We've mentioned it before but Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" easily could have been included in our reading list for this semester. As we're starting to read "The Wolf of Wall Street," I find myself identifying many connections between the two stories. I found this review of The Great Gatsby from when the film came out last year.
http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-serious-superficiality-of-the-great-gatsby
At the time it helped me sort out the way I felt about the over-glamorized, seductive portrayal of such a classic book. But reading this review with The Wolf of Wall Street in mind, it actually helps me make sense of this book as well. In the quote below, just one of many that stood out to me, the writer could have easily been talking about Jordan Belfort, or even Tom Ripley or Frank Abagnale Jr., any of our characters obsessed with fantasies and aware of people's willingness to believe in them.
"Fitzgerald understood the pleasure of giving in, and he saw people as desperate to give in to nearly anything -- a drink, a person, a story, a feeling, a song, a crowd, an idea. We were especially willing, he thought, to give in to ideas -- to fantasies. "Gatsby" captures, with great vividness, the push and pull of illusion and self-delusion; the danger and thrill of forgetting, lying and fantasizing; the hazards and the indispensability of dreaming and idealization."
YES!
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