The Great Gatsby - F. S. Fitzgerald

Spurred by the upcoming motion picture, I read this without any prior knowledge of what I would find inside. Which is exactly how it was meant to be read. I was arrested by the beautiful way Fitzgerald lays out his language like a path to be followed. Re-reading paragraphs because they were pleasing in the way they fit together. And then I stumbled upon his surprising, incongruous adjectives that all at once seem perfect.

For instance... his phrases paint precise pictures, such as, "her grey, sunstained eyes"; "one emotion after another crept into her face like objects into a slowly developing picture"; "for Dan Cody sober knew what lavish doings Dan Cody drunk would be about"; and "we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight." All these things gave me a knowledgeable feeling of what had happened before the scenes, and of what would inevitably occur.

Something is to be said for precise language, in that you cannot possibly describe everything, but if you select one aspect to portray entirely, it paints a picture in the mind in which everything else falls into place. I enjoyed the poetry and the plot. It is no wonder The Great Gatsby was named by the Modern Library as the second best English-language novel of the 20th century--a time, according to the New York Times, where "gin was the national drink and sex the national obsession." I plan to read more of Fitzgerlad soon.