mia442•1d ago

Question about that hot take on 'The Great Gatsby' being overrated

I sat through a 2 hour book club debate last Tuesday where everyone trashed Gatsby as shallow and unrelatable. But I spent 3 weeks tracking down letters from 1920s readers at a library archive to prove them wrong. Turns out Fitzgerald's own editor thought the green light scene was too sentimental and almost cut it. Why does every modern club assume old novels can't speak to us if we don't immediately get the references? Has anyone else tried digging into historical reception of a classic before judging it?

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the_dylan1d ago

My buddy Sarah once went to a book club where everyone trashed 'Moby Dick' as boring and bloated. She spent a month reading old sailor journals from the 1850s to find out what whalers actually thought, and found pages where they quoted the book during long voyages. One guy wrote that the chapter on whale anatomy helped him survive a storm because it kept his mind busy. Sarah brought those quotes to the club, and a few people actually changed their minds about the book being pointless. I think a lot of readers today forget that these books were written for people living in a very different world, and digging into that context can totally shift how you see them. It's easy to judge from our couch with our phones, but that older reception stuff is gold.