I am not a book reader. I grew up without that privilege. I’m not a child from the suburbs with both parents that paved the way for me. Now that I have a comfortable life I’m working on myself and trying to read more. I completed some basic books like Catcher in the Rye(good book), The Alchemist (big waste of time), etc just mainstream things that would offend reading-snobs. Anyways. I have a theory, which I will mention later.
Now I’m reading The Great Gatsby just because it’s a classic. Or so Google tells me. It’s a classic, it’s a staple, it’s basic, it’s an easy read, everyone reads it in high-school, etc etc.
I have only finished 1 chapter of this book and it’s a problem. Just skimming through it I can list some words that I HIGHLY DOUBT anyone would know. Levity, privy, quivering, Teutonic, epigram, Georgian Colonial mansion, swank, fractiousness, vista, carriage (not horses btw), languidly, extemporizing, intimation and there’s more. People don’t know these words. I have to check the meaning of a word every 10 seconds. It’s easy with the internet. And I enjoy learning new words, but this isn’t “an easy read” as some people put it. If it’s an easy read then literature is literally your one and only hobby.
Oh and some lines : Conduct may be founded
on the hard rock or the wet marshes but after a certain point
I don’t care what it’s founded on. WHAT THE HELL DOES THIS MEAN?
When I came back from
the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in
uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever – more military language that very few people understand.
So what is my point? My point is this book is difficult. Yet nobody agrees. Why doesn’t anyone agree? Well 5% of the people who don’t agree are full time literature enjoyers, the other 95% are just pretending they know what’s going on. They are more concerned about their image as a book-reader than the actual content. Just skim through a line yep ok got it. I read books. I am smart.
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by malefeministHehexd
8 Comments
You have poor comprehension skills idk what to tell you
… why are you so hostile? I mean, assuming this isn’t ragebait– which is a big assumption— why are you carrying this chip on your shoulder? You seem to have made a lot of decisions about people who are fluent readers, mixed it up with class and upbringing, and labeled them all snobs, but why? Why they need for the anger?
For what it’s worth, I grew up in a family with basically no money but we had lots of books from the library – and they were my entertainment because we didn’t own a TV. We weren’t middle class and we weren’t in the suburbs. But I started reading when I was little and read everything I could get my hands on, and my vocabulary was large by the time I reached Gatsby. And so what? It didn’t make me better than anyone else. I didn’t think it did. It just meant that I knew a lot of words.
A lot of people, and most readers, are going to know most of the words that you mentioned. No one is faking it. Some of the words are familiar from spoken vocabulary – quivering, for instance, and swank (more UK). A lot of those words I would’ve known because they had a giant rack of free Regency romances at our local library and my best friend and I read all of them – whether you’re talking about being privy to a secret or visiting the privy, we would’ve known both those meanings by ninth grade or so.
Lots of people still Austen and Bronte. They’ll know those words.
And if you don’t, so what? It’s not worth getting angry about. Other people learned those words from other books, you can learn those words from Gatsby.
I’d recommend reading on an e-reader so you can tap the word for a definition.
Gotta be troll post. I read this book when I was 14. Next theyll tell me Gatsby wasnt even that great!
The Great Gatsby was written nearly 100 years ago. It’s unreasonable to expect the vocabulary of the time to exactly match your own. Much of the phrasing is almost archaic, people just don’t talk like that now.
Having said that, I feel a lot of those terms are not uncommon but then I grew up reading, so I went in with an advantage. I suspect that you will expand your vocabulary the more you read. I don’t know if that will change your appreciation of the book or not, but you’ll come across more varied vocabulary reading fiction that you will comes across in your everyday life, especially fiction from different eras. It’s a great reason to read as a hobby!
The characters are all boring and unlikeable
“Carriage” means butt, aka bottom, aka ass. “She’s got a nice carriage.”
I know the rest of the words too. DM if you want help.
Speaking of privilege, being so heated over this is pretty privileged lmao. Some people have real problems.