The story is thin, the underlying themes are a bit richer, but it is the style that is extraordinary. I have highlighted many, many sentences just for their delightful form, rich descriptiveness and poignant observational value.
Other than that, the place in time and bottled up description of the roaring 20s are other reasons people keep referring to it.
“Intermittently she caught the gist of his sentences and supplied the rest from her subconscious, as one picks up the striking of a clock in the middle with only the rhythm of the first uncounted strokes lingering in the mind.”
That was a favourite sentence.
I'm sort of neutral about The Great Gatsby. It's not my favorite but I think it's become a popular testament to its era. Because that era in many ways is the dawning of our own, it has special relevance.
Evocative, overwrought, comically bad in hindsight—in a book about the 1920s.
Surprises me, as Fitzgerald has about the least monotonous prose of any author I've read. It's about as varied as Vonnegut, to me.
I don't really know what it means to read visually, but I read about of a quarter of Tender is the Night out loud to myself, which would be 'audio reading', if anything.