notanotherbookreview

Is GATSBY the Great American Novel or just a pretender? “Whether it’s something that happened twenty years ago or only yesterday, I must start out with an emotion—one that’s close to me and that I can understand.”  F.Scott Fitzgerald       This quote is key to Fitzgerald, a source of strength and criticism as a weakness-- especially in his rivalry with Hemingway.  I felt revisiting this novel was like reading a diary about a lost love— nostalgic, bitter-sweet, and touching.  A huge success in its era, GATSBY was later reviled as trivial, politically bankrupt , a celebration of rich people and their decadent life style.  Today of course, it’s assigned reading for schools, supposedly about class and money in America. But for that, Dreiser’s An American Tragedy may be the better novel. So why is this novel a classic?        Let’s begin with Nick, the haunted narrator, struggling to come to terms with events he can’t quit...

I like Ann Patchett's novels. I loved the Magician’s Assistant and enjoyed Bel Canto. What hooks me is the grand adventure and the incredible consciousness of her heroines. These women are hyper aware of their worlds and themselves. They have irony and real humor, along with a grit that is surprising and transformative. Marina Singh in State of Wonder  is just such a creation. Honest and skeptical by nature and her training as a scientist, Marina also possesses compassion for the flaws of human kind. Painfully aware of her own, she’s glad to have repetitive work in the lab of a pharmaceutical company and the friendship of her colleague, Anders. Like her, he’s a native Minnesotan, who enjoys his safe comfortable home. Why she’s surprised he agrees, when Mr. Fox, the CEO, asks him to go to the Amazon to find the elusive Dr. Swenson.   .     The only risk in Marina’s careful life is her affair with Mr.Fox, married and old enough to be he...

SUPERZELDA by Tiziana Lo Porto and Daniele Marotta published by One Peace Books It took two Italians, journalist Tiziana Lo Porto and cartoonist Daniele Marotta, to animate that quintessential American creation, Zelda Fitzgerald. Her ecstatic pursuit of life; joy, love, pleasure, is the romance of the Flapper, immortalized by Scott Fitzgerald. Yet this telling adds the dimension of literature from Zelda's journals, letters exchanged, stories both published, his novels, as well as her vast readings from philosophy to poets. Much analysis of Zelda begins and ends with tragic beauty, brilliant and unstable. There are also questions about whether Scott exploited her, not just her archetype but her actual writings, which appear in his novels. Opposed are Fitzgerald fans,who believe she destroyed a great writer, driven to alcohol from her madness. A philosopher quoted that the search for truth often leads to its "bastard substitute" anesthesia. This may be closer than me...