Unpopular take on 'The Great Gatsby' in my book club last Thursday

We met at Sarah's house in Austin, and everyone was raving about how 'beautiful' Gatsby's obsession with Daisy was. I had to speak up when Carol said it was 'the ultimate love story.' I pointed out that Gatsby literally spent 5 years building a fake identity and stalking her from across the bay, which is creepy not romantic. Two people argued back, but my neighbor Mike finally admitted he never thought of it that way. Has anyone else's book club gotten heated over a classic you just can't stand?

2 comments

2 Comments

shah.olivia1mo agoMost Upvoted

Wait, was Mike the guy who always brings store-bought cookies to book club and claims he baked them? Because that feels like a whole other level of irony here. But seriously, my own club fell apart over "Wuthering Heights" last year when Jenny insisted Heathcliff was just "misunderstood" and I asked if she'd ever had a guy dig up her dead sister's grave to try and see her ghost. The room went dead silent for like 10 solid seconds, and then David dropped his wine glass and we spent the rest of the night scrubbing red stains out of Sarah's rug.

maxm501mo ago

Respectfully, I think your book club is missing the point entirely. The whole novel is about how America itself is built on these beautiful illusions and the tragedy is that Gatsby’s dream is just as fake as the green light. Daisy represents the old money world Gatsby can never truly enter, not a person he actually loved. Gatsby’s greatness is that he kept believing in his dream against all odds, even if the dream itself was hollow and misguided. That devotion to a fantasy is what makes the story so powerful, not any real romance between two people.