num_pages: 248
description: Berman examines the intellectual and cultural milieu in which TheGreat Gatsby was created--and challenges accepted interpretations ofFitzgerald's greatest novel."The Great Gatsby" and Fitzgerald's World of Ideasfocuses on F. Scott Fitzgerald and the prevailing ideas and valuesthat permeated American society in the late teens and early twenties, providinga vivid portrait of the intellectual and cultural milieu in which TheGreat Gatsby was produced. This new and original reading of Gatsby disclosesFitzgerald's remarkable awareness of the issues of his time and his debtto such philosophers and critics as William James, Josiah Royce, GeorgeSantayana, John Dewey, Walter Lippman, H. L. Mencken, and Edmund Wilson.Ronald Berman's fresh approach considers the meaning of various ideas importantto the for example, those moral qualities governing both socialand individual life. Berman's reading of the text reveals extraordinaryemphases on matters that could productively be described as philosophical-- the nature of friendship, love, and the good life. But the text of thenovel has many echoes, and the same concern with moral issues -- especiallythose issues affecting democratic life - can be found in a number of othertexts of the first quarter of the century. Vigorously debated throughoutFitzgerald's own lifetime, these texts shed a completely new light on theidealism of The Great Gatsby and on the penetrating view it hasof life in a new form of American democracy. A noted Fitzgerald scholar, Berman makes it clear thataccepted interpretations of The Great Gatsby and of Fitzgerald'swork in general must be changed. Berman demonstrates that Fitzgerald wrotewithin a vast dialectic, relating the ideas of the twenties to those ofthe "old America" described in so many of his works. Gatsby, Nick Carraway,and the other characters of Fitzgerald's greatest novel all have to considernot only their relationship to the present but also their distance fromwhat was once a highly meaningful past.
language: English
title: The Great Gatsby and Fitzgerald's World of Ideas
titlecomplete: The Great Gatsby and Fitzgerald's World of Ideas
genres: Literary Criticism
ratings_count: 10
publisher: University Alabama Press