Review: This Audiobook Would Be Way Better If the Narrator Wasn’t Also Running Errands

Having not visited many of the great American novels since high school, I’ve decided to dive back into F. Scott Fitzgerald’s gilded age classic, The Great Gatsby. Of course, with my time, money, and attention span at a minimum, I opted for “reading” this essential work via a free audiobook ripped from YouTube.

However, I’m 86% certain that Fitzgerald never references a “$5 chicken meal deal from the McValue Menu,” right? For one, McDonald’s didn’t exist back then. And also, $5 for a chicken meal seems exorbitant for the roaring ‘20s, even by Gatsby’s lavish standard.

I’m starting to think that this is not part of the book and the narrator was just ordering lunch.

I tried to give the benefit of the doubt. Maybe this was an “immersive experience” that added a modern touch. The narrator is bringing the 1920s to life with some everyday realism. Or perhaps, it’s a stylistic choice and the narrator’s pathetic existence is meant to mirror Gatsby compensating for his emptiness and longing by presenting an extravagant facade of contentment.

But, then the narrator gets into a fistfight after the cashier caught him using a water cup for some fountain Sprite.

Unfortunately, many pivotal scenes are marred by this sort of needless buffoonery. Nick Carraway’s first meeting with the mysterious Jay Gatsby, for instance, is followed by 10 minutes of lip smacking, straw sucking, and the general ambience of a McDonald’s as the narrator noisily eats his meal.

And the eloquent description of New York is derailed by a lengthy, vitriolic rant about how they don’t let you vape in the Time Square M&M store.

It wouldn’t have been so terrible if he just read the book verbatim. You know, the bare minimum of what you’re supposed to do as an audiobook narrator. But instead, he’s calling Gatsby a “simp” and a “cuck,” as well as skipping vital sequences by saying “you guys get it, right?”

The audiobook clocks in at a gargantuan 14 hours. But listeners should be aware that a sex-hour chunk of that is snoring after the narrator passes out. At one point you can then hear him waking up and uttering “shit, shit, shit, shit” upon realizing his phone was still recording.

Oh my God. Was that a toilet flush? Seriously, just pause it, dude. Sure, it’s not like we can smell anything, but it feels dirty and wrong that Myrtle Wilson’s death is punctuated by the sounds of your “eliminations.”

The narrator did show some appropriate emotion as Nick reflected on the green light at Daisy’s dock. However, it also sounded like he was trying to return a Spongebob Squarepants blind box at Target. “My kid really wanted Mr. Krabs,” the narrator’s voice quivered. But the cashier refused, fully aware that there was no kid and the toy was his.

“So we beat on, boats against the…Whatever, fuck it.” In another bold, likely unintentional choice, the audiobook does not end on this butchered version of the final line of the novel, but instead after a few hours of the narrator softly crying in his car until his phone battery presumably died.

While it is certainly unorthodox, in a way, isn’t this pitiful display of loneliness a perfect encapsulation of the themes of The Great Gatsby? Honestly, I have no clue. This whole thing was a shit show from start to finish.