Gatsby
Fitzgerald was the Keats of early twentieth century prose writers: everything he said, he said more beautifully than anyone else could. A first reading of The Great Gatsby is like a first visit to Europe: you're so anxious to see everything that you rush ahead, missing countless wonders along the way. Fitzgerald's narrative style is so fluid you're carried along effortlessly, but the way he describes things is relentlessly brilliant. You do yourself a favor by slowing down and enjoying the ride. Daisy's voice, for instance, "was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again." Tom was "one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterwards savours of anti-climax." When dinner was announced, Tom took Nick's arm and "compelled" him from the room "as though he were moving a checker to another squar...