More Good Books: A Classic That Says a Lot about Today

I read The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fiztgerals for the first time  decades ago, and was not much impressed.  Too shallow, about people who really don't matter in the great scheme of things, I thought then.  But with time I began to see it as a novel with resonances that run deep in American culture and in capitalist mythology.  Definitely worth revisiting at this time when the extremely wealthy atre trying so hard to make control the world to their advantage.  See Paul Krugman today on the financial deal worked out this week in the US, if you have any question about that.

He writes: "Democrats want to preserve the legacy of the New Deal and the Great Society — Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — and add to them what every other advanced country has: a more or less universal guarantee of essential health care. Republicans want to roll all of that back, making room for drastically lower taxes on the wealthy. Yes, it’s essentially a class war."

The photos, by the way, are of F. Scott and his Zelda, Robert Redford and Mia Farrow playing Gatsby and Daisy in 1974 and Leonardo Dicaprio and Carey Mulligan in the same roles in the remake scheduled for release next May.