Category Archive: Classic Books
The Great Gatsby
Grave Fitzgeralds (Image courtesy of JayHenry)
(by F. Scott Fitzgerald) The Great American Novel is an absolute synthesis of all that’s great and rotten at the height of the Yankee century. America is so accomplished and competitive that one tends to overlook the result: a defeated majority. Hence the American theme of ‘starting over’ in a different place, exemplified in the go-west mantra of the 1800s and the eastern push of the 20th century. Gatsby emblematised this push, a doughboy made ‘good’ in the new desert of Dr T.J Eckleburg’s New York. Born 1896 in Minnesota, F.S.F. grew into a world of American hegemony but dreamed…
Continue Reading →The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
(by James Hogg) The protagonist, Robert Wringhim, finds himself spiraling deeper into a vortex of evil. Luckily there’s a mysterious but nice young chap to ‘guide’ him on his way. A towering, fascinating ‘mystery’ novel, revealing how dangerous it is to mix Calvinism and Old Scratch.
Continue Reading →Nostromo
(by Joseph Conrad) Conrad’s robust, sinewy and subtle story of silver madness is the best thing he ever did.
Continue Reading →The Moon and Sixpence
(by W. Somerset Maugham) W struggled to create a genuine primitive but he comes close with Charles Strickland, a nasty and tormented artist, based on Paul Gauguin (born 7 June 1848, died 8 May 1903 in Polynesia). Strickland’s exchanges with the Maugham-like narrator are great fun. “Don’t you care whether you paint well or badly?” “I don’t. I want only to paint what I see.”
Continue Reading →Middlemarch
(by George Eliot) Honestly, you just want to smash Dorothea Brookes’ face in.
Continue Reading →