Our book club meeting in the library basement went off the rails over a single line in 'The Great Gatsby'

Oscar Rivera · 2026-03-09T19:05:07.106084+00:00

We were supposed to discuss the whole book, but one person fixated on whether Gatsby's smile was 'one of those rare smiles' or just fake. It turned into a 45 minute argument about author intent versus reader perception. I finally stepped in and suggested we all write down our own one-sentence take on the smile and read them out. It calmed things down, but we never got to the ending. Has your group ever gotten completely stuck on a tiny detail like that?

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Our book club meeting in the library basement went off the rails over a single line in 'The Great Gatsby' | Book Club Debates - The Community Guide