whole life, even after marrying another woman. When he met her again after like 15-20 years of not seeing each other he showed up completely shit faced and offended her so badly they never spoke again.
>>24875171Isn't that basically the plot? Gatsby gets so obsessed about this woman out of his reach that he dedicates his whole life to "becoming worthy" and then they really do never speak again after he fucks up. The whole ending says, "We're all prisoners of the past, pining for things that can never come back."
>>24875420As much as people like to talk about great authors being able to write about abstractions far removed from their own experience, a lot of literature is just the lived experience of the author. Dante was obsessed with a women he met like twice, to the point of her being a nearly divine guide through Purgatory and Heaven. Melville's family faced financial ruin which forced him to work on whaling ships, and I doubt he would've written Moby Dick if he'd grown up as a pampered member of the upper class. He might have still been a great author, but the settings of his books would have been different.
>>24874114I mean, he's not wrong. why do you think spain lost their empire way before the rest did. it was extraction based colonialism. Great Britain and france actually bothered to settle functioning towns, with majority euro citizens, mostly on paid for / unsettled land. most native massacres by those two came later on when the land was running out. spain just did it to begin with and faced revolts the moment they seemed weak. britain did a similar thing as spain in india. the british didn't want to live in india they just wanted the riches out and a nice holiday home to visit once a year. very different to actually settling land like they did with the 13 colonies
