中西部小子盖茨比到东部闯荡一夕致富，他在自己的豪宅夜夜宴客，俨然慷慨荒唐的富豪大亨，他梦幻地看着纽约长岛上一座闪着绿光的灯塔，寻觅着他梦寐以求的女人黛西。他的邻居、也是故事的叙事者尼克，眼看着盖茨比的宾客们接受他的招待却冷漠无情，眼看着盖茨比奋力追求那腐败的虚华。盖兹比最后的结局，让尼克对东部浮华的名流生活梦碎，宛如看着繁华楼起再看着它楼塌。

《了不起的盖茨比》作者弗·司各特·菲茨杰拉德起落颠沛的人生正是盖茨比的写照，他对财富的想法与他对人生诗意浪漫的情感，透过盖茨比表现出美国文化最初的勇敢追梦形象。

《了不起的盖茨比》讲述了一个发生在20世纪20年代美国的悲凉故事。事物永远不是表面上看到的样子，看似纵情声色的盖茨比，内心却只钟情于黛西一人；而被盖茨比奉为女神的黛西却早已面目全非，拾不得一点当初的影子。繁华的大都市里尽是喧嚣、冷漠和虚情假意。这是一出“爵士时代”的悲歌，纸醉金迷的欢愉随风而逝，只留下幻灭的永恒。

《了不起的盖茨比》由弗·司各特·菲茨杰拉德所著。

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit. 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. 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; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction - Gatsby who represented everything for which I have an Unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the "creative temperament" - it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person, and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No - Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.

My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this middle- western city for three generations. The Carraways are something of a clan and we have a tradition that we're descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather's brother who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War and started the wholesale hardware business that my father carries on today.

I never saw this great-uncle but I'm supposed to look like him - With special reference to the rather hard-boiled painting that hangs in Father's office. I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter ofa, century after my father, and a little later I participated in that delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War. I enjoyed the counter-raid so thoroughly that I came back restless. Instead of being the warm center of the world the middle-west now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe - so I decided to go east and learn the bond business. Everybody I knew was in the bond business so I supposed it could support one more single man. All my aunts and uncles talked it over as if they were choosing a prep-school for me and finally said, "Why-ye-es" with very grave, hesitant faces. Father agreed to finance me for a year and after various delays I came east, permanently, I thought, in the spring of twenty-two.

The practical thing was to find rooms in the city but it was a warm season and I had just left a country of wide lawns and friendly trees, so when a young man at the office suggested that we take a house together in a commuting town it sounded like a great idea. He found the house, a weather beaten cardboard bungalow3 at eighty a month, but at the last minute the firm ordered him to Washington and I went out to the country alone. I had a dog, at least I had him for a few days until he ran away, and an old Dodge and a Finnish woman who made my bed and cooked breakfast and muttered Finnish wisdom to herself over the electric stove.

It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man, more recently arrived than I, stopped me on the road.

"How do you get to West Egg village?" he asked helplessly.

I told him. And as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler. He had casually conferred on me the freedom of the neighborhood.

And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees -just as things grow in fast movies - I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.

There was so much to read for one thing and so much fine health to be pulled down out of the young breath-giving air. I bought a dozen volumes on banking and credit and investment securities and they stood on my shelf in red and gold like new money from the mint, promising to unfold the shining secrets that only Midas and Morgan and Maecenas knew. And I had the high intention of reading many other books besides. I was rather literary in college - one year I wrote a series of very solemn and obvious editorials for the "Yale News" - and now I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most limited of all specialists, the "well-rounded man." This isn't just an epigram - life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.

It was a matter of chance that I should have rented a house in one of the strangest communities in North America. It was on that slender riotous island which extends itself due east of New York and where there are, among other natural curiosities, two unusual formations of land.

P2-4

经典的英文名著因其历百世而不衰以及难以超越的特性，一直以来被一代又一代的读者传阅着。可是在这浩瀚无边的经典中徜徉，即便是如饥似渴地阅读，也很难将所有经典通读吸收。因此“四季经典书屋”系列通过调查研究，帮助读者从众多经典名著中精选出十二部经典中的经典。时光如白驹过隙，珍惜时光，把生命中宝贵的阅读时间用来阅读最值得品味、学习的作品，您的生命也将变得更加有价值！

与其说“四季经典书屋”系列将最经典的十二部原著贴上了“春夏秋冬”的标签，不如说文学本身是有灵魂的，就像四季——个性分明，没有好与坏，只是如“酸甜苦辣”般滋味万千，等待读者去体味，随着四季去畅想。

春，代表着清新的气息与温柔的力量，经历了一冬的压抑，终于将积聚的力量在春天绽放成各种美丽，仿佛一切都可以从头开始。爱隋就好比是春天。无论是《简·爱》里那历经“严寒”的爱情，抑或是《傲慢与偏见》和《理智与情感》里那田园般的贵族爱情，都是让人无比期待与向往的，历经曲折与磨难也在所不惜。夏，代表着热情怒放，敢爱敢恨，轰轰烈烈。在这里有爱恨情仇、五味杂陈的《呼啸山庄》，有战火纷飞中的爱情故事《飘》，还有《双城记》——大革命中的为爱献身。秋，代表着恬静、喜悦与丰收。烈日骄阳渐渐减弱了自身的气势，万物又都重归平和。让我们跟随梭罗一起在《瓦尔登湖》湖畔体味湖光山色的美好，思索人生的真谛；从《欧·亨利短篇小说选》中阅尽小人物的生活，在平凡中发人深省；在《鲁滨逊漂流记》那“世外桃源”般的荒岛隐居，远离尘嚣，静观潮起潮落。冬，代表着凄凉，在凄凉中也蕴含着某种无法击倒的坚强和坚韧不拔的毅力。像《老人与海》中的老人在恶劣环境下苦苦坚持，最后用实际行动证明了“人可以被毁灭，但不可以被打败。”；《了不起的盖茨比》中描绘的梦想从璀璨走向幻灭；《1984》刻画的人类在集权主义下的生存状态，为后世拉响了永世的警钟。

故事有读完的时候，但是感悟会随着四季更迭而愈加成熟，愈加深刻。本系列丛书不会随时光流转而褪色，可以成为您品味一生的经典。我们除了为您呈现上最原汁原味的内容，书内还附有精美的插图以及可能会辅助您阅读的注释，力求将名著打造到极致，伴随您的成长。

四季更迭不停息，经典名著不厌品！