3/15/22

I got a personal message on Goodreads the other day by somebody spruiking his new book site. It was great, he said, you can chat to people about books on it. After making the obvious point that he was telling me that on a site where people chat about books, he enthusiastically assured me that if I just went and had a look, I'd see....

So I did. Book-talks.com You need a login to see chat rooms, but you can see books and their blurbs without that. I zeroed in on The Great Gatsby on account of how it's more or less my favourite book. And this is what I read:

The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel composed by American creator F. Scott Fitzgerald that follows a cast of characters living in the anecdotal towns of West Egg and East Egg on prosperous Long Island in the late spring of 1922. The story essentially concerns the youthful and baffling mogul Jay Gatsby and his eccentric energy and fixation on the excellent previous debutante Daisy Buchanan. The Great Gatsby investigates topics of debauchery, vision, protection from change, social change and abundance, making a representation of the Roaring Twenties that has been depicted as a useful example in regards to the American Dream.

Something odd is going on here. It's either been written by a non-native person with a thesaurus...or an algorithm? I put a sentence into google and discovered the answer.

The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel written by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald that follows a cast of characters living in the fictional towns of West Egg and East Egg on prosperous Long Island in the summer of 1922. Many literary critics consider The Great Gatsby to be one of the greatest novels ever written.[1][2][3][4]

The story of the book primarily concerns the young and mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and his quixotic passion and obsession with the beautiful former debutante Daisy Buchanan. Considered to be Fitzgerald's magnum opus, The Great Gatsby explores themes of decadence, idealism, resistance to change, social upheaval and excess, creating a portrait of the Roaring Twenties that has been described as a cautionary[a] tale regarding the American Dream.[5][6]

The blurb has been taken lock stock and barrel from wiki's The Great Gatsby entry and a thesaurus loving algorithm has changed some words to make it 'original'. The comparisons between the two are hilarious. It would make a nice lesson for school kids on understanding what a thesaurus is and the dangers of using it.

The Fourth Edition (1977) by Robert L. Chapman, retains the wonderful 1852 Preface by P. M. Roget:
"But in a work of this nature, where perfection is placed at so great a distance, I have thought it best to limit my ambition to that moderate share of merit which it may claim in its present form; trusting to the indulgence of those for whose benefit it is intended, and to the candor of critics who, while they find it easy to detect faults, can at the same time duly appreciate difficulties." ( )

Chapman is the best editor of thesauri. ( )

1317 p.