In the comments sectkion , there is a link to the storyboards for Michael Bay's THER GREAT GATSBY that makes the original post seem like high art. Check it out at http://www.cracked.com/blog/storyboards-from-michael-bays-the-great-gatsby/
No possible reading of the book, however stupid, could possibly conclude that.
I'm afraid Ebert is wrong. There are a lot of very stupid people out there (granted, most of them don't read) now being 'nourished' on reality television (so called) and Twitter.
It puts me in mind of the rewrites of Shakespeare that took place in the 18th century. Did you know that for over 100 years, most people read a version of King Lear in which Cordelia is saved and reunited with her father at the end?
Anyway, as usual, Roger says it better than I ever could--
There is no purpose in "reading" The Great Gatsby unless you actually read it. Fitzgerald's novel is not about a story. It is about how the story is told. Its poetry, its message, its evocation of Gatsby's lost American dream, is expressed in Fitzgerald's style--in the precise words he choose to write what some consider the great American novel. Unless you have read them, you have not read the book at all.
Except...it turns out that this is an ESL text. And, while the language in the synopsizing/retelling is flat, the fact that the rewriter poses the question, rather than makes a statement, does get across a hint of the sense of the work. Though (part of) Ebert's eventual question, why do a dumbed-down GATSBY rather than, as he doesn't ask, simply a simple adult story (he suggests children's lit, which might or might not fly with relatively practical adults) is valid.
5 comments:
In the comments sectkion , there is a link to the storyboards for Michael Bay's THER GREAT GATSBY that makes the original post seem like high art.
Check it out at http://www.cracked.com/blog/storyboards-from-michael-bays-the-great-gatsby/
This is why every year professors have to reinvent a language to talk to their writing students.
There's no sense of anything being passed on, just picked over until all you have left are the rotten bones of what was.
OMG indeed - also WTF?
No possible reading of the book, however stupid, could possibly conclude that.
I'm afraid Ebert is wrong. There are a lot of very stupid people out there (granted, most of them don't read) now being 'nourished' on reality television (so called) and Twitter.
Things can - and probably will - get worse.
Jeff
It puts me in mind of the rewrites of Shakespeare that took place in the 18th century. Did you know that for over 100 years, most people read a version of King Lear in which Cordelia is saved and reunited with her father at the end?
Anyway, as usual, Roger says it better than I ever could--
There is no purpose in "reading" The Great Gatsby unless you actually read it. Fitzgerald's novel is not about a story. It is about how the story is told. Its poetry, its message, its evocation of Gatsby's lost American dream, is expressed in Fitzgerald's style--in the precise words he choose to write what some consider the great American novel. Unless you have read them, you have not read the book at all.
Except...it turns out that this is an ESL text. And, while the language in the synopsizing/retelling is flat, the fact that the rewriter poses the question, rather than makes a statement, does get across a hint of the sense of the work. Though (part of) Ebert's eventual question, why do a dumbed-down GATSBY rather than, as he doesn't ask, simply a simple adult story (he suggests children's lit, which might or might not fly with relatively practical adults) is valid.
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