Our book club meeting in the library basement went off the rails over a single line in 'The Great Gatsby'

We were supposed to discuss the whole book, but one person fixated on whether Gatsby's smile was 'one of those rare smiles' or just fake. It turned into a 45 minute argument about author intent versus reader perception. I finally stepped in and suggested we all write down our own one-sentence take on the smile and read them out. It calmed things down, but we never got to the ending. Has your group ever gotten completely stuck on a tiny detail like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

theaellis1h ago

My book club once spent an hour on a comma in a soup recipe...

wendyc6317m ago

Sounds like a great use of time to me.