In the Back to School guide in the current issue of The Stranger, we provided spoiler alerts for the big novels so you can flirt with English majors as if you’ve already read them. Here’s the synopsis of The Great Gatsby as published:
The Great Gatsby: A man whose wife is fucking Gatsby shoots Gatsby to death in his swimming pool, and even though tons of assholes used to come to Gatsby’s parties, no one goes to his funeral.
Gah! That is not the plot of The Great Gatsby.
True story: Years ago, someone asked me what my favorite novel was and feeling uncreative I said The Great Gatsby, and the questioner said something like, “What happens in that again?” Lots of symbols and sentences came to mind—the eyes, the eggs, the woman’s breast getting sliced off in a car accident (not entirely off; it dangles from a flap)—but for the life of me I couldn’t remember who was sleeping with whom and who wanted to be sleeping with whom and who was driving the car that got into the accident and who was said to be driving the car even though they weren’t and all that stuff. It’s just complicated, the tight little plot of that perfect little book. But I was humiliated that I couldn’t recite the plot of my “favorite” book, so I went back and reread it JUST TO TEACH MYSELF THE PLOT, so that if anyone asked me again I’d be ready.
Well guess what? I forgot it again, because when the current books editor (Mr. Constant) turned in this synopsis to the former books editor (me)…
The Great Gatsby: George Wilson, a man whose wife is fucking Gatsby, shoots Gatsby to death and commits suicide. Almost nobody attends Gatsby’s funeral.
…I read it carefully, added some stuff, took out some stuff, and meanwhile completely missed the point that Wilson’s wife isn’t fucking Gatsby, Wilson just thinks his wife is fucking Gatsby. She’s actually fucking Tom Buchanan, Daisy’s husband.
We regret the error and apologize if getting the plot wrong has caused harm to your romantic overtures with English majors.
Who was fucking Wilson’s wife is only one of a dozen egregious errors and omissions in that synopsis. Everyone at the stranger who might have at least glanced at that before publication must immediately renounce any claims to being educated, cultured, or at least moderately well-read. Thank you and Good Day. I said Good Day, sir!
I wouldn’t worry. Apparently even English majors can’t remember the plot of the Great Gatsby.
I would give the writer a grade of D.
At best.
Other than that, great issue, even if you didn’t cover the need for spare couches if you attend the UW, cause we like to burn those.
I prefer Jersey Shore
@ 1 Here, here. I have always been partial to Hemingway but I could still come up with a more accurate “synopsis” of what is considered one of the best novels of the 20th century.
Will in Seattle is too charitable; I give the Editor and the Books Editor of this paper a failing grade, for shame.
If anything, being caught bullshitting-while-flirting should help get you past that awkward phase in a hurry–either straight on to hot monkey-sex since it’s obviously what you’re really after, or on to the next prospective partner (a little wiser for the experience) if bullshitting turns out to be a deal-breaker. Yay for speed-dating… I think.
In the off-chance some dating wizard chooses your print-prescribed method of flirtation, the resulting embarrassment would probably be good for ’em.
Wiz: “So yeah, that’s what I think about that.”
Him/her: “Are you sure? Hold on, I have a copy on my iPad. Hm, looks like you’re wrong.”
Wiz: “Okay, fine, I was only using the suggestions in the Stranger to worm my way into getting our genitals together for a meeting of the minds.”
Him/her: “Really? Where does it say that in The Stranger? Oh. I see. Well, I guess I should have figured that out.”
Wiz: “Yeah, sorry.”
Him/her: “No, no, hey, it’s cool, I was snookered into psuedo-intellectual talk predicated on orgasm acquisition… my bad. And, really, the only reason I listened to you fumble was my own lust-based needs. Let me make it up to you by fucking your brains out.”
There are two types of English majors:
a) Those who love literature and language and like to talk about both.
b) Those seeking a Mickey Mouse major to get through a B.A.
Those of type a) will most likely see through your bullshit. Try being literate instead of trying to sound literate. Those of type b) do not give a fuck about your synopsis of Fitzgerald.
What was the point of acting like you care about books? To get laid or something? Just shut up about books and talk about sports or something, OK? It’s sad to watch.
I had an English lit teacher in high school who got wet at the thought of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Granted, most of his books are probably way too sophisticated for the average high school student, but later on I returned to Fitzgerald and found him to be somewhat overrated.
I can’t believe I know so much about an author’s life since I wasn’t very interesting in digging into it in the first place. And all that stuff that romanticizes his loony wife, the rivers of prohibition booze, the extravagance. Yawn. Today, he and his wife would just be candidates for Antabuse and Elavil.
There are a lot of lit scholars – some whom I admire and respect – who adore his books, so I can’t be too uppity about my opinion, and his books and short stories were written more than 70 years ago – so there’s that. One reads Fitzgerald and bases one’s opinions, I suppose, on the fact that his work is of its time.
One thing’s for sure. He’s proof positive that film and literature are two entirely different mediums. No one has ever made a movie of any of his work that has captured the imagination like his books have done.
Remember, in the end, 86 percent of men think women have orgasms, but only 62 percent of women think they had an orgasm.
Probably because men prefer vaginal intercourse, and women are more likely to orgasm if that’s only part of the entire experience.
er, not that the book is really “about” the plot (for me, it’s more about tone and Nick Caraway), but doesn’t Wilson shoot Gatsby because Daisy killed his wife in a hit-and-run while Driving Gatsby’s car?
@12 — Yes, you’re right. But George believes that the person driving the car that struck Myrtle is the person Myrtle was having her affair with.
@12 — As you imply, though, our tense is wrong. The “is” makes it sound like Myrtle is alive by the end of the book. God damn it, we can’t even get one little sentence about how this book ends right.
An old English teacher of mine hated Gatsby. Her synopsis: the story proves that money can’t buy the American Dream. Gatsby wants Daisy to say that she never loved her husband, which she can’t.
stick to dancers and actors, Frizzelle.
By the way, Audible sells a book-on-tape version of the Great Gatsby narrated by Tim Robbins.
Awesome.
They are careless people, writers at the Stranger. They smash up plotlines and make grammatical errors and then retreat back into their booze or their vast collections of porn or whatever it is that keeps them together, and let other people clean up the mess they’ve made.
#12
Yes, Wilson’s wife, who works for the CIA, is run over by Daisy, but Gatsby decides to take the blame for it.
1)the (fantastic) plotting is why it’s impossible to turn Gatsby into a film…
2)your dismissal of history as an unimportant subject of study was stupidly snarky and lazy. Now, we’re doomed to repeat it.
3).001% of Sloggers think the commenting of WiS is essential to the success of Slog. 99.999% of Sloggers know this is not true.
@ 17, very well played!
@16. Tim Robbins’s reading is all hushed and overly momentous sounding. He reads Gatsby like a sufferer of catatonia. Mostly, I couldn’t hear the damn thing–even at maximum volume in my car.
@19 you’re just jealous. I love you too, smoochums.
@16 — agreed. He makes you listen to the story. It’s no good in the background.
17!! Hell yes.
And I lost interest in Gatsby when I heard Bill Gates has “He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it” inscribed around the dome of his library.
I’ve never liked that book, after reading it several times. I sort of liked the 2000 TV version with Paul Rudd, which is not great, but at least its unpretentious. Its a bit alarming to note that Baz Luhrmann is rumored to be planning a version; perhaps it will feature a 45-year-old Nicole Kidman playing the young Daisy, botoxed to the gills? I can almost hear the critic’s knives sharpening…
Skip directly to the last two paragraphs of the book. There’s your fuckin’ Cye-nop-sus.
@23. Because an artist and their achievements should be judged by the personality and popularity of someone entirely different who likes the artist, but has no relation to them, isn’t an artist him or herself, and was born 15 years after the artists death. Who wouldn’t want to be judged that way? Reasonable and insightful! Congratulations!
For as much crap as Wikipedia gets, it still wouldn’t let shit like this stand.
But don’t worry, kid, you’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.