What's funny to me — and I mean this sincerely, not as a troll — almost all the examples of good writing in Gatsby in this thread and the target article seem overwrought to me. If you'd present them to me out of context, I'd think they were examples of comically bad writing.

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.