Christopher A. Snyder

A fairly well written analysis of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" and how it intertwined with his exposure to Oxford and the tie in with age of the writing and the main character Jay Gatsby. Fitzgerald was for most as much an enigma as his writings and success or lack there of in his lifetime. They will forever be linked to the "Jazz Age" and aftermath of WWI.

In this book Christopher Snyder looks at much of the history and literary giants who came through the prestigious university or were in some way connected. Fitzgerald visited the campus and was influenced by the culture and romance of the institution that led to his writings and influences in these novels. The author connects this with a medieval link of the honor and nature of knighthood. Though it can be meandering at times the book does a good job of illustrating the influence of the college on young men who either marched off to war or wrote about it. Eventually it transformed into the aftermath that became the wandering soles of the jazz age and the Gatsby types that were connected to it.… (mer)

This book loosely- very loosely- ties the fictional Jay Gatsby to Oxford. The author posits that being an ‘Oxford man’ is very important to Gatsby’s image and ability to enter high society; he would not be able to pursue Daisy without this in his background. The author then carries this to show that, were Gatsby a real person (and if the character had really gone to Oxford, which is dubious given some clues in the story) he would have seen certain places, met certain people, and examined certain ideas. Given that, the author then tells us about those people, places, and ideas in detail.

He tells us about the various castes that inhabit Oxford: the athletes, idealists, poets, and enlisted men. He tells us about the medievalism and romanticism of Oxford of the time. And he tells us about Tolkein, Waugh, C.S. Lewis, Woolf, Yeats, Eliot, Huxley, and Churchill, among many others.

The text wanders and goes into great detail. The author seemed intent on showing us every single influence that might have touched Fitzgerald (who was at Oxford with his wife, Zelda, for a few months) and Gatsby, the history of that influence, and possibly the influences brother-in-law. We get how Princeton was set up to be like Oxford, how race was dealt with, the Jazz Age, and even what businesses were run later by Oxford men. It really seemed like he was carrying things a bit far at times.

Because of this, I found some parts of the book very interesting and some, well, less so. The chapter on Tolkein & Lewis I loved, as well as the one on the Jazz age. The one on American Rhodes scholars really lost me a few times, as did the one on Princeton. I suspect many people will wish to pick and choose which chapters to read- although there is so much wandering even inside chapters one risks either missing something really interesting or being bored to tears. Four stars.… (mer)

Well, this book was perfectly brilliant.

The pictures in it were gorgeous, and I was pleasantly surprised at the number of color photos within it. The pages were thick, and the book itself of surprisingly high quality. Along with the photos were a good deal of primary source quotes, sometimes shown in the original language before the translation was provided which was also very gratifying. Some of the photos included were of the actual pages from the annals and lais, which were in such high resolution you could read the documents themselves. How cool is that?

The book gave a really good overview of the evolution of the Arthurian legends, while also including a pretty thorough bibliography at the end. While the book is about a decade out of date now, a good deal of the sources referenced (for instance, translations and commentaries on Mallory) are still useful. Recent archaeological discoveries and the question of Arthur's historicity should not be looked for in this volume, as archaeology is constantly changing, but for the cultural importance of the Arthur myths evolution this book is a pretty fantastic starting place.… (mer)