Modern Classics Great Gatsby (Penguin Modern Classics)

著者 : F ScottFitzgerald

• Penguin Classic (2000年2月22日発売)

作品紹介・あらすじ

Now the subject of a major new film from director Baz Luhrmann ("Romeo+Juliet", "Moulin Rouge!"), starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan, "The Great Gatsby" is F. Scott Fitzgerald's brilliant fable of the hedonistic excess and tragic reality of 1920s America. This "Penguin Classics" edition is edited with an introduction and notes by Tony Tanner. Young, handsome and fabulously rich, Jay Gatsby is the bright star of the Jazz Age, but as writer Nick Carraway is drawn into the decadent orbit of his Long Island mansion, where the party never seems to end, he finds himself faced by the mystery of Gatsby's origins and desires. Beneath the shimmering surface of his life, Gatsby is hiding a secret: a silent longing that can never be fulfilled. And soon, this destructive obsession will force his world to unravel. In "The Great Gatsby", Fitzgerald brilliantly captures both the disillusionment of post-war America and the moral failure of a society obsessed with wealth and status. But he does more than render the essence of a particular time and place, for - in chronicling Gatsby's tragic pursuit of his dream - Fitzgerald re-creates the universal conflict between illusion and reality.
Like Jay Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) has acquired a mythical status in American literary history, and his masterwork. "The Great Gatsby" is considered by many to be the 'great American novel'. In 1920 he married Zelda Sayre, dubbed 'the first American Flapper', and their traumatic marriage and Zelda's gradual descent into insanity became the leading influence on his writing. As well as many short stories, Fitzgerald wrote five novels "This Side of Paradise", "The Great Gatsby", "The Beautiful and the Damned", "Tender is the Night" and, incomplete at the time of his death, "The Last Tycoon". After his death "The New York Times" said of him that 'in fact and in the literary sense he created a "generation"'. "A classic, perhaps the supreme American novel". (John Carey, "Sunday Times" Books of the Century).

感想・レビュー・書評

[bundokimodokiさんの感想 · 2018年10月29日]

７章は圧巻。視点変更の応酬で、ともすれば単なるメロドラマに堕してしまいそうな話を、一級の悲劇に仕立て上げている。人物の輪郭を浮き上がらせる術も実に見事で、特に２章に出てくるミスター・マッキーの描写（石鹸の泡のくだり）なんかとても脇役の描写とは思えない（マッキーの頬についた泡をハンカチで拭いてあげずにはいられない「私」ことニック・キャラウェイのちょっぴりお節介な性格も同時に浮き上がってくるところがミソ）。個人的に興味を惹かれたのは、ギャツビーが自分の家の庭をデイジーに見せびらかす場面（５章）で、そこの庭に咲いている花は黄水仙、サンザシ、プラム、スミレとなっているのだけれど、花言葉はそれぞれ「愛情の復活を望む」「希望」「忠節」「慎み深さ、あどけない恋」なわけで、この二人の関係を実によく表しているとは思いませんか。というか庭の花の花言葉まで考えてセルフプロデュースしてるギャツビーの微妙な痛さがキャラウェイのお節介魂に火をつけるのだろうな。これは現代だったら絶対薄い本が出てホモホモしい展開になるな。

[ピヨピヨさんの感想 · 2008年4月22日]

アメリカ文学の代表作のひとつ。今更僕が語るまでもない有名な小説ですが、人間の夢や想いに対する儚さ、虚しさの表現の傑出っぷり、そこから来るだろう切ない読後感、僕は好きです。

ギャツビーの「美しい破滅」的生きかた、物事に対する病的な執念を含んだ感覚や身のこなし、話しかた…等、まさに村上春樹文学の原点を見る思いです。