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The Great Gatsby

January 01, 1970

This article is about the novel. For other uses, see The Great Gatsby (disambiguation).

The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in the Jazz Age on Long Island, near New York City, the novel depicts first-person narrator Nick Carraway's interactions with mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and Gatsby's obsession to reunite with his former lover, Daisy Buchanan.

The Great Gatsby
The front dust jacket art of the first edition, known as Celestial Eyes
AuthorF. Scott Fitzgerald
Cover artistFrancis Cugat
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
GenreTragedy
PublishedApril 10, 1925
PublisherCharles Scribner's Sons
Media typePrint (hardcover & paperback)
Preceded byThe Beautiful and Damned (1922) 
Followed byTender Is the Night (1934) 
TextThe Great Gatsby at Wikisource

The novel was inspired by a youthful romance Fitzgerald had with socialite Ginevra King, and the riotous parties he attended on Long Island's North Shore in 1922. Following a move to the French Riviera, Fitzgerald completed a rough draft of the novel in 1924. He submitted it to editor Maxwell Perkins, who persuaded Fitzgerald to revise the work over the following winter. After making revisions, Fitzgerald was satisfied with the text, but remained ambivalent about the book's title and considered several alternatives. Painter Francis Cugat's dust jacket art, named Celestial Eyes, greatly impressed Fitzgerald, and he incorporated its imagery into the novel.

After its publication by Scribner's in April 1925, The Great Gatsby received generally favorable reviews, though some literary critics believed it did not equal Fitzgerald's previous efforts. Compared to his earlier novels, This Side of Paradise (1920) and The Beautiful and Damned (1922), the novel was a commercial disappointment. It sold fewer than 20,000 copies by October, and Fitzgerald's hopes of a monetary windfall from the novel were unrealized. When the author died in 1940, he believed himself to be a failure and his work forgotten.

During World War II, the novel experienced an abrupt surge in popularity when the Council on Books in Wartime distributed free copies to American soldiers serving overseas. This new-found popularity launched a critical and scholarly re-examination, and the work soon became a core part of most American high school curricula and a part of American popular culture. Numerous stage and film adaptations followed in the subsequent decades.

Gatsby continues to attract popular and scholarly attention. Scholars emphasize the novel's treatment of social class, inherited versus self-made wealth, gender, race, and environmentalism, and its cynical attitude towards the American Dream. The Great Gatsby is widely considered to be a literary masterpiece and a contender for the title of the Great American Novel.

Historical and biographical context edit

Further information: Jazz Age and Prohibition in the United States

 
 
F. Scott Fitzgerald's romance and life-long obsession with socialite Ginevra King informed the plot of the novel. King was fêted in the press as among Chicago's most desirable debutantes and inspired the character of Daisy Buchanan.

Set on the prosperous Long Island of 1922, The Great Gatsby provides a critical social history of Prohibition-era America during the Jazz Age.[a] F. Scott Fitzgerald's fictional narrative fully renders that period—known for its jazz music,[2] economic prosperity,[3] flapper culture,[4] libertine mores,[3] rebellious youth,[5] and ubiquitous speakeasies. Fitzgerald uses many of these 1920s societal developments to tell his story, from simple details like petting in automobiles to broader themes such as bootlegging as the illicit source of Gatsby's fortune.[6][7]

Fitzgerald conveys the hedonism of Jazz Age society by placing a relatable plotline within the historical context of the most raucous and flashiest era in American history.[3][8] In Fitzgerald's eyes, the era represented a morally permissive time when Americans of all ages became disillusioned with prevailing social norms and obsessed with pleasure-seeking.[9] Fitzgerald himself had a certain ambivalence towards the Jazz Age, an era whose themes he would later regard as reflective of events in his own life.[10]

The Great Gatsby reflects various events in Fitzgerald's youth.[11] He was a young Midwesterner from Minnesota. Like the novel's narrator who went to Yale, he was educated at an Ivy League school, Princeton.[12] There the 18-year-old Fitzgerald met Ginevra King, a 16-year-old socialite with whom he fell deeply in love.[13][14] Although Ginevra was madly in love with him,[15] her upper-class family openly discouraged his courtship of their daughter because of his lower-class status, and her father purportedly told him that "poor boys shouldn't think of marrying rich girls".[16]

Rejected by Ginevra's family as a suitor because of his lack of financial prospects, a suicidal Fitzgerald enlisted in the United States Army amid World War I and was commissioned as a second lieutenant.[17][18] While awaiting deployment to the Western front where he hoped to die in combat,[18] he was stationed at Camp Sheridan in Montgomery, Alabama, where he met Zelda Sayre, a vivacious 17-year-old Southern belle.[19] After learning that Ginevra had married wealthy Chicago businessman William "Bill" Mitchell, Fitzgerald asked Zelda to marry him.[20] Zelda agreed but postponed their marriage until he became financially successful.[21][22] Fitzgerald is thus similar to Jay Gatsby in that he became engaged while a military officer stationed far from home and then sought immense wealth in order to provide for the lifestyle to which his fiancée had become accustomed.[b][26][27]

After his success as a short-story writer and as a novelist, Fitzgerald married Zelda in New York City, and the newly-wed couple soon relocated to Long Island.[28] Despite enjoying the exclusive Long Island milieu, Fitzgerald quietly disapproved of the extravagant parties,[29] and the wealthy persons he encountered often disappointed him.[30] While striving to emulate the rich, he found their privileged lifestyle to be morally disquieting.[31][32] Although Fitzgerald—like Gatsby—had always admired the rich, he nonetheless possessed a smoldering resentment towards them.[32]

Plot summary edit

 
George Wilson and his wife Myrtle live in the "valley of ashes", a refuse dump (shown in the above photograph) historically located in New York City during the 1920s. Today, the area is Flushing Meadows–Corona Park.

In spring 1922, Nick Carraway—a Yale alumnus from the Midwest and a World War I veteran—journeys to New York City to obtain employment as a bond salesman. He rents a bungalow in the Long Island village of West Egg, next to a luxurious estate inhabited by Jay Gatsby, an enigmatic multi-millionaire who hosts dazzling soirées yet doesn't partake in them.

One evening, Nick dines with a distant cousin, Daisy Buchanan, in the old money town of East Egg. Daisy is married to Tom Buchanan, formerly a Yale football star whom Nick knew during his college days. The couple has recently relocated from Chicago to a mansion directly across the bay from Gatsby's estate. There, Nick encounters Jordan Baker, an insolent flapper and golf champion who is a childhood friend of Daisy's. Jordan confides to Nick that Tom keeps a mistress, Myrtle Wilson, who brazenly telephones him at his home and who lives in the "valley of ashes", a sprawling refuse dump.[33] That evening, Nick sees Gatsby standing alone on his lawn, staring at a green light across the bay.

Days later, Nick reluctantly accompanies a drunken and agitated Tom to New York City by train. En route, they stop at a garage inhabited by mechanic George Wilson and his wife Myrtle. Myrtle joins them, and the trio proceed to a small New York apartment that Tom has rented for trysts with her. Guests arrive and a party ensues, which ends with Tom slapping Myrtle and breaking her nose after she mentions Daisy.

One morning, Nick receives a formal invitation to a party at Gatsby's mansion. Once there, Nick is embarrassed that he recognizes no one and begins drinking heavily until he encounters Jordan. While chatting with her, he is approached by a man who introduces himself as Jay Gatsby and insists that both he and Nick served in the 3rd Infantry Division[c] during the war. Gatsby attempts to ingratiate himself with Nick and when Nick leaves the party, he notices Gatsby watching him.

 
The confrontation between Gatsby and Tom occurs in the twenty-story Plaza Hotel, a château-like edifice with an architectural style inspired by the French Renaissance.

In late July, Nick and Gatsby have lunch at a speakeasy. Gatsby tries impressing Nick with tales of his war heroism and his Oxford days. Afterward, Nick meets Jordan again at the Plaza Hotel. Jordan reveals that Gatsby and Daisy met around 1917 when Gatsby was an officer in the American Expeditionary Forces. They fell in love, but when Gatsby was deployed overseas, Daisy reluctantly married Tom. Gatsby hopes that his newfound wealth and dazzling parties will make Daisy reconsider. Gatsby uses Nick to stage a reunion with Daisy, and the two embark upon an affair.

In September, Tom discovers the affair when Daisy carelessly addresses Gatsby with unabashed intimacy in front of him. Later, at a Plaza Hotel suite, Gatsby and Tom argue about the affair. Gatsby insists Daisy declare that she never loved Tom. Daisy claims she loves Tom and Gatsby, upsetting both. Tom reveals Gatsby is a swindler whose money comes from bootlegging alcohol. Upon hearing this, Daisy chooses to stay with Tom. Tom scornfully tells Gatsby to drive her home, knowing that Daisy will never leave him.

While returning to East Egg, Gatsby and Daisy drive by Wilson's garage and their car strikes Myrtle, killing her instantly. Later Gatsby reveals to Nick that Daisy was driving the car, but that he intends to take the blame for the accident to protect her. Nick urges Gatsby to flee to avoid prosecution, but he refuses. After Tom tells George that Gatsby owns the car that struck Myrtle, a distraught George assumes the owner of the vehicle must be Myrtle's lover. George fatally shoots Gatsby in his mansion's swimming pool, then kills himself.

Several days after Gatsby's murder, his father Henry Gatz arrives for the sparsely attended funeral. After Gatsby's death, Nick comes to hate New York and decides that Gatsby, Daisy, Tom, and he were all Midwesterners unsuited to Eastern life.[d] Nick encounters Tom and initially refuses to shake his hand. Tom admits he was the one who told George that Gatsby owned the vehicle that killed Myrtle. Before returning to the Midwest, Nick returns to Gatsby's mansion and stares across the bay at the green light emanating from the end of Daisy's dock.

Major characters edit

 
Edith Cummings, a premier amateur golfer, inspired the character of Jordan Baker. A friend of Ginevra King, she was one of Chicago's famous debutantes in the Jazz Age.
  • Nick Carraway – a Yale University alumnus from the Midwest, a World War I veteran, and a newly arrived resident of West Egg, age 29 (later 30) who serves as the first-person narrator. He is Gatsby's neighbor and a bond salesman. Carraway is easy-going and optimistic, although this latter quality fades as the novel progresses. He ultimately returns to the Midwest after despairing of the decadence and indifference of the eastern United States.[35]
  • Jay Gatsby (originally James "Jimmy" Gatz) – a young, mysterious millionaire with shady business connections (later revealed to be a bootlegger), originally from North Dakota. During World War I, when he was a young military officer stationed at the United States Army's Camp Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky, Gatsby encountered the love of his life, the debutante Daisy Buchanan. Later, after the war, he studied briefly at Trinity College, Oxford, in England.[36] According to Fitzgerald's wife Zelda, he partly based Gatsby on their enigmatic Long Island neighbor, Max Gerlach.[37] A military veteran, Gerlach became a self-made millionaire due to his bootlegging endeavors and was fond of using the phrase "old sport" in his letters to Fitzgerald.[38]
  • Daisy Buchanan – a shallow, self-absorbed, and young debutante and socialite from Louisville, Kentucky, identified as a flapper.[39] She is Nick's second cousin, once removed, and the wife of Tom Buchanan. Before marrying Tom, Daisy had a romantic relationship with Gatsby. Her choice between Gatsby and Tom is one of the novel's central conflicts. Fitzgerald's romance and life-long obsession with Ginevra King inspired the character of Daisy.[13][40][41]
  • Thomas "Tom" Buchanan – Daisy's husband, a millionaire who lives in East Egg. Tom is an imposing man of muscular build with a gruff voice and contemptuous demeanor.[42] He was a football star at Yale and is a white supremacist.[43] Among other literary models,[e] Buchanan has certain parallels with William "Bill" Mitchell, the Chicago businessman who married Ginevra King.[45] Buchanan and Mitchell were both Chicagoans with an interest in polo.[45] Also, like Ginevra's father Charles King whom Fitzgerald resented, Buchanan is an imperious Yale man and polo player from Lake Forest, Illinois.[46]
  • Jordan Baker – an amateur golfer with a sarcastic streak and an aloof attitude, and Daisy's long-time friend. She is Nick Carraway's girlfriend for most of the novel, though they grow apart towards the end. She has a shady reputation because of rumors that she had cheated in a tournament, which harmed her reputation both socially and as a golfer. Fitzgerald based Jordan on Ginevra's friend Edith Cummings,[47] a premier amateur golfer known in the press as "The Fairway Flapper".[48] Unlike Jordan Baker, Cummings was never suspected of cheating.[49] The character's name is a play on two popular automobile brands, the Jordan Motor Car Company and the Baker Motor Vehicle, both of Cleveland, Ohio,[50] alluding to Jordan's "fast" reputation and the new freedom presented to American women, especially flappers, in the 1920s.[51][52][53]
  • George B. Wilson – a mechanic and owner of a garage. He is disliked by both his wife, Myrtle Wilson, and Tom Buchanan, who describes him as "so dumb he doesn't know he's alive".[54] At the end of the novel, George kills Gatsby, wrongly believing he had been driving the car that killed Myrtle, and then kills himself.[55]
  • Myrtle Wilson – George's wife and Tom Buchanan's mistress. Myrtle, who possesses a fierce vitality,[56] is desperate to find refuge from her disappointing marriage.[57] She is accidentally killed by Gatsby's car, as she mistakenly thinks Tom is still driving it and runs after it.[58]

Writing and production edit

 
The now-demolished Beacon Towers partly served as an inspiration for Gatsby's home.
 
Oheka Castle was another North Shore inspiration for the novel's setting.

Fitzgerald began outlining his third novel in June 1922.[7] He longed to produce an exquisite work that was beautiful and intricately patterned,[59] but the troubled production of his stage play The Vegetable repeatedly interrupted his progress.[60] The play flopped, and Fitzgerald wrote magazine stories that winter to pay debts incurred by its production.[61] He viewed these stories as all worthless,[60] although included among them was "Winter Dreams", which Fitzgerald described as his first attempt at the Gatsby idea.[62] "The whole idea of Gatsby", he later explained to a friend, "is the unfairness of a poor young man not being able to marry a girl with money. This theme comes up again and again because I lived it".[63]

In October 1922, after the birth of their only child, Frances Scott "Scottie" Fitzgerald, the Fitzgeralds moved to Great Neck, New York, on Long Island.[64] Their neighbors in Great Neck included such newly wealthy personages as writer Ring Lardner, actor Lew Fields and comedian Ed Wynn.[7] These figures were all considered to be nouveau riche, unlike those who came from Manhasset Neck, which sat across the bay from Great Neck—places that were home to many of New York's wealthiest established families.[65] This real-life juxtaposition gave Fitzgerald his idea for "West Egg" and "East Egg". In the novel, Great Neck (Kings Point) became the "new money" peninsula of West Egg and Port Washington (Sands Point) became the "old money" East Egg.[65] Several Gold Coast mansions in the area served as inspiration for Gatsby's estate including Land's End,[66] Oheka Castle,[67] and the since-demolished Beacon Towers.[68]

While living on Long Island, the Fitzgeralds' enigmatic neighbor was Max Gerlach.[f][37][72] Purportedly born in America to a German immigrant family,[g] Gerlach had been a major in the American Expeditionary Forces during World War I, and he later became a gentleman bootlegger who lived like a millionaire in New York.[74] Flaunting his new wealth,[h] Gerlach threw lavish parties,[76] never wore the same shirt twice,[77] used the phrase "old sport",[78] and fostered myths about himself including that he was a relation of the German Kaiser.[79] These details about Gerlach inspired Fitzgerald in his creation of Jay Gatsby.[80]

During this same time period, the daily newspapers sensationalized the Hall–Mills murder case over many months, and the highly publicized case likely influenced the plot of Fitzgerald's novel.[81] The case involved the double-murder of a man and his lover on September 14, 1922, mere weeks before Fitzgerald arrived in Great Neck. Scholars have speculated that Fitzgerald based certain aspects of the ending of The Great Gatsby and various characterizations on this factual incident.[82]

Inspired by the Halls–Mills case, the mysterious persona of Gerlach and the riotous parties he attended on Long Island, Fitzgerald had written 18,000 words for his novel by mid-1923 but discarded most of his new story as a false start.[83] Some of this early draft resurfaced in the 1924 short story "Absolution".[84] In earlier drafts,[i] Daisy was originally named Ada and Nick was Dud,[86] and the two characters had shared a previous romance prior to their reunion on Long Island.[87] These earlier drafts were written from the viewpoint of an omniscient narrator as opposed to Nick's perspective.[88] A key difference in earlier drafts is a less complete failure of Gatsby's dream.[89] Another difference is that the argument between Tom Buchanan and Gatsby is more balanced, although Daisy still returns to Tom.[89]

Work on The Great Gatsby resumed in earnest in April 1924.[90] Fitzgerald decided to depart from the writing process of his previous novels and told Perkins that he was intent on creating an artistic achievement.[91] He wished to eschew the realism of his previous two novels and to compose a creative work of sustained imagination.[92] To this end, he consciously imitated the literary styles of Joseph Conrad and Willa Cather.[93] He was particularly influenced by Cather's 1923 work, A Lost Lady,[94] which features a wealthy married socialite pursued by a variety of romantic suitors and who symbolically embodies the American dream.[95][96] He later wrote a letter to Cather apologizing for any unintentional plagiarism.[94] During this period of revisions, Scott saw and was influenced by early sketches for the book's dust jacket art.[97][98] Soon after this burst of effort, work slowed while the Fitzgeralds moved to the Villa Marie in Saint-Raphaël on the French Riviera, where a marital crisis soon developed.[j]

Despite his ongoing marital tension, Fitzgerald continued to write steadily and submitted a near-final version of the manuscript to his editor, Maxwell Perkins, on October 27.[100] Perkins informed him in a November letter that Gatsby was too vague as a character and that his wealth and business, respectively, needed a convincing explanation.[101] Fitzgerald thanked Perkins for his detailed criticisms and claimed that such feedback would enable him to perfect the manuscript.[102] Having relocated with his wife to Rome,[103] Fitzgerald made revisions to the manuscript throughout the winter.[101]

Content after a few rounds of revision, Fitzgerald submitted the final version in February 1925.[104] Fitzgerald's alterations included extensive revisions of the sixth and eighth chapters.[105] He declined an offer of $10,000 for the serial rights to the book so that it could be published sooner.[106] He received a $3,939 advance in 1923 and would receive $1,981.25 upon publication.[107]

Alternative titles edit

 
Fitzgerald's editor, Maxwell Perkins, convinced the author to abandon his original title of Trimalchio in West Egg in favor of The Great Gatsby.

Fitzgerald had difficulty choosing a title for his novel and entertained many choices before reluctantly deciding on The Great Gatsby,[108] a title inspired by Alain-Fournier's Le Grand Meaulnes.[109] Previously he had shifted between Among Ash Heaps and Millionaires,[108] Trimalchio,[108] Trimalchio in West Egg,[110] On the Road to West Egg,[110] Under the Red, White, and Blue,[108] The Gold-Hatted Gatsby,[110] and The High-Bouncing Lover.[110] The titles The Gold-Hatted Gatsby and The High-Bouncing Lover came from Fitzgerald's epigraph for the novel, one which he wrote himself under the pen name of Thomas Parke D'Invilliers.[111]

Fitzgerald initially preferred titles referencing Trimalchio,[k] the crude upstart in Petronius's Satyricon, and even refers to Gatsby as Trimalchio once in the novel.[113] Unlike Gatsby's spectacular parties, Trimalchio participated in the orgies he hosted but, according to literary critic Tony Tanner, there are subtle similarities between the two characters.[114] By November 1924, Fitzgerald wrote to Perkins that he had settled upon the title of Trimalchio in West Egg.[115]

Disliking Fitzgerald's chosen title of Trimalchio in West Egg, editor Max Perkins persuaded him that the reference was too obscure and that people would be unable to pronounce it.[116] Zelda and Perkins both expressed their preference for The Great Gatsby, and the next month Fitzgerald agreed.[117] A month before publication, after a final review of the proofs, he asked if it would be possible to re-title it Trimalchio or Gold-Hatted Gatsby, but Perkins advised against it. On March 19, 1925,[118] Fitzgerald expressed enthusiasm for the title Under the Red, White, and Blue, but it was too late to change it at that stage.[119][120] The novel was published as The Great Gatsby on April 10, 1925.[121] Fitzgerald believed the book's final title to be merely acceptable and often expressed his ambivalence with the name.[122]

Dust jacket art edit

This article is about the cover. For other uses, see Celestial Eyes.
 
 
Drafts of the dust jacket by artist Francis Cugat juxtaposed with the final version. In one draft (first), a single eye loomed over Long Island Sound. In a subsequent draft (second), Cugat expanded upon this concept to feature two eyes gazing over the New York cityscape. In the final draft (third), the shadowy cityscape was replaced by carnival lights evoking Coney Island.

The artwork for the first edition of The Great Gatsby, known as Celestial Eyes, is among the most celebrated in American literature and represents a unique instance in literary history in which a novel's commissioned artwork directly influenced the composition of the text.[123] Rendered in an Art Deco visual style,[124] the artwork depicts the disembodied face of a Jazz Age flapper with celestial eyes and rouged mouth over a dark blue skyline.[125] A little-known Barcelonan painter named Francis Cugat—born Francisco Coradal-Cougat—was commissioned by an unknown individual in Scribner's art department to illustrate the cover while Fitzgerald was composing the novel.[126]

In a preliminary sketch, Cugat drew a concept of a dismal gray landscape inspired by Fitzgerald's original title for the novel, Among Ash Heaps and Millionaires.[127] Discarding this gloomy concept, Cugat next drew a divergent study which became the prefiguration to the final cover: A pencil and crayon drawing of a flapper's half-hidden visage over Long Island Sound with scarlet lips, one celestial eye, and a single diagonal tear.[128] Expanding upon this study, his subsequent drawing featured two bright eyes looming over a shadowy New York cityscape.[129] In later iterations, Cugat replaced the shadowy cityscape with dazzling carnival lights evoking a Ferris wheel and likely referencing the glittering amusement park at New York's Coney Island.[130] Cugat affixed reclining nudes within the flapper's irizes and added a green tint to the streaming tear.[131] Cugat's final cover,[l] which Max Perkins hailed as a masterpiece, was the only work he completed for Scribner's and the only book cover he ever designed.[133]

Although Fitzgerald likely never saw the final gouache painting prior to the novel's publication,[134] Cugat's preparatory drafts influenced his writing.[97][124] Upon viewing Cugat's drafts before sailing for France in April–May 1924,[97][98] Fitzgerald was so enamored that he later told editor Max Perkins that he had incorporated Cugat's imagery into the novel.[135] This statement has led many to analyze interrelations between Cugat's art and Fitzgerald's text.[135] One popular interpretation is that the celestial eyes are reminiscent of those of optometrist T. J. Eckleburg depicted on a faded commercial billboard near George Wilson's auto repair shop.[136] Author Ernest Hemingway supported this latter interpretation and claimed that Fitzgerald had told him the cover referred to a billboard in the valley of the ashes.[137] Although this passage has some resemblance to the imagery, a closer explanation can be found in Fitzgerald's explicit description of Daisy Buchanan as the "girl whose disembodied face floated along the dark cornices and blinding signs".[126]

Critical reception edit

Initial reviews edit

Charles Scribner's Sons published The Great Gatsby on April 10, 1925.[138] Fitzgerald cabled Perkins the day after publication to monitor reviews: "Any news?"[138] "Sales situation doubtful [but] excellent reviews", read a telegram from Perkins on April 20.[139] Fitzgerald responded on April 24, saying the cable dispirited him, closing the letter with "Yours in great depression".[139] Fitzgerald soon received letters from contemporaries Willa Cather, Edith Wharton, and poet T. S. Eliot praising the novel.[140] Although gratified by such correspondence, Fitzgerald sought public acclaim from professional critics.[141]

 
Although he praised the novel's style, H. L. Mencken criticized the plot as highly improbable—a criticism that Fitzgerald particularly resented.

The Great Gatsby received generally favorable reviews from literary critics of the day.[142] Edwin Clark of The New York Times felt the novel was a mystical and glamorous tale of the Jazz Age.[143] Similarly, Lillian C. Ford of the Los Angeles Times hailed the novel as a revelatory work of art that "leaves the reader in a mood of chastened wonder".[144] The New York Post described Fitzgerald's prose style as scintillating and genuinely brilliant.[145] The New York Herald Tribune was less impressed, referring to The Great Gatsby as "a literary lemon meringue" that nonetheless "contains some of the nicest little touches of contemporary observation you could imagine—so light, so delicate, so sharp".[146] In The Chicago Daily Tribune, H. L. Mencken judged the work's plot to be highly improbable, although he praised the writing as elegant and the "careful and brilliant finish".[147]

Several reviewers felt the novel left much to be desired following Fitzgerald's previous works and criticized him accordingly. Harvey Eagleton of The Dallas Morning News predicted that the novel signaled the end of Fitzgerald's artistic success.[148] Ralph Coghlan of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch dismissed the work as an inconsequential performance by a once-promising author who had grown bored and cynical.[149] Ruth Snyder of New York Evening World lambasted the book's style as painfully forced and declared the editors of her newspaper were "quite convinced after reading The Great Gatsby that Mr. Fitzgerald is not one of the great American writers of today".[150] John McClure of The Times-Picayune insisted the plot was implausible and the book itself seemed raw in its construction.[151]

After reading these reviews, Fitzgerald believed that many critics misunderstood the novel.[91] He despaired that "of all the reviews, even the most enthusiastic, not one had the slightest idea what the book was about".[152] In particular, Fitzgerald resented criticisms of the novel's plot as implausible since he had never intended for the story to be realistic.[91] Instead, he crafted the work to be a romanticized depiction that was largely scenic and symbolic.[153] According to his friend John Peale Bishop, Fitzgerald further resented the fact that critics failed to perceive the many parallels between the author's life and the character of Jay Gatsby; in particular, that both created a mythical version of themselves and attempted to live up to this legend.[154] Dispirited by critics failing to understand the novel, Fitzgerald remained hopeful that the novel would at least be a commercial success, perhaps selling as many as 75,000 copies.[155]

To Fitzgerald's great disappointment, Gatsby was a commercial failure in comparison with his previous efforts, This Side of Paradise (1920) and The Beautiful and Damned (1922). By October, the book had sold fewer than 20,000 copies.[60] Although the novel went through two initial printings, many copies remained unsold years later.[156] Fitzgerald attributed the poor sales to the fact that women tended to be the primary audience for novels during this time, and Gatsby did not contain an admirable female character.[156] According to his ledger, he earned only $2,000 from the book.[157] Although Owen Davis' 1926 stage adaptation and the Paramount-issued silent film version brought in money for the author, Fitzgerald lamented that the novel fell far short of the success he had hoped for and would not bring him recognition as a serious novelist in the public eye.[60] With the onset of the Great Depression, The Great Gatsby was regarded as little more than a nostalgic period piece.[60] By the time Fitzgerald died in 1940, the novel had fallen into near obscurity.[158]

Revival and reassessment edit

 
Fitzgerald's friend Edmund Wilson helped revive the author's posthumous reputation.

In 1940, Fitzgerald suffered a third and fatal heart attack and died believing his work forgotten.[159] His obituary in The New York Times hailed him as a brilliant novelist and cited Gatsby as his greatest work.[160] In the wake of Fitzgerald's death, a strong appreciation for the book gradually developed in writers' circles. Future authors Budd Schulberg and Edward Newhouse were deeply affected by it, and John O'Hara acknowledged its influence on his work.[161] By the time that Gatsby was republished in Edmund Wilson's edition of The Last Tycoon in 1941, the prevailing opinion in writers' circles deemed the novel to be an enduring work of fiction.[60]

In the spring of 1942, mere months after the United States' entrance into World War II, an association of publishing executives created the Council on Books in Wartime with the stated purpose of distributing paperback Armed Services Editions books to combat troops. The Great Gatsby was one of them.[162] Within the next several years, 155,000 copies of Gatsby were distributed to U.S. soldiers overseas,[163] and the book proved popular among beleaguered troops, according to the Saturday Evening Post's 1945 report.[164]

By 1944, a full-scale Fitzgerald revival had occurred.[165] Full-length scholarly articles on Fitzgerald's works were being published in periodicals and, by the following year, the earlier consensus among professional critics that The Great Gatsby was merely a sensational story or a nostalgic period piece had effectively vanished.[166] The tireless promotional efforts of literary critic Edmund Wilson, who was Fitzgerald's Princeton classmate and his close friend, led this Fitzgerald revival.[167] In 1951, three years after Zelda's death in a hospital fire, Professor Arthur Mizener of Cornell University published The Far Side of Paradise, the first biography of Fitzgerald.[168] Mizener's bestselling biography emphasized The Great Gatsby's positive reception by literary critics, which may have further influenced public opinion and renewed interest in it.[169]

By 1960—thirty-five years after the novel's original publication—the book was steadily selling 100,000 copies per year.[170] Renewed interest in it led The New York Times editorialist Mizener to proclaim the novel was a masterwork of 20th-century American literature.[60] By 1974, The Great Gatsby had attained its status as a literary masterwork and was deemed a contender for the title of the "Great American Novel".[171] Hunter S. Thompson retyped pages of The Great Gatsby "just to get a feeling of what it was like to write that way."[172] According to Thompson's friend William Nack, Thompson once retyped the entirety of the novel. Roger Ebert wrote that "perhaps Fitzgerald's words 'compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired' is the best possible description of Thompson's life's work."[173] By the mid-2000s, many literary critics considered The Great Gatsby to be one of the greatest novels ever written,[174] and the work was part of the assigned curricula in the near majority of U.S. high schools.[158] As of early 2020, The Great Gatsby had sold almost 30 million copies worldwide and continues to sell an additional 500,000 copies annually.[175] Numerous foreign editions of the novel have been published,[176] and the text has been translated into 42 different languages.[177] The work is Scribner's most popular title; in 2013, the e-book alone sold 185,000 copies.[177] The novel's U.S. copyright expired on January 1, 2021, when all works published in 1925 entered the public domain.[178] Since then, numerous altered and incomplete reprints have flooded the market.[179]

Critical analysis edit

Major themes edit

The American Dream edit

 
The American Dream, often represented by the Statue of Liberty signifying new opportunities in life, is a central theme underlying the novel.

Following the novel's revival, later critical writings on The Great Gatsby focused on Fitzgerald's disillusionment with the American Dream in the hedonistic Jazz Age,[180] a name for the era which Fitzgerald claimed to have coined.[181] In 1970, scholar Roger L. Pearson asserted that Fitzgerald's work—more so than other twentieth century novels—is especially linked with this conceptualization of the American dream.[182] Pearson traced the literary origins of this dream to Colonial America. The dream is the belief that every individual, regardless of their origins, may seek and achieve their desired goals, "be they political, monetary, or social. It is the literary expression of the concept of America: The land of opportunity".[182]

However, Pearson noted that Fitzgerald's particular treatment of this theme is devoid of the discernible optimism in the writings of earlier American authors.[182] He suggests Gatsby serves as a false prophet of the American dream, and pursuing the dream only results in dissatisfaction for those who chase it, owing to its unattainability.[183] In this analytical context, the green light on the Buchanans' dock (visible across Long Island Sound from Gatsby's house) is frequently interpreted as a symbol of Gatsby's unrealizable goal to win Daisy and, consequently, to achieve the American Dream.[158][184] Also, scholar Sarah Churchwell points out that adultery in the novel is linked to the loss of faith and broken promises, which symbolizes the corruption of the American Dream.[185]

Class permanence edit

Scholars and writers commonly ascribe Gatsby's inability to achieve the American Dream to entrenched class disparities in American society.[186] The novel underscores the limits of the American lower class to transcend their station of birth.[119] Scholar Sarah Churchwell contends that Fitzgerald's novel is a tale of class warfare in a status-obsessed country that refuses to acknowledge publicly it even has a class system.[119]

Although scholars posit different explanations for the continuation of class differences in the United States, there is a consensus regarding the novel's message in conveying its underlying permanence.[187] Although Gatsby's fundamental conflict occurs between entrenched sources of socio-economic power and upstarts like Gatsby who threaten their interests,[188] Fitzgerald's novel shows that a class permanence persists despite the country's capitalist economy that prizes innovation and adaptability.[188] Dianne Bechtel argues Fitzgerald plotted the novel to illustrate that class transcends wealth in America. Even if the poorer Americans become rich, they remain inferior to those Americans with "old money".[189] Consequently, Gatsby and other characters in the novel are trapped in a rigid American class system.[190]

Gender relations edit

 
An idealized depiction of a flapper as illustrated by Ellen Pyle for the cover of The Saturday Evening Post (1922)

Besides exploring the difficulties of achieving the American dream, The Great Gatsby explores societal gender expectations during the Jazz Age.[191] The character of Daisy Buchanan has been identified specifically as personifying the emerging cultural archetype of the flapper.[39] Flappers were typically young, modern women who bobbed their hair and wore short skirts.[192][193] They also drank alcohol and had premarital sex.[194][6]

Despite the newfound societal freedoms attained by flappers in the 1920s,[195] Fitzgerald's work critically examines the continued limitations upon women's agency during this period.[196] In this context, although early critics viewed the character of Daisy to be a "monster of bitchery",[197] later scholars such as Leland S. Person Jr. asserted that Daisy's character exemplifies the marginalization of women in the elite social environment that Fitzgerald depicts.[198]

Writing in 1978, Person noted Daisy is more of a hapless victim than a manipulative victimizer.[199] She is the target first of Tom's callous domination and next of Gatsby's dehumanizing adoration.[199] She involuntarily becomes the holy grail at the center of Gatsby's unrealistic quest to be steadfast to a youthful concept of himself.[199] The ensuing contest of wills between Tom and Gatsby reduces Daisy to a trophy wife whose sole existence is to augment her possessor's socio-economic success.[200]

As an upper-class white woman living in East Egg during this time period, Daisy must adhere to societal expectations and gender norms such as actively fulfilling the roles of dutiful wife, nurturing mother, and charming socialite.[196] Many of Daisy's choices—ultimately culminating in the fatal car crash and misery for all those involved—can be partly attributed to her prescribed role as a "beautiful little fool" who is reliant on her husband for financial and societal security.[m][202] Her decision to remain with her husband, despite her feelings for Gatsby, is because of the security that her marriage to Tom Buchanan provides.[197]

Race and displacement edit

 
Fitzgerald's novel references a fictional book, Goddard's The Rise of the Colored Empires, which is a parody of The Rising Tide of Color (1920) by Lothrop Stoddard.

Many scholars have analyzed the novel's treatment of race and displacement; in particular, a perceived threat posed by newer immigrants to older Americans, triggering concerns over a loss of socio-economic status.[203] In one instance, Tom Buchanan—the novel's antagonist—claims that he, Nick, and Jordan are racially superior Nordics. Tom decries immigration and advocates white supremacy.[204] A fictional book alluded to by Tom is Stoddard's The Rise of the Colored Empires, which is a parody by Fitzgerald of Lothrop Stoddard's The Rising Tide of Color, a 1920s bestseller.[205] Stoddard warned that immigration would alter America's racial composition and destroy the country.[206]

Analyzing these elements, literary theorist Walter Benn Michaels contends that Fitzgerald's novel reflects a historical period in American literature characterized by fears over the influx of Southern and Eastern European immigrants whose "otherness" challenged Americans' sense of national identity.[207] Such anxieties were more salient in national discourse than the societal consequences of World War I,[208][209] and the defining question of the period was who constituted "a real American".[210]

In this context of immigration and displacement, Tom's hostility towards Gatsby, who is the embodiment of "latest America",[211] has been interpreted as partly embodying status anxieties of the time involving anti-immigrant sentiment.[211] Gatsby—whom Tom belittles as "Mr. Nobody from Nowhere"[212]—functions as a cipher because of his obscure origins, his unclear ethno-religious identity and his indeterminate class status.[213] Although his ethnicity is vague, his last name Gatz and his father's adherence to the Lutheran religion indicate his family are recent German immigrants.[214] This would preclude them from the coveted status of Old Stock Americans.[214] Consequently, Gatsby's socio-economic ascent is deemed a threat not only due to his status as nouveau riche, but because he is perceived as an outsider.[215]

Because of such themes, The Great Gatsby captures the perennial American experience as it is a story about change and those who resist it—whether such change comes in the form of a new wave of immigrants, the nouveau riche, or successful minorities.[188] Since Americans living in the 1920s to the present are largely defined by their fluctuating socio-economic circumstances and must navigate a society with entrenched racial and ethnic prejudices, Fitzgerald's depiction of resultant status anxieties and social conflict has been highlighted by scholars as still enduringly relevant nearly a hundred years after the novel's publication.[188][216]

Sexuality and identity edit

 
Photo of Fitzgerald dressed as a woman circa 1915

Questions regarding the sexuality of characters have been raised for decades and—augmented by biographical details about the author—have given rise to queer readings.[217] During his lifetime, Fitzgerald's sexuality became a subject of debate among his friends and acquaintances.[218][219][220] As a youth, Fitzgerald had a close relationship with Father Sigourney Fay,[221] a possibly gay Catholic priest,[222][223] and Fitzgerald later used his last name for the idealized romantic character of Daisy Fay.[224] After college, Fitzgerald cross-dressed during outings in Minnesota.[225] Years later, while drafting The Great Gatsby, rumors dogged Fitzgerald among the American expat community in Paris that he was gay.[219] Soon after, Fitzgerald's wife Zelda Fitzgerald likewise doubted his heterosexuality and asserted that he was a closeted homosexual.[226] She publicly belittled him with homophobic slurs,[227] and she alleged that Fitzgerald and fellow writer Ernest Hemingway engaged in homosexual relations.[228][229] These incidents strained the Fitzgeralds' marriage at the time of the novel's publication.[226]

Although Fitzgerald's sexuality is a subject of scholarly debate,[n] such biographical details lent credence to critical interpretations that his fictional characters are either gay or bisexual surrogates.[o][234][232] As early as 1945, critics such as Lionel Trilling noted that characters in The Great Gatsby, such as Jordan Baker, were implied to be "vaguely homosexual",[235][236] and, in 1960, writer Otto Friedrich commented upon the ease of examining the thwarted relations depicted in Fitzgerald's fiction through a queer lens.[237] In recent decades, scholarship has focused sharply on the sexuality of Nick Carraway.[238] In one instance in the novel, Carraway departs a drunken orgy with a "pale, feminine" man named Mr. McKee and—following suggestive ellipses—Nick next finds himself standing beside a bed while McKee sits between the sheets clad only in his underwear.[239][240] Such scenes have led scholars to describe Nick as possessing an overt queerness and prompted analyzes about his emotional attachment to Jay Gatsby.[241] For these reasons, the novel has been described as an exploration of sexual identity during a historical era typified by the societal transition towards modernity.[242][243]

Technology and environment edit

Technological and environmental criticisms of Gatsby seek to place the novel and its characters in a broader historical context.[244] In 1964, Leo Marx argued in The Machine in the Garden that Fitzgerald's work evinces a tension between a complex pastoral ideal of a bygone America and the societal transformations caused by industrialization and machine technology.[245] Specifically, the valley of the ashes, in between East and West Egg, represents a man-made wasteland which is a byproduct of the industrialization that has made Gatsby's booming lifestyle, including his automobile, possible.[246] Marx argues that Fitzgerald, via Nick, expresses a pastoral longing typical of other 1920s American writers like William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway.[247] Although such writers cherish the pastoral ideal, they accept that technological progress has deprived this ideal of nearly all meaning.[248] In this context, Nick's repudiation of the eastern United States represents a futile attempt to withdraw into nature.[248] Yet, as Fitzgerald's work shows, any technological demarcation between the eastern and western United States has vanished,[d] and one cannot escape into a pastoral past.[248]

In 2018, scholar Kyle Keeler argued that the voracious pursuit of wealth as criticized in Fitzgerald's novel offers a warning about the perils of environmental destruction in pursuit of self-interest.[251] According to Kyle Keeler, Gatsby's quest for greater status manifests as self-centered, anthropocentric resource acquisition.[251] Inspired by the predatory mining practices of his fictional mentor Dan Cody, Gatsby participates in extensive deforestation amid World War I and then undertakes bootlegging activities reliant upon exploiting South American agriculture.[251] Gatsby conveniently ignores the wasteful devastation of the valley of ashes to pursue a consumerist lifestyle and exacerbates the wealth gap that became increasingly salient in 1920s America.[251] For these reasons, Keeler argues that—while Gatsby's socioeconomic ascent and self-transformation depend upon these very factors—each one is nonetheless partially responsible for the ongoing ecological crisis.[251]

Antisemitism edit

 
Fitzgerald based the character of Meyer Wolfsheim on Jazz Age racketeer Arnold Rothstein (pictured above) who was murdered in 1928.

The Great Gatsby has been accused of antisemitism because of its use of Jewish stereotypes.[252] One of the novel's supporting characters is Meyer Wolfsheim,[p] a Jewish friend and mentor of Gatsby. A corrupt profiteer who assists Gatsby's bootlegging operations and who fixed the 1919 World Series, he appears only twice in the novel, the second time refusing to attend Gatsby's funeral. Fitzgerald describes Wolfsheim as "a small, flat-nosed Jew", with "tiny eyes" and "two fine growths of hair" in his nostrils.[255] Evoking ethnic stereotypes regarding the Jewish nose, he describes Wolfsheim's nose as "expressive", "tragic", and able to "flash ... indignantly".[255] The fictional character of Wolfsheim is an allusion to real-life Jewish gambler Arnold Rothstein,[256] a notorious New York crime kingpin whom Fitzgerald met once in undetermined circumstances.[257] Rothstein was blamed for match fixing in the Black Sox Scandal that tainted the 1919 World Series.[258]

Wolfsheim has been interpreted as representing the Jewish miser stereotype. Richard Levy, author of Antisemitism: A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution, claims that Wolfsheim serves to link Jewishness with corruption.[255] In a 1947 article for Commentary, Milton Hindus, an assistant professor of humanities at the University of Chicago, stated that while he believed the book was a superb literary achievement, Wolfsheim was its most abrasive character, and the work contains an antisemitic undertone.[259] However, Hindus argued the Jewish stereotypes displayed by Wolfsheim were typical of the time when the novel was written and set and that its antisemitism was of the "habitual, customary, 'harmless,' unpolitical variety".[260] A 2015 article by essayist Arthur Krystal agreed with Hindus' assessment that Fitzgerald's use of Jewish caricatures was not driven by malice and merely reflected commonly held beliefs of his time. He notes the accounts of Frances Kroll, a Jewish woman and secretary to Fitzgerald, who claimed that Fitzgerald was hurt by accusations of antisemitism and responded to critiques of Wolfsheim by claiming he merely "fulfilled a function in the story and had nothing to do with race or religion".[252]

Adaptations edit

Stage edit

Gatsby has been adapted for the stage. The first known stage adaptation was by American dramatist Owen Davis,[261] which became the 1926 film version. The play, directed by George Cukor, opened on Broadway on February 2, 1926, and had 112 curtain calls. A successful tour later in the year included performances in Chicago, August 1 through October 2.[262] In July 2006, Simon Levy's stage adaptation, directed by David Esbjornson, premiered at the Guthrie Theater to commemorate the opening of its new theater.[263] In 2010, critic Ben Brantley of The New York Times highly praised the debut of Gatz, an Off-Broadway production by Elevator Repair Service.[264]

The New York Metropolitan Opera commissioned John Harbison to compose an operatic treatment of the novel to commemorate the 25th anniversary of James Levine's debut. The work, called The Great Gatsby, premiered on December 20, 1999.[265]

The novel has also been adapted for ballet performances. In 2009, BalletMet premiered a version at the Capitol Theatre in Columbus, Ohio.[266] In 2010, The Washington Ballet premiered a version at the Kennedy Center. The show received an encore run the following year. The Comedy Theatre of Budapest created a musical.[267]

Also, in 2023, the second musical adaptation, The Great Gatsby: A New Musical, with music and lyrics by Jason Howland and Nathan Tysen and a book by Kait Kerrigan announced a one-month limited engagement at the Paper Mill Playhouse.[268] The Broadway tryout began its previews on October 12, 2023, followed by an official opening night scheduled for ten days later. The production concluded on November 12 of the same year. Jeremy Jordan and Eva Noblezada starred as the leading roles of Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan, with Samantha Pauly and Noah J. Ricketts as Jordan Baker and Nick Carraway.[269] The production transferred to Broadway for previews on March 29, 2024, and is set to officially open April 25th, 2024.[270][271]

Gatsby, a third musical adaptation with music and lyrics by Florence Welch and Thomas Bartlett and a book by Martyna Majok is set to have its world premiere the American Repertory Theater.[272] On May 25, 2024, the show will begin previews and will open officially on June 5 of the same year. It will run for about two months with a closing night set for July 21.

Film edit

 
A lobby card for the lost 1926 film adaptation
The 1926 film trailer—the only extant footage

The first movie version of the novel debuted in 1926. Itself a version of Owen Davis's Broadway play, it was directed by Herbert Brenon and starred Warner Baxter, Lois Wilson and William Powell. It is a famous example of a lost film. Reviews suggest it may have been the most faithful adaptation of the novel, but a trailer of the film at the National Archives is all that is known to exist.[273] Reportedly, Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda loathed the silent version. Zelda wrote to an acquaintance that the film was "rotten". She and Scott left the cinema midway through the film.[274]

Following the 1926 movie was 1949's The Great Gatsby, directed by Elliott Nugent and starring Alan Ladd, Betty Field and Macdonald Carey.[275] Twenty-five years later in 1974, The Great Gatsby appeared onscreen again. It was directed by Jack Clayton and starred Robert Redford as Gatsby, Mia Farrow as Daisy, and Sam Waterston as Nick Carraway.[275] Most recently, The Great Gatsby was directed by Baz Luhrmann in 2013 and starred Leonardo DiCaprio as Gatsby, Carey Mulligan as Daisy, and Tobey Maguire as Nick.[274]

In 2021, visual effects company DNEG Animation announced they would be producing an animated film adaptation of the novel directed by William Joyce and written by Brian Selznick.[276]

Television edit

Gatsby has been recast multiple times as a short-form television movie. The first was in 1955 as an NBC episode for Robert Montgomery Presents starring Robert Montgomery, Phyllis Kirk, and Lee Bowman. The episode was directed by Alvin Sapinsley.[277] In 1958, CBS filmed another adaptation as an episode of Playhouse 90, also titled The Great Gatsby, which was directed by Franklin J. Schaffner and starred Robert Ryan, Jeanne Crain and Rod Taylor.[278] Most recently, the novel was adapted as an A&E movie in 2000. The Great Gatsby was directed by Robert Markowitz and starred Toby Stephens as Gatsby, Mira Sorvino as Daisy, and Paul Rudd as Nick.[279][278]

Literature edit

Since entering the public domain in 2021, retellings and expansions of The Great Gatsby have become legal to publish. Nick by Michael Farris Smith (2021) imagines the backstory of Nick Carraway.[280] That same year saw the publication of The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo, a retelling with elements of the fantasy genre while tackling issues of race and sexuality,[281] and The Pursued and the Pursuing by AJ Odasso, a queer partial retelling and sequel in which Jay Gatsby survives.[282] Anna-Marie McLemore's own queer retelling, Self-Made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix, was released in 2022 and was longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People's Literature.[283]

Graphic novels edit

The Great Gatsby has been adapted into three graphic novels. The first was in 2007 by Nicki Greenberg, who published The Great Gatsby: A Graphic Adaptation in Australia. Because the original novel was still protected by United States copyright laws, this version was never published in the U.S. The second version, The Great Gatsby: The Graphic Novel, was adapted by Fred Fordham and illustrated by Aya Morton in 2020. In 2021, K. Woodman-Maynard adapted and illustrated The Great Gatsby: A Graphic Novel Adaptation, which was published by Candlewick Press.[284] This was the first graphic novel adaptation of the original novel to be published after it entered the public domain in 2021. In June 2021, Clover Press debuted the first of seven periodical comic books, faithfully adapting The Great Gatsby.

Radio edit

The novel has been adapted into a series of radio episodes. The first radio episode was a 1950 half-hour-long adaptation for CBS' Family Hour of Stars starring Kirk Douglas as Gatsby.[285] The novel was read aloud by the BBC World Service in ten parts in 2008. In a 2012 BBC Radio 4 broadcast, The Great Gatsby took the form of a Classic Serial dramatization. It was created by dramatist Robert Forrest.[286][287]

Video games edit

In 2010, Oberon Media released a casual hidden object game called Classic Adventures: The Great Gatsby.[288][289] In 2011, developer Charlie Hoey and editor Pete Smith created an 8-bit-style online game of The Great Gatsby called The Great Gatsby for NES;[290][291][292] in 2022, after the Adobe Flash end of life they adapted this game to an actual NES ROM file, which can also be played on their website.[293][294] In 2013, Slate released a short symbolic adaptation called The Great Gatsby: The Video Game.[295][296]

Notes edit

  1. ^ Historian Jeff Nilsson described F. Scott Fitzgerald as the poet laureate of the Jazz Age, "the most raucous, gaudy era in U.S. history".[1]
  2. ^ As a Southern belle, Zelda Sayre's wealthy family employed half-a-dozen domestic servants, many of whom were African-American.[23] She was unaccustomed to domestic labor of any kind and delegated all tasks to her servants.[24][25]
  3. ^ In the original 1925 edition, Fitzgerald wrote that Gatsby and Nick served in the First Division. Fitzgerald revised the text in later editions to be the Third Division.[34]
  4. ^ a b Throughout the novel, Fitzgerald identifies his native region of the Midwest—those "towns beyond the Ohio"—with the perceived virtuousness and rustic simplicity of the American West and as culturally distinct from the decadent values of the eastern United States.[249][250]
  5. ^ Another possible model for Tom Buchanan was Southern polo champion and aviator Tommy Hitchcock Jr., whom Fitzgerald met at Long Island parties while in New York.[44]
  6. ^ Primary sources such as Zelda Fitzgerald and F. Scott Fitzgerald's friend Edmund Wilson both stated that Max Gerlach was a neighbor.[37][69] Scholars have yet to find surviving property records for a Long Island residence with Gerlach's name.[70] However, there are likely "gaps in the record of his addresses",[70] and an accurate reconstruction of Gerlach's life and whereabouts is greatly hindered "by the imperfect state of relevant documentation".[71]
  7. ^ In a 2009 book, scholar Horst Kruse asserts that Max Gerlach was born in or near Berlin, Germany, and, as a young boy, he immigrated with his German parents to America.[73]
  8. ^ With the end of prohibition and the onset of the Great Depression, Max Gerlach lost his wealth. Living in poverty, he attempted suicide by shooting himself in the head in 1939.[75]
  9. ^ Only two pages of the first draft of The Great Gatsby survive. Fitzgerald enclosed them with a letter to Willa Cather in 1925. They are now in the Fitzgerald Papers at Princeton University.[85]
  10. ^ While Fitzgerald worked on the novel, his wife Zelda was romanced by French naval aviator Edouard Jozan and asked for a divorce.[99]
  11. ^ In 2002, over six decades after Fitzgerald's death, his earlier draft of the now-famous novel was published under the title Trimalchio: An Early Version of The Great Gatsby.[112]
  12. ^ Many years after The Great Gatsby's publication, Francis Cugat's original painting for the book cover was presumed forever lost until it was found in a trash can at Scribner's and donated to the Princeton University Libraries for its Graphic Arts Collection.[132]
  13. ^ Daisy's statement that she hopes her daughter will be a "beautiful little fool" was said by Zelda Fitzgerald when their daughter Frances was born on October 26, 1921, in a St. Paul hospital.[201]
  14. ^ Fessenden (2005) argues that Fitzgerald struggled with his sexual orientation.[230] In contrast, Bruccoli (2002) insists that "anyone can be called a latent homosexual, but there is no evidence that Fitzgerald was ever involved in a homosexual attachment".[231]
  15. ^ Scholars have focused on Fitzgerald's statement in a letter that his mind was "half feminine".[232] In 1935, Fitzgerald wrote to Laura Guthrie: "I don't know what it is in me or that comes to me when I start to write. I am half feminine—at least my mind is".[233]
  16. ^ The spelling "Wolfshiem" appears throughout Fitzgerald's original manuscript, while "Wolfsheim" was introduced by editor Edmund Wilson in the second edition.[253] This appears in later Scribner's editions.[254]

References edit

Citations edit

  1. ^ Donahue 2013a.
  2. ^ Fitzgerald 1945, p. 16, "Echoes of the Jazz Age".
  3. ^ a b c Fitzgerald 1945, p. 18, "Echoes of the Jazz Age".
  4. ^ Fitzgerald 1945, p. 15, "Echoes of the Jazz Age": "Scarcely had the staider citizens of the republic caught their breaths when the wildest of all generations, the generation which had been adolescent during the confusion of the [Great] War, brusquely shouldered my contemporaries out of the way and danced into the limelight. This was the generation whose girls dramatized themselves as flappers."
  5. ^ Donahue 2013a.
  6. ^ a b Fitzgerald 1945, pp. 14–15, "Echoes of the Jazz Age": "Unchaperoned young people of the smaller cities had discovered the mobile privacy of that automobile given to young Bill at sixteen to make him 'self-reliant'. At first petting was a desperate adventure even under such favorable conditions, but presently confidences were exchanged and the old commandment broke down".
  7. ^ a b c Bruccoli 2000, pp. 53–54.
  8. ^ Donahue 2013a; Gross 1998, p. 167.
  9. ^ Fitzgerald 1945, p. 15, "Echoes of the Jazz Age".
  10. ^ Fitzgerald 1945, pp. 13–22: Fitzgerald documented the Jazz Age and his life's relation to the era in his essay, "Echoes of the Jazz Age" which was published in the essay collection The Crack-Up.
  11. ^ Mizener 1965, pp. 11, 129, 140.
  12. ^ Mizener 1965, pp. 30–31.
  13. ^ a b Smith 2003: Fitzgerald later confided to his daughter Frances Scott Fitzgerald that Ginevra King "was the first girl I ever loved" and that he "faithfully avoided seeing her" to "keep the illusion perfect".
  14. ^ Mizener 1965, p. 50.
  15. ^ West 2005, p. 35.
  16. ^ Smith 2003: "That August Fitzgerald visited Ginevra in Lake Forest, Illinois. Afterward he wrote in his ledger foreboding words, spoken to him perhaps by Ginevra's father, 'Poor boys shouldn't think of marrying rich girls'".
  17. ^ Mizener 1965, p. 70.
  18. ^ a b Bruccoli 2002, pp. 80, 82. Fitzgerald wished to be killed in battle, and he hoped that his novel would become a great success in the wake of his death.
  19. ^ Mizener 1965, pp. 79–80.
  20. ^ West 2005, p. 73; Bruccoli 2002, pp. 86, 91
  21. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 91.
  22. ^ Mizener 1965, pp. 85, 89, 90: "Zelda would question whether he was ever going to make enough money for them to marry", and Fitzgerald was compelled to prove that "he was rich enough for her".
  23. ^ Wagner-Martin 2004, p. 24.
  24. ^ Wagner-Martin 2004, p. 24; Bruccoli 2002, pp. 189, 437.
  25. ^ Turnbull 1962, p. 111: "Zelda was no housekeeper. Sketchy about ordering meals, she completely ignored the laundry".
  26. ^ Mizener 1965, pp. 79–82.
  27. ^ Mizener 1965, p. 87: "Fame and fortune did not seem to be materializing on schedule for Fitzgerald, and Zelda was fretting her time away in Montgomery wondering if she ought not to marry one of her more eligible and financially better equipped admirers".
  28. ^ Mizener 1965, p. 164.
  29. ^ Mizener 1965, pp. 135, 140.
  30. ^ Mizener 1965, pp. 140–41.
  31. ^ Mizener 1965, p. 140: Although Fitzgerald strove "to become member of the community of the rich, to live from day to day as they did, to share their interests and tastes", he found such a privileged lifestyle to be morally disquieting.
  32. ^ a b Mizener 1965, p. 141: Fitzgerald "admired deeply the rich" and yet his wealthy friends often disappointed or repulsed him. Consequently, he harbored "the smouldering hatred of a peasant" towards the wealthy and their milieu.
  33. ^ Lask 1971: The valley of ashes was a landfill in Flushing Meadows, Queens. "In those empty spaces and graying heaps, part of which was known as the Corona Dumps, Fitzgerald found his perfect image for the callous and brutal betrayal of the incurably innocent Gatsby". Flushing Meadows was drained and became the location of the 1939 World's Fair.
  34. ^ Fitzgerald 1991, pp. 39, 188.
  35. ^ Mizener 1965, p. 190.
  36. ^ McCullen 2007, pp. 11–20.
  37. ^ a b c Bruccoli 2002, p. 178: "Jay Gatsby was inspired in part by a local figure, Max Gerlach. Near the end of her life Zelda Fitzgerald said that Gatsby was based on 'a neighbor named Von Guerlach or something who was said to be General Pershing's nephew and was in trouble over bootlegging'".
  38. ^ Kruse 2002, pp. 45–46.
  39. ^ a b Conor 2004, p. 301: "Fitzgerald's literary creation Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby was identified with the type of the flapper. Her pictorial counterpart was drawn by the American cartoonist John Held Jr., whose images of party-going flappers who petted in cars frequented the cover of the American magazine Life during the 1920s".
  40. ^ Corrigan 2014, p. 58: "Because she's the one who got away, Ginevra—even more than Zelda—is the love who lodged like an irritant in Fitzgerald's imagination, producing the literary pearl that is Daisy Buchanan".
  41. ^ Borrelli 2013.
  42. ^ Fitzgerald 1991, p. 9: "His speaking voice, a gruff husky tenor, added to the impression of fractiousness he conveyed. There was a touch of paternal contempt in it, even toward people he liked".
  43. ^ Slater 1973, p. 54; Bruccoli 2000, pp. 9–11, 246; Baker 2016.
  44. ^ Kruse 2014, pp. 82–88.
  45. ^ a b Bruccoli 2000, pp. 9–11, 246; Bruccoli 2002, p. 86; West 2005, pp. 66–70.
  46. ^ West 2005, pp. 4, 57–59.
  47. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 211.
  48. ^ West 2005, pp. 57–59.
  49. ^ Bruccoli 2000, pp. 9–11.
  50. ^ Whipple 2019, p. 85.
  51. ^ Fitzgerald 1991, p. 184. Editor Matthew J. Bruccoli notes: "This name combines two automobile makes: The sporty Jordan and the conservative Baker electric".
  52. ^ Tredell 2007, p. 124: An index note refers to Laurence E. MacPhee's "The Great Gatsby's Romance of Motoring: Nick Carraway and Jordan Baker", Modern Fiction Studies, 18 (Summer 1972), pp. 207–212.
  53. ^ Fitzgerald 2006, p. 95; Fitzgerald 1997, p. 184.
  54. ^ Fitzgerald 1991, p. 23.
  55. ^ Fitzgerald 2006, p. 18; Tate 2007, p. 101.
  56. ^ Tredell 2007, p. 64.
  57. ^ Tredell 2007, pp. 54–55; Fitzgerald 1991, pp. 28–29.
  58. ^ Fitzgerald 2006, p. 18; Tate 2007, p. 101; Fitzgerald 1991, p. 107.
  59. ^ Mizener 1965, p. 184.
  60. ^ a b c d e f g Mizener 1960.
  61. ^ Curnutt 2004, p. 58; Bruccoli 2002, p. 185.
  62. ^ Fitzgerald 1963, p. 189.
  63. ^ Turnbull 1962, p. 150.
  64. ^ Murphy 2010: From Fall 1922 to Spring 1924, Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda resided at 6 Gateway Drive in Great Neck, New York. While reflecting upon the wild parties held during the Jazz Age on "that slender riotous island", Fitzgerald wrote the early story fragments which would become The Great Gatsby.
  65. ^ a b Bruccoli 2000, pp. 38–39.
  66. ^ Kellogg 2011.
  67. ^ Bruccoli 2000, p. 45.
  68. ^ Randall 2003, pp. 275–277.
  69. ^ Kruse 2014, pp. 13–14: Biographer Arthur Mizener wrote in a January 1951 letter to Max Gerlach that "Edmund Wilson, the literary critic, told me that Fitzgerald came to his house, apparently from yours [Gerlach's], and told him with great fascination about the life you were leading. Naturally, it fascinated him as all splendor did".
  70. ^ a b Kruse 2014, pp. 23–24.
  71. ^ Kruse 2014, p. 20.
  72. ^ Kruse 2002, p. 51.
  73. ^ Kruse 2014, pp. 6, 20.
  74. ^ Kruse 2002, pp. 53–54, 47–48, 63–64.
  75. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 178; Kruse 2002, pp. 47–48; Kruse 2014, p. 15.
  76. ^ Kruse 2014, p. 15.
  77. ^ Kruse 2002, p. 47.
  78. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 178.
  79. ^ Kruse 2002, p. 60.
  80. ^ Kruse 2002, pp. 45–83; Bruccoli 2002, p. 178.
  81. ^ Lopate 2014; Churchwell 2013a, pp. 1–9.
  82. ^ Powers 2013, pp. 9–11.
  83. ^ West 2002, p. xi.
  84. ^ Bruccoli 2000, pp. 53–54; Eble 1974, p. 37; Haglund 2013.
  85. ^ Fitzgerald 1991, pp. xvi, xx.
  86. ^ Fitzgerald 1991, p. xxvii.
  87. ^ Eble 1964, p. 325.
  88. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 178; Bruccoli 1978, p. 176.
  89. ^ a b Alter 2013.
  90. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 190: Fitzgerald wrote in his private ledger: "Out of woods at last and starting novel".
  91. ^ a b c Eble 1974, p. 37.
  92. ^ Flanagan 2000; Leader 2000, pp. 13–15.
  93. ^ Quirk 1982, p. 578.
  94. ^ a b Bruccoli 1978, pp. 171–172; Quirk 1982, p. 578.
  95. ^ Harvey 1995, p. 76: "Marian Forrester, then, represents the American Dream boldly focused on self, almost fully disengaged from the morals and ethics to which it had been tied in the nineteenth century".
  96. ^ Funda 1995, p. 275; Rosowski 1977, p. 51.
  97. ^ a b c Scribner 1992, pp. 145–146: "Since there were at most a couple of weeks between the commission and Fitzgerald's departure for France, it is likely that what he had seen—and "written into the book"—was one or more of Cugat's preparatory sketches which were probably shown to him at Scribners before he set sail".
  98. ^ a b Scribner 1992, pp. 143–144.
  99. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 195; Milford 1970, p. 112; Howell 2013.
  100. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 206.
  101. ^ a b Perkins 2004, pp. 27–30.
  102. ^ Eble 1974, p. 38.
  103. ^ Tate 2007, p. 326.
  104. ^ Bruccoli 2000, pp. 54–56; Bruccoli 2002, p. 215.
  105. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 213.
  106. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 215.
  107. ^ F. Scott Fitzgerald's ledger 1919–1938; Zuckerman 2013.
  108. ^ a b c d Mizener 1965, p. 185; Bruccoli 2002, pp. 206–207.
  109. ^ The Economist 2012.
  110. ^ a b c d Vanderbilt 1999, p. 96.
  111. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 207.
  112. ^ West 2002.
  113. ^ Fitzgerald 1991, p. 88, Chapter 7, opening sentence: "It was when curiosity about Gatsby was at its highest that the lights in his house failed to go on one Saturday night—and, as obscurely as it had begun, his career as Trimalchio was over".
  114. ^ Fitzgerald 2000, pp. vii–viii: Tanner's introduction to the Penguin Books edition.
  115. ^ Hill, Burns & Shillingsburg 2002, p. 331.
  116. ^ Fitzgerald & Perkins 1971, p. 87.
  117. ^ Bruccoli 2002, pp. 206–207.
  118. ^ Tate 2007, p. 87: "He settled on The Great Gatsby in December 1924, but in January and March 1925 he continued to express his concern to Perkins about the title, cabling from CAPRI on March 19: CRAZY ABOUT TITLE UNDER THE RED WHITE AND BLUE STOP WHART [sic] WOULD DELAY BE"
  119. ^ a b c Churchwell 2013b.
  120. ^ Lipton 2013: "Fitzgerald, who despised the title The Great Gatsby and toiled for months to think of something else, wrote to Perkins that he had finally found one: Under the Red, White, and Blue. Unfortunately, it was too late to change".
  121. ^ Lazo 2003, p. 75.
  122. ^ Bruccoli 2002, pp. 215–217.
  123. ^ Scribner 1992, pp. 141–155.
  124. ^ a b Scribner 1992, p. 141.
  125. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 202.
  126. ^ a b Scribner 1992, pp. 140–155.
  127. ^ Scribner 1992, p. 146.
  128. ^ Scribner 1992, pp. 148–149.
  129. ^ Scribner 1992, pp. 149–151.
  130. ^ Scribner 1992, pp. 149–153.
  131. ^ Scribner 1992, p. 154.
  132. ^ Scribner 1992, pp. 145, 154.
  133. ^ Scribner 1992, pp. 143, 154.
  134. ^ Scribner 1992, p. 145: "It is entirely conceivable that Fitzgerald had never seen Cugat's final, finished artwork".
  135. ^ a b Scribner 1992, p. 142.
  136. ^ Scribner 1992, pp. 140–155: "We are left then with the enticing possibility that Fitzgerald's arresting image was originally prompted by Cugat's fantastic apparitions over the valley of ashes; in other words, that the author derived his inventive metamorphosis from a recurrent theme of Cugat's trial jackets, one which the artist himself was to reinterpret and transform through subsequent drafts".
  137. ^ Hemingway 1964, p. 176: "Scott brought his book over. It had a garish dust jacket and I remember being embarrassed by the violence, bad taste, and slippery look of it. It looked like the book jacket for a book of bad science fiction. Scot told me not to be put off by it, that it had to do with a billboard along a highway in Long Island that was important in the story. He said he had liked the jacket and now he didn't like it. I took it off to read the book".
  138. ^ a b Bruccoli 2002, p. 217.
  139. ^ a b O'Meara 2002, p. 49; Bruccoli 2002, p. 217.
  140. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 218.
  141. ^ Mizener 1960; Quirk 1982, p. 576.
  142. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 217; Mizener 1965, p. 193.
  143. ^ Clark 1925.
  144. ^ Ford 1925.
  145. ^ New York Post 1925.
  146. ^ New York Herald Tribune 1925.
  147. ^ Mencken 1925, p. 9: "The Great Gatsby is in form no more than a glorified anecdote, and not too probable at that. The story for all its basic triviality has a fine texture; a careful and brilliant finish ... What gives the story distinction is something quite different from the management of the action or the handling of the characters; it is the charm and beauty of the writing".
  148. ^ Eagleton 1925: "[Fitzgerald] is considered a Roman candle which burned brightly at first but now flares out".
  149. ^ Coghlan 1925.
  150. ^ Snyder 1925.
  151. ^ McClure 1925.
  152. ^ Fitzgerald 1945, p. 270, Letter to Edmund Wilson.
  153. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 219; Flanagan 2000; Leader 2000, pp. 13–15.
  154. ^ Kruse 2002, p. 75.
  155. ^ O'Meara 2002, p. 49.
  156. ^ a b Bruccoli 2000, p. 175.
  157. ^ Howell 2013; F. Scott Fitzgerald's ledger 1919–1938.
  158. ^ a b c Rimer 2008.
  159. ^ Donahue 2013b: "When 'Gatsby' author F. Scott Fitzgerald died in 1940, he thought he was a failure".
  160. ^ Fitzgerald's obituary 1940: "The best of his books, the critics said, was The Great Gatsby. When it was published in 1925 this ironic tale of life on Long Island, at a time when gin was the national drink and sex the national obsession, it received critical acclaim. In it, Mr. Fitzgerald was at his best".
  161. ^ Mizener 1960: "Writers like John O'Hara were showing its influence and younger men like Edward Newhouse and Budd Schulberg, who would presently be deeply affected by it, were discovering it".
  162. ^ Cole 1984, p. 25.
  163. ^ Cole 1984, p. 26: "One hundred fifty-five thousand ASE copies of The Great Gatsby were distributed-as against the twenty-five thousand copies of the novel printed by Scribners between 1925 and 1942".
  164. ^ Wittels 1945: "Troops showed interest in books about the human mind and books with sexual situations were grabbed up eagerly. One soldier said that books with 'racy' passages were as popular as 'pin-up girls'".
  165. ^ Mizener 1960; Verghis 2013.
  166. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 217; Mizener 1960.
  167. ^ Verghis 2013.
  168. ^ Mizener 1965.
  169. ^ Mizener 1965, p. 183.
  170. ^ Tredell 2007, p. 90.
  171. ^ Eble 1974, pp. 34, 45; Batchelor 2013.
  172. ^ Menand, Louis (February 27, 2005). "Believer". The New Yorker. from the original on July 1, 2014. Retrieved March 26, 2023.
  173. ^ Ebert 2011, p. 304.
  174. ^ Hogeback 2016; Lacayo & Grossman 2010; Burt 2010.
  175. ^ Italie 2020.
  176. ^ Tredell 2007, pp. 89–90.
  177. ^ a b Donahue 2013b.
  178. ^ Alter 2018; Williams 2021.
  179. ^ Alberge, Dalya (February 12, 2022). "The Great Gapsby? How modern editions of classics lost the plot". The Guardian. from the original on June 12, 2023. Retrieved June 12, 2023.
  180. ^ Kazin 1951, p. 189; Bewley 1954, pp. 223–224.
  181. ^ Pearson 1970, p. 638: "[Fitzgerald] was the self-appointed spokesman for the 'Jazz Age,' a term he takes credit for coining, and he gave it its arch-high priest and prophet, Jay Gatsby, in his novel The Great Gatsby".
  182. ^ a b c Pearson 1970, p. 638.
  183. ^ Pearson 1970, p. 645.
  184. ^ Bewley 1954, pp. 235, 238: "For Gatsby, Daisy does not exist in herself. She is the green light that signals him into the heart of his ultimate vision ... Thus the American dream, whose superstitious valuation of the future began in the past, gives the green light through which alone the American returns to his traditional roots, paradoxically retreating into the pattern of history while endeavoring to exploit the possibilities of the future".
  185. ^ Churchwell 2012.
  186. ^ Churchwell 2013b; Gillespie 2013; Bechtel 2017, p. 117.
  187. ^ Gillespie 2013; Bechtel 2017, p. 117; Churchwell 2013b.
  188. ^ a b c d Gillespie 2013.
  189. ^ Bechtel 2017, p. 120.
  190. ^ Bechtel 2017, pp. 117, 128.
  191. ^ Drudzina 2006, pp. 17–20.
  192. ^ Conor 2004, p. 209: "More than any other type of the Modern Woman, it was the Flapper who embodied the scandal which attached to women's new public visibility, from their increasing street presence to their mechanical reproduction as spectacles".
  193. ^ Conor 2004, pp. 210, 221.
  194. ^ Fitzgerald 1945, p. 16, "Echoes of the Jazz Age": The flappers, "if they get about at all, know the taste of gin or corn at sixteen".
  195. ^ Conor 2004, p. 209.
  196. ^ a b Person 1978, pp. 250–257.
  197. ^ a b Person 1978, p. 253.
  198. ^ Person 1978, pp. 250–257; Donahue 2013a.
  199. ^ a b c Person 1978, p. 250.
  200. ^ Person 1978, p. 256.
  201. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 156; Milford 1970, p. 80; Turnbull 1962, p. 127.
  202. ^ Person 1978, pp. 253, 256.
  203. ^ Slater 1973, p. 55; Pekarofski 2012, p. 52; Michaels 1995, pp. 18, 29; Vogel 2015, p. 43; Berman 1996, p. 33.
  204. ^ Slater 1973, p. 54; Michaels 1995, p. 29.
  205. ^ Slater 1973, p. 54; Vogel 2015, p. 36; Pekarofski 2012, p. 52.
  206. ^ Michaels 1995, p. 29.
  207. ^ Pekarofski 2012, p. 52; Michaels 1995, pp. 18, 29.
  208. ^ Berman 1996, p. 33.
  209. ^ Slater 1973, p. 53: "An obsessive concern with ethnic differences has always been a part of American culture, but in some periods this concern has been more intense and explicit than in others. The 1920s, the time of the reborn Ku Klux Klan, immigration restriction legislation, and the pseudo-scientific racism of Madison Grant and Lothrop Stoddard was one of the periods when concern about ethnicity was most evident on the surface of national life".
  210. ^ Vogel 2015, p. 38.
  211. ^ a b Vogel 2015, p. 45.
  212. ^ Vogel 2015, p. 40; Slater 1973, p. 54.
  213. ^ Pekarofski 2012, p. 52.
  214. ^ a b Slater 1973, p. 56.
  215. ^ Vogel 2015, p. 41.
  216. ^ Vogel 2015, pp. 29–30, 33, 38–40, 51: "The Great Gatsby resonates more in the present than it ever did in the Jazz Age", and "the work speaks in strikingly familiar terms to the issues of our time", especially since its "themes are inextricably woven into questions of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality".
  217. ^ Vogel 2015, pp. 38–40.
  218. ^ Fessenden 2005, p. 28: "Fitzgerald's career records the ambient, dogging pressure to repel charges of his own homosexuality".
  219. ^ a b Bruccoli 2002, p. 284: According to biographer Matthew J. Bruccoli, author Robert McAlmon and other contemporaries in Paris publicly asserted that Fitzgerald was a homosexual, and Hemingway later avoided Fitzgerald due to these rumors.
  220. ^ Milford 1970, p. 154; Kerr 1996, p. 417.
  221. ^ Fessenden 2005, p. 28: "Biographers describe Fay as a 'fin-de-siècle aesthete' of considerable appeal; 'a dandy, always heavily perfumed,' who introduced the teenaged Fitzgerald to Oscar Wilde and good wine".
  222. ^ Fessenden 2005, p. 28.
  223. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 275: "If Fay was a homosexual, as has been asserted without proof, Fitzgerald was presumably unaware of it".
  224. ^ Fessenden 2005, p. 30.
  225. ^ Mizener 1965, p. 60: "In February he put on his Show Girl make-up and went to a Psi U dance at the University of Minnesota with his old friend Gus Schurmeier as escort. He spent the evening casually asking for cigarettes in the middle of the dance floor and absent-mindedly drawing a small vanity case from the top of a blue stocking".
  226. ^ a b Fessenden 2005, p. 33.
  227. ^ Milford 1970, p. 183.
  228. ^ Fitzgerald & Fitzgerald 2002, p. 65.
  229. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 275: "Zelda extended her attack on Fitzgerald's masculinity by charging that he was involved in a homosexual liaison with Hemingway".
  230. ^ Fessenden 2005, pp. 32–33.
  231. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 275.
  232. ^ a b Kerr 1996, p. 406.
  233. ^ Turnbull 1962, p. 259.
  234. ^ Fessenden 2005, p. 31: The novel "includes some queer energies, to be sure—we needn't revisit the more gossipy strains of Fitzgerald biography to note that it's Nick who delivers the sensuous goods on Gatsby from beginning to end".
  235. ^ Kazin 1951, p. 202.
  236. ^ Paulson 1978, p. 326.
  237. ^ Friedrich 1960, p. 394.
  238. ^ Kerr 1996, p. 406: "It was in the 1970s that readers first began to address seriously the themes of gender and sexuality in The Great Gatsby; a few critics have pointed out the novel's bizarre homoerotic leitmotif".
  239. ^ Vogel 2015, p. 34.
  240. ^ Kerr 1996, pp. 412, 414.
  241. ^ Kerr 1996, pp. 409–411; Vogel 2015, p. 34; Lisca 1967, pp. 20–21; Paulson 1978, p. 329; Wasiolek 1992, pp. 20–21.
  242. ^ Vogel 2015, pp. 31, 51: "Among the most significant contributions of The Great Gatsby to the present is its intersectional exploration of identity.... these themes are inextricably woven into questions of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality".
  243. ^ Paulson 1978, p. 329: Commenting upon Nick's sexual confusion, A. B. Paulson remarked in 1978 that "the novel is about identity, about leaving home and venturing into a world of adults, about choosing a profession, about choosing a sexual role to play as well as a partner to love, it is a novel that surely appeals on several deep levels to the problems of adolescent readers".
  244. ^ Keeler 2018, pp. 174–188; Marx 1964, pp. 358, 362–364; Little 2015, pp. 3–26.
  245. ^ Marx 1964, pp. 358–364.
  246. ^ Marx 1964, p. 358.
  247. ^ Marx 1964, p. 362.
  248. ^ a b c Marx 1964, pp. 363–364
  249. ^ Mizener 1965, p. 190; Marx 1964, p. 363.
  250. ^ Turnbull 1962, p. 46: "In those days the contrasts between East and West, between city and country, between prep school and high school were more marked than they are now, and correspondingly the nuances of dress and manners were more noticeable".
  251. ^ a b c d e Keeler 2018, p. 174.
  252. ^ a b Krystal 2015.
  253. ^ Fitzgerald 1991, p. liv.
  254. ^ Fitzgerald 1991, p. 148.
  255. ^ a b c Berrin 2013.
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  257. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 179; Mizener 1965, p. 186
  258. ^ Bruccoli 2000, p. 29.
  259. ^ Hindus 1947.
  260. ^ Hindus 1947; Berrin 2013.
  261. ^ Playbill 1926: Reproduction of original program at the Ambassador Theatre in 1926.
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  • Skinner, Quinton (July 26, 2006). "The Great Gatsby: The Guthrie's first production on its new thrust stage". Variety. Los Angeles, California. from the original on January 11, 2021. Retrieved December 22, 2020.
  • Smith, Dinitia (September 8, 2003). "Love Notes Drenched in Moonlight; Hints of Future Novels in Letters to Fitzgerald". The New York Times. New York. from the original on November 16, 2019. Retrieved November 16, 2019.
  • Stevens, David (December 29, 1999). "Harbison Mixes Up A Great 'Gatsby'". The New York Times. New York. from the original on June 5, 2012. Retrieved April 8, 2011.
  • "The Girl at the Grand Palais". The Economist. London. December 22, 2012. from the original on April 30, 2013. Retrieved March 27, 2013.
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  • Verghis, Sharon (May 3, 2013). "Careless People of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby Have a Modern Equivalent". The Australian. Surry Hills, New South Wales. from the original on March 25, 2017. Retrieved May 5, 2013.
  • White, Trevor (December 10, 2007). "BBC World Service Programmes – The Great Gatsby". BBC. London. from the original on October 3, 2010. Retrieved August 30, 2010.
  • Williams, John (January 14, 2021). "The 'Great Gatsby' Glut". The New York Times. New York. from the original on January 19, 2021. Retrieved July 28, 2021.
  • Zuckerman, Esther (April 29, 2013). . The Atlantic Wire. Washington, D.C.: The Atlantic Media Company. Archived from the original on November 6, 2013. Retrieved July 4, 2019.

External links edit

January 01, 1970
great, gatsby, this, article, about, novel, other, uses, disambiguation, 1925, novel, american, writer, scott, fitzgerald, jazz, long, island, near, york, city, novel, depicts, first, person, narrator, nick, carraway, interactions, with, mysterious, millionair. This article is about the novel For other uses see The Great Gatsby disambiguation The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel by American writer F Scott Fitzgerald Set in the Jazz Age on Long Island near New York City the novel depicts first person narrator Nick Carraway s interactions with mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and Gatsby s obsession to reunite with his former lover Daisy Buchanan The Great GatsbyThe front dust jacket art of the first edition known as Celestial EyesAuthorF Scott FitzgeraldCover artistFrancis CugatCountryUnited StatesLanguageEnglishGenreTragedyPublishedApril 10 1925PublisherCharles Scribner s SonsMedia typePrint hardcover amp paperback Preceded byThe Beautiful and Damned 1922 Followed byTender Is the Night 1934 TextThe Great Gatsby at Wikisource The novel was inspired by a youthful romance Fitzgerald had with socialite Ginevra King and the riotous parties he attended on Long Island s North Shore in 1922 Following a move to the French Riviera Fitzgerald completed a rough draft of the novel in 1924 He submitted it to editor Maxwell Perkins who persuaded Fitzgerald to revise the work over the following winter After making revisions Fitzgerald was satisfied with the text but remained ambivalent about the book s title and considered several alternatives Painter Francis Cugat s dust jacket art named Celestial Eyes greatly impressed Fitzgerald and he incorporated its imagery into the novel After its publication by Scribner s in April 1925 The Great Gatsby received generally favorable reviews though some literary critics believed it did not equal Fitzgerald s previous efforts Compared to his earlier novels This Side of Paradise 1920 and The Beautiful and Damned 1922 the novel was a commercial disappointment It sold fewer than 20 000 copies by October and Fitzgerald s hopes of a monetary windfall from the novel were unrealized When the author died in 1940 he believed himself to be a failure and his work forgotten During World War II the novel experienced an abrupt surge in popularity when the Council on Books in Wartime distributed free copies to American soldiers serving overseas This new found popularity launched a critical and scholarly re examination and the work soon became a core part of most American high school curricula and a part of American popular culture Numerous stage and film adaptations followed in the subsequent decades Gatsby continues to attract popular and scholarly attention Scholars emphasize the novel s treatment of social class inherited versus self made wealth gender race and environmentalism and its cynical attitude towards the American Dream The Great Gatsby is widely considered to be a literary masterpiece and a contender for the title of the Great American Novel Contents 1 Historical and biographical context 2 Plot summary 3 Major characters 4 Writing and production 4 1 Alternative titles 4 2 Dust jacket art 5 Critical reception 5 1 Initial reviews 5 2 Revival and reassessment 6 Critical analysis 6 1 Major themes 6 1 1 The American Dream 6 1 2 Class permanence 6 1 3 Gender relations 6 1 4 Race and displacement 6 1 5 Sexuality and identity 6 1 6 Technology and environment 6 2 Antisemitism 7 Adaptations 7 1 Stage 7 2 Film 7 3 Television 7 4 Literature 7 5 Graphic novels 7 6 Radio 7 7 Video games 8 Notes 9 References 9 1 Citations 9 2 Print sources 9 3 Online sources 10 External linksHistorical and biographical context editFurther information Jazz Age and Prohibition in the United States nbsp nbsp F Scott Fitzgerald s romance and life long obsession with socialite Ginevra King informed the plot of the novel King was feted in the press as among Chicago s most desirable debutantes and inspired the character of Daisy Buchanan Set on the prosperous Long Island of 1922 The Great Gatsby provides a critical social history of Prohibition era America during the Jazz Age a F Scott Fitzgerald s fictional narrative fully renders that period known for its jazz music 2 economic prosperity 3 flapper culture 4 libertine mores 3 rebellious youth 5 and ubiquitous speakeasies Fitzgerald uses many of these 1920s societal developments to tell his story from simple details like petting in automobiles to broader themes such as bootlegging as the illicit source of Gatsby s fortune 6 7 Fitzgerald conveys the hedonism of Jazz Age society by placing a relatable plotline within the historical context of the most raucous and flashiest era in American history 3 8 In Fitzgerald s eyes the era represented a morally permissive time when Americans of all ages became disillusioned with prevailing social norms and obsessed with pleasure seeking 9 Fitzgerald himself had a certain ambivalence towards the Jazz Age an era whose themes he would later regard as reflective of events in his own life 10 The Great Gatsby reflects various events in Fitzgerald s youth 11 He was a young Midwesterner from Minnesota Like the novel s narrator who went to Yale he was educated at an Ivy League school Princeton 12 There the 18 year old Fitzgerald met Ginevra King a 16 year old socialite with whom he fell deeply in love 13 14 Although Ginevra was madly in love with him 15 her upper class family openly discouraged his courtship of their daughter because of his lower class status and her father purportedly told him that poor boys shouldn t think of marrying rich girls 16 Rejected by Ginevra s family as a suitor because of his lack of financial prospects a suicidal Fitzgerald enlisted in the United States Army amid World War I and was commissioned as a second lieutenant 17 18 While awaiting deployment to the Western front where he hoped to die in combat 18 he was stationed at Camp Sheridan in Montgomery Alabama where he met Zelda Sayre a vivacious 17 year old Southern belle 19 After learning that Ginevra had married wealthy Chicago businessman William Bill Mitchell Fitzgerald asked Zelda to marry him 20 Zelda agreed but postponed their marriage until he became financially successful 21 22 Fitzgerald is thus similar to Jay Gatsby in that he became engaged while a military officer stationed far from home and then sought immense wealth in order to provide for the lifestyle to which his fiancee had become accustomed b 26 27 After his success as a short story writer and as a novelist Fitzgerald married Zelda in New York City and the newly wed couple soon relocated to Long Island 28 Despite enjoying the exclusive Long Island milieu Fitzgerald quietly disapproved of the extravagant parties 29 and the wealthy persons he encountered often disappointed him 30 While striving to emulate the rich he found their privileged lifestyle to be morally disquieting 31 32 Although Fitzgerald like Gatsby had always admired the rich he nonetheless possessed a smoldering resentment towards them 32 Plot summary edit nbsp George Wilson and his wife Myrtle live in the valley of ashes a refuse dump shown in the above photograph historically located in New York City during the 1920s Today the area is Flushing Meadows Corona Park In spring 1922 Nick Carraway a Yale alumnus from the Midwest and a World War I veteran journeys to New York City to obtain employment as a bond salesman He rents a bungalow in the Long Island village of West Egg next to a luxurious estate inhabited by Jay Gatsby an enigmatic multi millionaire who hosts dazzling soirees yet doesn t partake in them One evening Nick dines with a distant cousin Daisy Buchanan in the old money town of East Egg Daisy is married to Tom Buchanan formerly a Yale football star whom Nick knew during his college days The couple has recently relocated from Chicago to a mansion directly across the bay from Gatsby s estate There Nick encounters Jordan Baker an insolent flapper and golf champion who is a childhood friend of Daisy s Jordan confides to Nick that Tom keeps a mistress Myrtle Wilson who brazenly telephones him at his home and who lives in the valley of ashes a sprawling refuse dump 33 That evening Nick sees Gatsby standing alone on his lawn staring at a green light across the bay Days later Nick reluctantly accompanies a drunken and agitated Tom to New York City by train En route they stop at a garage inhabited by mechanic George Wilson and his wife Myrtle Myrtle joins them and the trio proceed to a small New York apartment that Tom has rented for trysts with her Guests arrive and a party ensues which ends with Tom slapping Myrtle and breaking her nose after she mentions Daisy One morning Nick receives a formal invitation to a party at Gatsby s mansion Once there Nick is embarrassed that he recognizes no one and begins drinking heavily until he encounters Jordan While chatting with her he is approached by a man who introduces himself as Jay Gatsby and insists that both he and Nick served in the 3rd Infantry Division c during the war Gatsby attempts to ingratiate himself with Nick and when Nick leaves the party he notices Gatsby watching him nbsp The confrontation between Gatsby and Tom occurs in the twenty story Plaza Hotel a chateau like edifice with an architectural style inspired by the French Renaissance In late July Nick and Gatsby have lunch at a speakeasy Gatsby tries impressing Nick with tales of his war heroism and his Oxford days Afterward Nick meets Jordan again at the Plaza Hotel Jordan reveals that Gatsby and Daisy met around 1917 when Gatsby was an officer in the American Expeditionary Forces They fell in love but when Gatsby was deployed overseas Daisy reluctantly married Tom Gatsby hopes that his newfound wealth and dazzling parties will make Daisy reconsider Gatsby uses Nick to stage a reunion with Daisy and the two embark upon an affair In September Tom discovers the affair when Daisy carelessly addresses Gatsby with unabashed intimacy in front of him Later at a Plaza Hotel suite Gatsby and Tom argue about the affair Gatsby insists Daisy declare that she never loved Tom Daisy claims she loves Tom and Gatsby upsetting both Tom reveals Gatsby is a swindler whose money comes from bootlegging alcohol Upon hearing this Daisy chooses to stay with Tom Tom scornfully tells Gatsby to drive her home knowing that Daisy will never leave him While returning to East Egg Gatsby and Daisy drive by Wilson s garage and their car strikes Myrtle killing her instantly Later Gatsby reveals to Nick that Daisy was driving the car but that he intends to take the blame for the accident to protect her Nick urges Gatsby to flee to avoid prosecution but he refuses After Tom tells George that Gatsby owns the car that struck Myrtle a distraught George assumes the owner of the vehicle must be Myrtle s lover George fatally shoots Gatsby in his mansion s swimming pool then kills himself Several days after Gatsby s murder his father Henry Gatz arrives for the sparsely attended funeral After Gatsby s death Nick comes to hate New York and decides that Gatsby Daisy Tom and he were all Midwesterners unsuited to Eastern life d Nick encounters Tom and initially refuses to shake his hand Tom admits he was the one who told George that Gatsby owned the vehicle that killed Myrtle Before returning to the Midwest Nick returns to Gatsby s mansion and stares across the bay at the green light emanating from the end of Daisy s dock Major characters edit nbsp Edith Cummings a premier amateur golfer inspired the character of Jordan Baker A friend of Ginevra King she was one of Chicago s famous debutantes in the Jazz Age Nick Carraway a Yale University alumnus from the Midwest a World War I veteran and a newly arrived resident of West Egg age 29 later 30 who serves as the first person narrator He is Gatsby s neighbor and a bond salesman Carraway is easy going and optimistic although this latter quality fades as the novel progresses He ultimately returns to the Midwest after despairing of the decadence and indifference of the eastern United States 35 Jay Gatsby originally James Jimmy Gatz a young mysterious millionaire with shady business connections later revealed to be a bootlegger originally from North Dakota During World War I when he was a young military officer stationed at the United States Army s Camp Taylor in Louisville Kentucky Gatsby encountered the love of his life the debutante Daisy Buchanan Later after the war he studied briefly at Trinity College Oxford in England 36 According to Fitzgerald s wife Zelda he partly based Gatsby on their enigmatic Long Island neighbor Max Gerlach 37 A military veteran Gerlach became a self made millionaire due to his bootlegging endeavors and was fond of using the phrase old sport in his letters to Fitzgerald 38 Daisy Buchanan a shallow self absorbed and young debutante and socialite from Louisville Kentucky identified as a flapper 39 She is Nick s second cousin once removed and the wife of Tom Buchanan Before marrying Tom Daisy had a romantic relationship with Gatsby Her choice between Gatsby and Tom is one of the novel s central conflicts Fitzgerald s romance and life long obsession with Ginevra King inspired the character of Daisy 13 40 41 Thomas Tom Buchanan Daisy s husband a millionaire who lives in East Egg Tom is an imposing man of muscular build with a gruff voice and contemptuous demeanor 42 He was a football star at Yale and is a white supremacist 43 Among other literary models e Buchanan has certain parallels with William Bill Mitchell the Chicago businessman who married Ginevra King 45 Buchanan and Mitchell were both Chicagoans with an interest in polo 45 Also like Ginevra s father Charles King whom Fitzgerald resented Buchanan is an imperious Yale man and polo player from Lake Forest Illinois 46 Jordan Baker an amateur golfer with a sarcastic streak and an aloof attitude and Daisy s long time friend She is Nick Carraway s girlfriend for most of the novel though they grow apart towards the end She has a shady reputation because of rumors that she had cheated in a tournament which harmed her reputation both socially and as a golfer Fitzgerald based Jordan on Ginevra s friend Edith Cummings 47 a premier amateur golfer known in the press as The Fairway Flapper 48 Unlike Jordan Baker Cummings was never suspected of cheating 49 The character s name is a play on two popular automobile brands the Jordan Motor Car Company and the Baker Motor Vehicle both of Cleveland Ohio 50 alluding to Jordan s fast reputation and the new freedom presented to American women especially flappers in the 1920s 51 52 53 George B Wilson a mechanic and owner of a garage He is disliked by both his wife Myrtle Wilson and Tom Buchanan who describes him as so dumb he doesn t know he s alive 54 At the end of the novel George kills Gatsby wrongly believing he had been driving the car that killed Myrtle and then kills himself 55 Myrtle Wilson George s wife and Tom Buchanan s mistress Myrtle who possesses a fierce vitality 56 is desperate to find refuge from her disappointing marriage 57 She is accidentally killed by Gatsby s car as she mistakenly thinks Tom is still driving it and runs after it 58 Writing and production edit nbsp The now demolished Beacon Towers partly served as an inspiration for Gatsby s home nbsp Oheka Castle was another North Shore inspiration for the novel s setting Fitzgerald began outlining his third novel in June 1922 7 He longed to produce an exquisite work that was beautiful and intricately patterned 59 but the troubled production of his stage play The Vegetable repeatedly interrupted his progress 60 The play flopped and Fitzgerald wrote magazine stories that winter to pay debts incurred by its production 61 He viewed these stories as all worthless 60 although included among them was Winter Dreams which Fitzgerald described as his first attempt at the Gatsby idea 62 The whole idea of Gatsby he later explained to a friend is the unfairness of a poor young man not being able to marry a girl with money This theme comes up again and again because I lived it 63 In October 1922 after the birth of their only child Frances Scott Scottie Fitzgerald the Fitzgeralds moved to Great Neck New York on Long Island 64 Their neighbors in Great Neck included such newly wealthy personages as writer Ring Lardner actor Lew Fields and comedian Ed Wynn 7 These figures were all considered to be nouveau riche unlike those who came from Manhasset Neck which sat across the bay from Great Neck places that were home to many of New York s wealthiest established families 65 This real life juxtaposition gave Fitzgerald his idea for West Egg and East Egg In the novel Great Neck Kings Point became the new money peninsula of West Egg and Port Washington Sands Point became the old money East Egg 65 Several Gold Coast mansions in the area served as inspiration for Gatsby s estate including Land s End 66 Oheka Castle 67 and the since demolished Beacon Towers 68 While living on Long Island the Fitzgeralds enigmatic neighbor was Max Gerlach f 37 72 Purportedly born in America to a German immigrant family g Gerlach had been a major in the American Expeditionary Forces during World War I and he later became a gentleman bootlegger who lived like a millionaire in New York 74 Flaunting his new wealth h Gerlach threw lavish parties 76 never wore the same shirt twice 77 used the phrase old sport 78 and fostered myths about himself including that he was a relation of the German Kaiser 79 These details about Gerlach inspired Fitzgerald in his creation of Jay Gatsby 80 During this same time period the daily newspapers sensationalized the Hall Mills murder case over many months and the highly publicized case likely influenced the plot of Fitzgerald s novel 81 The case involved the double murder of a man and his lover on September 14 1922 mere weeks before Fitzgerald arrived in Great Neck Scholars have speculated that Fitzgerald based certain aspects of the ending of The Great Gatsby and various characterizations on this factual incident 82 Inspired by the Halls Mills case the mysterious persona of Gerlach and the riotous parties he attended on Long Island Fitzgerald had written 18 000 words for his novel by mid 1923 but discarded most of his new story as a false start 83 Some of this early draft resurfaced in the 1924 short story Absolution 84 In earlier drafts i Daisy was originally named Ada and Nick was Dud 86 and the two characters had shared a previous romance prior to their reunion on Long Island 87 These earlier drafts were written from the viewpoint of an omniscient narrator as opposed to Nick s perspective 88 A key difference in earlier drafts is a less complete failure of Gatsby s dream 89 Another difference is that the argument between Tom Buchanan and Gatsby is more balanced although Daisy still returns to Tom 89 Work on The Great Gatsby resumed in earnest in April 1924 90 Fitzgerald decided to depart from the writing process of his previous novels and told Perkins that he was intent on creating an artistic achievement 91 He wished to eschew the realism of his previous two novels and to compose a creative work of sustained imagination 92 To this end he consciously imitated the literary styles of Joseph Conrad and Willa Cather 93 He was particularly influenced by Cather s 1923 work A Lost Lady 94 which features a wealthy married socialite pursued by a variety of romantic suitors and who symbolically embodies the American dream 95 96 He later wrote a letter to Cather apologizing for any unintentional plagiarism 94 During this period of revisions Scott saw and was influenced by early sketches for the book s dust jacket art 97 98 Soon after this burst of effort work slowed while the Fitzgeralds moved to the Villa Marie in Saint Raphael on the French Riviera where a marital crisis soon developed j Despite his ongoing marital tension Fitzgerald continued to write steadily and submitted a near final version of the manuscript to his editor Maxwell Perkins on October 27 100 Perkins informed him in a November letter that Gatsby was too vague as a character and that his wealth and business respectively needed a convincing explanation 101 Fitzgerald thanked Perkins for his detailed criticisms and claimed that such feedback would enable him to perfect the manuscript 102 Having relocated with his wife to Rome 103 Fitzgerald made revisions to the manuscript throughout the winter 101 Content after a few rounds of revision Fitzgerald submitted the final version in February 1925 104 Fitzgerald s alterations included extensive revisions of the sixth and eighth chapters 105 He declined an offer of 10 000 for the serial rights to the book so that it could be published sooner 106 He received a 3 939 advance in 1923 and would receive 1 981 25 upon publication 107 Alternative titles edit nbsp Fitzgerald s editor Maxwell Perkins convinced the author to abandon his original title of Trimalchio in West Egg in favor of The Great Gatsby Fitzgerald had difficulty choosing a title for his novel and entertained many choices before reluctantly deciding on The Great Gatsby 108 a title inspired by Alain Fournier s Le Grand Meaulnes 109 Previously he had shifted between Among Ash Heaps and Millionaires 108 Trimalchio 108 Trimalchio in West Egg 110 On the Road to West Egg 110 Under the Red White and Blue 108 The Gold Hatted Gatsby 110 and The High Bouncing Lover 110 The titles The Gold Hatted Gatsby and The High Bouncing Lover came from Fitzgerald s epigraph for the novel one which he wrote himself under the pen name of Thomas Parke D Invilliers 111 Fitzgerald initially preferred titles referencing Trimalchio k the crude upstart in Petronius s Satyricon and even refers to Gatsby as Trimalchio once in the novel 113 Unlike Gatsby s spectacular parties Trimalchio participated in the orgies he hosted but according to literary critic Tony Tanner there are subtle similarities between the two characters 114 By November 1924 Fitzgerald wrote to Perkins that he had settled upon the title of Trimalchio in West Egg 115 Disliking Fitzgerald s chosen title of Trimalchio in West Egg editor Max Perkins persuaded him that the reference was too obscure and that people would be unable to pronounce it 116 Zelda and Perkins both expressed their preference for The Great Gatsby and the next month Fitzgerald agreed 117 A month before publication after a final review of the proofs he asked if it would be possible to re title it Trimalchio or Gold Hatted Gatsby but Perkins advised against it On March 19 1925 118 Fitzgerald expressed enthusiasm for the title Under the Red White and Blue but it was too late to change it at that stage 119 120 The novel was published as The Great Gatsby on April 10 1925 121 Fitzgerald believed the book s final title to be merely acceptable and often expressed his ambivalence with the name 122 Dust jacket art edit This article is about the cover For other uses see Celestial Eyes nbsp nbsp Drafts of the dust jacket by artist Francis Cugat juxtaposed with the final version In one draft first a single eye loomed over Long Island Sound In a subsequent draft second Cugat expanded upon this concept to feature two eyes gazing over the New York cityscape In the final draft third the shadowy cityscape was replaced by carnival lights evoking Coney Island The artwork for the first edition of The Great Gatsby known as Celestial Eyes is among the most celebrated in American literature and represents a unique instance in literary history in which a novel s commissioned artwork directly influenced the composition of the text 123 Rendered in an Art Deco visual style 124 the artwork depicts the disembodied face of a Jazz Age flapper with celestial eyes and rouged mouth over a dark blue skyline 125 A little known Barcelonan painter named Francis Cugat born Francisco Coradal Cougat was commissioned by an unknown individual in Scribner s art department to illustrate the cover while Fitzgerald was composing the novel 126 In a preliminary sketch Cugat drew a concept of a dismal gray landscape inspired by Fitzgerald s original title for the novel Among Ash Heaps and Millionaires 127 Discarding this gloomy concept Cugat next drew a divergent study which became the prefiguration to the final cover A pencil and crayon drawing of a flapper s half hidden visage over Long Island Sound with scarlet lips one celestial eye and a single diagonal tear 128 Expanding upon this study his subsequent drawing featured two bright eyes looming over a shadowy New York cityscape 129 In later iterations Cugat replaced the shadowy cityscape with dazzling carnival lights evoking a Ferris wheel and likely referencing the glittering amusement park at New York s Coney Island 130 Cugat affixed reclining nudes within the flapper s irizes and added a green tint to the streaming tear 131 Cugat s final cover l which Max Perkins hailed as a masterpiece was the only work he completed for Scribner s and the only book cover he ever designed 133 Although Fitzgerald likely never saw the final gouache painting prior to the novel s publication 134 Cugat s preparatory drafts influenced his writing 97 124 Upon viewing Cugat s drafts before sailing for France in April May 1924 97 98 Fitzgerald was so enamored that he later told editor Max Perkins that he had incorporated Cugat s imagery into the novel 135 This statement has led many to analyze interrelations between Cugat s art and Fitzgerald s text 135 One popular interpretation is that the celestial eyes are reminiscent of those of optometrist T J Eckleburg depicted on a faded commercial billboard near George Wilson s auto repair shop 136 Author Ernest Hemingway supported this latter interpretation and claimed that Fitzgerald had told him the cover referred to a billboard in the valley of the ashes 137 Although this passage has some resemblance to the imagery a closer explanation can be found in Fitzgerald s explicit description of Daisy Buchanan as the girl whose disembodied face floated along the dark cornices and blinding signs 126 Critical reception editInitial reviews edit Charles Scribner s Sons published The Great Gatsby on April 10 1925 138 Fitzgerald cabled Perkins the day after publication to monitor reviews Any news 138 Sales situation doubtful but excellent reviews read a telegram from Perkins on April 20 139 Fitzgerald responded on April 24 saying the cable dispirited him closing the letter with Yours in great depression 139 Fitzgerald soon received letters from contemporaries Willa Cather Edith Wharton and poet T S Eliot praising the novel 140 Although gratified by such correspondence Fitzgerald sought public acclaim from professional critics 141 nbsp Although he praised the novel s style H L Mencken criticized the plot as highly improbable a criticism that Fitzgerald particularly resented The Great Gatsby received generally favorable reviews from literary critics of the day 142 Edwin Clark of The New York Times felt the novel was a mystical and glamorous tale of the Jazz Age 143 Similarly Lillian C Ford of the Los Angeles Times hailed the novel as a revelatory work of art that leaves the reader in a mood of chastened wonder 144 The New York Post described Fitzgerald s prose style as scintillating and genuinely brilliant 145 The New York Herald Tribune was less impressed referring to The Great Gatsby as a literary lemon meringue that nonetheless contains some of the nicest little touches of contemporary observation you could imagine so light so delicate so sharp 146 In The Chicago Daily Tribune H L Mencken judged the work s plot to be highly improbable although he praised the writing as elegant and the careful and brilliant finish 147 Several reviewers felt the novel left much to be desired following Fitzgerald s previous works and criticized him accordingly Harvey Eagleton of The Dallas Morning News predicted that the novel signaled the end of Fitzgerald s artistic success 148 Ralph Coghlan of the St Louis Post Dispatch dismissed the work as an inconsequential performance by a once promising author who had grown bored and cynical 149 Ruth Snyder of New York Evening World lambasted the book s style as painfully forced and declared the editors of her newspaper were quite convinced after reading The Great Gatsby that Mr Fitzgerald is not one of the great American writers of today 150 John McClure of The Times Picayune insisted the plot was implausible and the book itself seemed raw in its construction 151 After reading these reviews Fitzgerald believed that many critics misunderstood the novel 91 He despaired that of all the reviews even the most enthusiastic not one had the slightest idea what the book was about 152 In particular Fitzgerald resented criticisms of the novel s plot as implausible since he had never intended for the story to be realistic 91 Instead he crafted the work to be a romanticized depiction that was largely scenic and symbolic 153 According to his friend John Peale Bishop Fitzgerald further resented the fact that critics failed to perceive the many parallels between the author s life and the character of Jay Gatsby in particular that both created a mythical version of themselves and attempted to live up to this legend 154 Dispirited by critics failing to understand the novel Fitzgerald remained hopeful that the novel would at least be a commercial success perhaps selling as many as 75 000 copies 155 To Fitzgerald s great disappointment Gatsby was a commercial failure in comparison with his previous efforts This Side of Paradise 1920 and The Beautiful and Damned 1922 By October the book had sold fewer than 20 000 copies 60 Although the novel went through two initial printings many copies remained unsold years later 156 Fitzgerald attributed the poor sales to the fact that women tended to be the primary audience for novels during this time and Gatsby did not contain an admirable female character 156 According to his ledger he earned only 2 000 from the book 157 Although Owen Davis 1926 stage adaptation and the Paramount issued silent film version brought in money for the author Fitzgerald lamented that the novel fell far short of the success he had hoped for and would not bring him recognition as a serious novelist in the public eye 60 With the onset of the Great Depression The Great Gatsby was regarded as little more than a nostalgic period piece 60 By the time Fitzgerald died in 1940 the novel had fallen into near obscurity 158 Revival and reassessment edit nbsp Fitzgerald s friend Edmund Wilson helped revive the author s posthumous reputation In 1940 Fitzgerald suffered a third and fatal heart attack and died believing his work forgotten 159 His obituary in The New York Times hailed him as a brilliant novelist and cited Gatsby as his greatest work 160 In the wake of Fitzgerald s death a strong appreciation for the book gradually developed in writers circles Future authors Budd Schulberg and Edward Newhouse were deeply affected by it and John O Hara acknowledged its influence on his work 161 By the time that Gatsby was republished in Edmund Wilson s edition of The Last Tycoon in 1941 the prevailing opinion in writers circles deemed the novel to be an enduring work of fiction 60 In the spring of 1942 mere months after the United States entrance into World War II an association of publishing executives created the Council on Books in Wartime with the stated purpose of distributing paperback Armed Services Editions books to combat troops The Great Gatsby was one of them 162 Within the next several years 155 000 copies of Gatsby were distributed to U S soldiers overseas 163 and the book proved popular among beleaguered troops according to the Saturday Evening Post s 1945 report 164 By 1944 a full scale Fitzgerald revival had occurred 165 Full length scholarly articles on Fitzgerald s works were being published in periodicals and by the following year the earlier consensus among professional critics that The Great Gatsby was merely a sensational story or a nostalgic period piece had effectively vanished 166 The tireless promotional efforts of literary critic Edmund Wilson who was Fitzgerald s Princeton classmate and his close friend led this Fitzgerald revival 167 In 1951 three years after Zelda s death in a hospital fire Professor Arthur Mizener of Cornell University published The Far Side of Paradise the first biography of Fitzgerald 168 Mizener s bestselling biography emphasized The Great Gatsby s positive reception by literary critics which may have further influenced public opinion and renewed interest in it 169 By 1960 thirty five years after the novel s original publication the book was steadily selling 100 000 copies per year 170 Renewed interest in it led The New York Times editorialist Mizener to proclaim the novel was a masterwork of 20th century American literature 60 By 1974 The Great Gatsby had attained its status as a literary masterwork and was deemed a contender for the title of the Great American Novel 171 Hunter S Thompson retyped pages of The Great Gatsby just to get a feeling of what it was like to write that way 172 According to Thompson s friend William Nack Thompson once retyped the entirety of the novel Roger Ebert wrote that perhaps Fitzgerald s words compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired is the best possible description of Thompson s life s work 173 By the mid 2000s many literary critics considered The Great Gatsby to be one of the greatest novels ever written 174 and the work was part of the assigned curricula in the near majority of U S high schools 158 As of early 2020 The Great Gatsby had sold almost 30 million copies worldwide and continues to sell an additional 500 000 copies annually 175 Numerous foreign editions of the novel have been published 176 and the text has been translated into 42 different languages 177 The work is Scribner s most popular title in 2013 the e book alone sold 185 000 copies 177 The novel s U S copyright expired on January 1 2021 when all works published in 1925 entered the public domain 178 Since then numerous altered and incomplete reprints have flooded the market 179 Critical analysis editMajor themes edit The American Dream edit nbsp The American Dream often represented by the Statue of Liberty signifying new opportunities in life is a central theme underlying the novel Following the novel s revival later critical writings on The Great Gatsby focused on Fitzgerald s disillusionment with the American Dream in the hedonistic Jazz Age 180 a name for the era which Fitzgerald claimed to have coined 181 In 1970 scholar Roger L Pearson asserted that Fitzgerald s work more so than other twentieth century novels is especially linked with this conceptualization of the American dream 182 Pearson traced the literary origins of this dream to Colonial America The dream is the belief that every individual regardless of their origins may seek and achieve their desired goals be they political monetary or social It is the literary expression of the concept of America The land of opportunity 182 However Pearson noted that Fitzgerald s particular treatment of this theme is devoid of the discernible optimism in the writings of earlier American authors 182 He suggests Gatsby serves as a false prophet of the American dream and pursuing the dream only results in dissatisfaction for those who chase it owing to its unattainability 183 In this analytical context the green light on the Buchanans dock visible across Long Island Sound from Gatsby s house is frequently interpreted as a symbol of Gatsby s unrealizable goal to win Daisy and consequently to achieve the American Dream 158 184 Also scholar Sarah Churchwell points out that adultery in the novel is linked to the loss of faith and broken promises which symbolizes the corruption of the American Dream 185 Class permanence edit Scholars and writers commonly ascribe Gatsby s inability to achieve the American Dream to entrenched class disparities in American society 186 The novel underscores the limits of the American lower class to transcend their station of birth 119 Scholar Sarah Churchwell contends that Fitzgerald s novel is a tale of class warfare in a status obsessed country that refuses to acknowledge publicly it even has a class system 119 Although scholars posit different explanations for the continuation of class differences in the United States there is a consensus regarding the novel s message in conveying its underlying permanence 187 Although Gatsby s fundamental conflict occurs between entrenched sources of socio economic power and upstarts like Gatsby who threaten their interests 188 Fitzgerald s novel shows that a class permanence persists despite the country s capitalist economy that prizes innovation and adaptability 188 Dianne Bechtel argues Fitzgerald plotted the novel to illustrate that class transcends wealth in America Even if the poorer Americans become rich they remain inferior to those Americans with old money 189 Consequently Gatsby and other characters in the novel are trapped in a rigid American class system 190 Gender relations edit nbsp An idealized depiction of a flapper as illustrated by Ellen Pyle for the cover of The Saturday Evening Post 1922 Besides exploring the difficulties of achieving the American dream The Great Gatsby explores societal gender expectations during the Jazz Age 191 The character of Daisy Buchanan has been identified specifically as personifying the emerging cultural archetype of the flapper 39 Flappers were typically young modern women who bobbed their hair and wore short skirts 192 193 They also drank alcohol and had premarital sex 194 6 Despite the newfound societal freedoms attained by flappers in the 1920s 195 Fitzgerald s work critically examines the continued limitations upon women s agency during this period 196 In this context although early critics viewed the character of Daisy to be a monster of bitchery 197 later scholars such as Leland S Person Jr asserted that Daisy s character exemplifies the marginalization of women in the elite social environment that Fitzgerald depicts 198 Writing in 1978 Person noted Daisy is more of a hapless victim than a manipulative victimizer 199 She is the target first of Tom s callous domination and next of Gatsby s dehumanizing adoration 199 She involuntarily becomes the holy grail at the center of Gatsby s unrealistic quest to be steadfast to a youthful concept of himself 199 The ensuing contest of wills between Tom and Gatsby reduces Daisy to a trophy wife whose sole existence is to augment her possessor s socio economic success 200 As an upper class white woman living in East Egg during this time period Daisy must adhere to societal expectations and gender norms such as actively fulfilling the roles of dutiful wife nurturing mother and charming socialite 196 Many of Daisy s choices ultimately culminating in the fatal car crash and misery for all those involved can be partly attributed to her prescribed role as a beautiful little fool who is reliant on her husband for financial and societal security m 202 Her decision to remain with her husband despite her feelings for Gatsby is because of the security that her marriage to Tom Buchanan provides 197 Race and displacement edit nbsp Fitzgerald s novel references a fictional book Goddard s The Rise of the Colored Empires which is a parody of The Rising Tide of Color 1920 by Lothrop Stoddard Many scholars have analyzed the novel s treatment of race and displacement in particular a perceived threat posed by newer immigrants to older Americans triggering concerns over a loss of socio economic status 203 In one instance Tom Buchanan the novel s antagonist claims that he Nick and Jordan are racially superior Nordics Tom decries immigration and advocates white supremacy 204 A fictional book alluded to by Tom is Stoddard s The Rise of the Colored Empires which is a parody by Fitzgerald of Lothrop Stoddard s The Rising Tide of Color a 1920s bestseller 205 Stoddard warned that immigration would alter America s racial composition and destroy the country 206 Analyzing these elements literary theorist Walter Benn Michaels contends that Fitzgerald s novel reflects a historical period in American literature characterized by fears over the influx of Southern and Eastern European immigrants whose otherness challenged Americans sense of national identity 207 Such anxieties were more salient in national discourse than the societal consequences of World War I 208 209 and the defining question of the period was who constituted a real American 210 In this context of immigration and displacement Tom s hostility towards Gatsby who is the embodiment of latest America 211 has been interpreted as partly embodying status anxieties of the time involving anti immigrant sentiment 211 Gatsby whom Tom belittles as Mr Nobody from Nowhere 212 functions as a cipher because of his obscure origins his unclear ethno religious identity and his indeterminate class status 213 Although his ethnicity is vague his last name Gatz and his father s adherence to the Lutheran religion indicate his family are recent German immigrants 214 This would preclude them from the coveted status of Old Stock Americans 214 Consequently Gatsby s socio economic ascent is deemed a threat not only due to his status as nouveau riche but because he is perceived as an outsider 215 Because of such themes The Great Gatsby captures the perennial American experience as it is a story about change and those who resist it whether such change comes in the form of a new wave of immigrants the nouveau riche or successful minorities 188 Since Americans living in the 1920s to the present are largely defined by their fluctuating socio economic circumstances and must navigate a society with entrenched racial and ethnic prejudices Fitzgerald s depiction of resultant status anxieties and social conflict has been highlighted by scholars as still enduringly relevant nearly a hundred years after the novel s publication 188 216 Sexuality and identity edit nbsp Photo of Fitzgerald dressed as a woman circa 1915 Questions regarding the sexuality of characters have been raised for decades and augmented by biographical details about the author have given rise to queer readings 217 During his lifetime Fitzgerald s sexuality became a subject of debate among his friends and acquaintances 218 219 220 As a youth Fitzgerald had a close relationship with Father Sigourney Fay 221 a possibly gay Catholic priest 222 223 and Fitzgerald later used his last name for the idealized romantic character of Daisy Fay 224 After college Fitzgerald cross dressed during outings in Minnesota 225 Years later while drafting The Great Gatsby rumors dogged Fitzgerald among the American expat community in Paris that he was gay 219 Soon after Fitzgerald s wife Zelda Fitzgerald likewise doubted his heterosexuality and asserted that he was a closeted homosexual 226 She publicly belittled him with homophobic slurs 227 and she alleged that Fitzgerald and fellow writer Ernest Hemingway engaged in homosexual relations 228 229 These incidents strained the Fitzgeralds marriage at the time of the novel s publication 226 Although Fitzgerald s sexuality is a subject of scholarly debate n such biographical details lent credence to critical interpretations that his fictional characters are either gay or bisexual surrogates o 234 232 As early as 1945 critics such as Lionel Trilling noted that characters in The Great Gatsby such as Jordan Baker were implied to be vaguely homosexual 235 236 and in 1960 writer Otto Friedrich commented upon the ease of examining the thwarted relations depicted in Fitzgerald s fiction through a queer lens 237 In recent decades scholarship has focused sharply on the sexuality of Nick Carraway 238 In one instance in the novel Carraway departs a drunken orgy with a pale feminine man named Mr McKee and following suggestive ellipses Nick next finds himself standing beside a bed while McKee sits between the sheets clad only in his underwear 239 240 Such scenes have led scholars to describe Nick as possessing an overt queerness and prompted analyzes about his emotional attachment to Jay Gatsby 241 For these reasons the novel has been described as an exploration of sexual identity during a historical era typified by the societal transition towards modernity 242 243 Technology and environment edit Technological and environmental criticisms of Gatsby seek to place the novel and its characters in a broader historical context 244 In 1964 Leo Marx argued in The Machine in the Garden that Fitzgerald s work evinces a tension between a complex pastoral ideal of a bygone America and the societal transformations caused by industrialization and machine technology 245 Specifically the valley of the ashes in between East and West Egg represents a man made wasteland which is a byproduct of the industrialization that has made Gatsby s booming lifestyle including his automobile possible 246 Marx argues that Fitzgerald via Nick expresses a pastoral longing typical of other 1920s American writers like William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway 247 Although such writers cherish the pastoral ideal they accept that technological progress has deprived this ideal of nearly all meaning 248 In this context Nick s repudiation of the eastern United States represents a futile attempt to withdraw into nature 248 Yet as Fitzgerald s work shows any technological demarcation between the eastern and western United States has vanished d and one cannot escape into a pastoral past 248 In 2018 scholar Kyle Keeler argued that the voracious pursuit of wealth as criticized in Fitzgerald s novel offers a warning about the perils of environmental destruction in pursuit of self interest 251 According to Kyle Keeler Gatsby s quest for greater status manifests as self centered anthropocentric resource acquisition 251 Inspired by the predatory mining practices of his fictional mentor Dan Cody Gatsby participates in extensive deforestation amid World War I and then undertakes bootlegging activities reliant upon exploiting South American agriculture 251 Gatsby conveniently ignores the wasteful devastation of the valley of ashes to pursue a consumerist lifestyle and exacerbates the wealth gap that became increasingly salient in 1920s America 251 For these reasons Keeler argues that while Gatsby s socioeconomic ascent and self transformation depend upon these very factors each one is nonetheless partially responsible for the ongoing ecological crisis 251 Antisemitism edit nbsp Fitzgerald based the character of Meyer Wolfsheim on Jazz Age racketeer Arnold Rothstein pictured above who was murdered in 1928 The Great Gatsby has been accused of antisemitism because of its use of Jewish stereotypes 252 One of the novel s supporting characters is Meyer Wolfsheim p a Jewish friend and mentor of Gatsby A corrupt profiteer who assists Gatsby s bootlegging operations and who fixed the 1919 World Series he appears only twice in the novel the second time refusing to attend Gatsby s funeral Fitzgerald describes Wolfsheim as a small flat nosed Jew with tiny eyes and two fine growths of hair in his nostrils 255 Evoking ethnic stereotypes regarding the Jewish nose he describes Wolfsheim s nose as expressive tragic and able to flash indignantly 255 The fictional character of Wolfsheim is an allusion to real life Jewish gambler Arnold Rothstein 256 a notorious New York crime kingpin whom Fitzgerald met once in undetermined circumstances 257 Rothstein was blamed for match fixing in the Black Sox Scandal that tainted the 1919 World Series 258 Wolfsheim has been interpreted as representing the Jewish miser stereotype Richard Levy author of Antisemitism A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution claims that Wolfsheim serves to link Jewishness with corruption 255 In a 1947 article for Commentary Milton Hindus an assistant professor of humanities at the University of Chicago stated that while he believed the book was a superb literary achievement Wolfsheim was its most abrasive character and the work contains an antisemitic undertone 259 However Hindus argued the Jewish stereotypes displayed by Wolfsheim were typical of the time when the novel was written and set and that its antisemitism was of the habitual customary harmless unpolitical variety 260 A 2015 article by essayist Arthur Krystal agreed with Hindus assessment that Fitzgerald s use of Jewish caricatures was not driven by malice and merely reflected commonly held beliefs of his time He notes the accounts of Frances Kroll a Jewish woman and secretary to Fitzgerald who claimed that Fitzgerald was hurt by accusations of antisemitism and responded to critiques of Wolfsheim by claiming he merely fulfilled a function in the story and had nothing to do with race or religion 252 Adaptations editStage edit Gatsby has been adapted for the stage The first known stage adaptation was by American dramatist Owen Davis 261 which became the 1926 film version The play directed by George Cukor opened on Broadway on February 2 1926 and had 112 curtain calls A successful tour later in the year included performances in Chicago August 1 through October 2 262 In July 2006 Simon Levy s stage adaptation directed by David Esbjornson premiered at the Guthrie Theater to commemorate the opening of its new theater 263 In 2010 critic Ben Brantley of The New York Times highly praised the debut of Gatz an Off Broadway production by Elevator Repair Service 264 The New York Metropolitan Opera commissioned John Harbison to compose an operatic treatment of the novel to commemorate the 25th anniversary of James Levine s debut The work called The Great Gatsby premiered on December 20 1999 265 The novel has also been adapted for ballet performances In 2009 BalletMet premiered a version at the Capitol Theatre in Columbus Ohio 266 In 2010 The Washington Ballet premiered a version at the Kennedy Center The show received an encore run the following year The Comedy Theatre of Budapest created a musical 267 Also in 2023 the second musical adaptation The Great Gatsby A New Musical with music and lyrics by Jason Howland and Nathan Tysen and a book by Kait Kerrigan announced a one month limited engagement at the Paper Mill Playhouse 268 The Broadway tryout began its previews on October 12 2023 followed by an official opening night scheduled for ten days later The production concluded on November 12 of the same year Jeremy Jordan and Eva Noblezada starred as the leading roles of Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan with Samantha Pauly and Noah J Ricketts as Jordan Baker and Nick Carraway 269 The production transferred to Broadway for previews on March 29 2024 and is set to officially open April 25th 2024 270 271 Gatsby a third musical adaptation with music and lyrics by Florence Welch and Thomas Bartlett and a book by Martyna Majok is set to have its world premiere the American Repertory Theater 272 On May 25 2024 the show will begin previews and will open officially on June 5 of the same year It will run for about two months with a closing night set for July 21 Film edit nbsp A lobby card for the lost 1926 film adaptation source source source source source source The 1926 film trailer the only extant footage The first movie version of the novel debuted in 1926 Itself a version of Owen Davis s Broadway play it was directed by Herbert Brenon and starred Warner Baxter Lois Wilson and William Powell It is a famous example of a lost film Reviews suggest it may have been the most faithful adaptation of the novel but a trailer of the film at the National Archives is all that is known to exist 273 Reportedly Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda loathed the silent version Zelda wrote to an acquaintance that the film was rotten She and Scott left the cinema midway through the film 274 Following the 1926 movie was 1949 s The Great Gatsby directed by Elliott Nugent and starring Alan Ladd Betty Field and Macdonald Carey 275 Twenty five years later in 1974 The Great Gatsby appeared onscreen again It was directed by Jack Clayton and starred Robert Redford as Gatsby Mia Farrow as Daisy and Sam Waterston as Nick Carraway 275 Most recently The Great Gatsby was directed by Baz Luhrmann in 2013 and starred Leonardo DiCaprio as Gatsby Carey Mulligan as Daisy and Tobey Maguire as Nick 274 In 2021 visual effects company DNEG Animation announced they would be producing an animated film adaptation of the novel directed by William Joyce and written by Brian Selznick 276 Television edit Gatsby has been recast multiple times as a short form television movie The first was in 1955 as an NBC episode for Robert Montgomery Presents starring Robert Montgomery Phyllis Kirk and Lee Bowman The episode was directed by Alvin Sapinsley 277 In 1958 CBS filmed another adaptation as an episode of Playhouse 90 also titled The Great Gatsby which was directed by Franklin J Schaffner and starred Robert Ryan Jeanne Crain and Rod Taylor 278 Most recently the novel was adapted as an A amp E movie in 2000 The Great Gatsby was directed by Robert Markowitz and starred Toby Stephens as Gatsby Mira Sorvino as Daisy and Paul Rudd as Nick 279 278 Literature edit Since entering the public domain in 2021 retellings and expansions of The Great Gatsby have become legal to publish Nick by Michael Farris Smith 2021 imagines the backstory of Nick Carraway 280 That same year saw the publication of The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo a retelling with elements of the fantasy genre while tackling issues of race and sexuality 281 and The Pursued and the Pursuing by AJ Odasso a queer partial retelling and sequel in which Jay Gatsby survives 282 Anna Marie McLemore s own queer retelling Self Made Boys A Great Gatsby Remix was released in 2022 and was longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People s Literature 283 Graphic novels edit The Great Gatsby has been adapted into three graphic novels The first was in 2007 by Nicki Greenberg who published The Great Gatsby A Graphic Adaptation in Australia Because the original novel was still protected by United States copyright laws this version was never published in the U S The second version The Great Gatsby The Graphic Novel was adapted by Fred Fordham and illustrated by Aya Morton in 2020 In 2021 K Woodman Maynard adapted and illustrated The Great Gatsby A Graphic Novel Adaptation which was published by Candlewick Press 284 This was the first graphic novel adaptation of the original novel to be published after it entered the public domain in 2021 In June 2021 Clover Press debuted the first of seven periodical comic books faithfully adapting The Great Gatsby Radio edit The novel has been adapted into a series of radio episodes The first radio episode was a 1950 half hour long adaptation for CBS Family Hour of Stars starring Kirk Douglas as Gatsby 285 The novel was read aloud by the BBC World Service in ten parts in 2008 In a 2012 BBC Radio 4 broadcast The Great Gatsby took the form of a Classic Serial dramatization It was created by dramatist Robert Forrest 286 287 Video games edit In 2010 Oberon Media released a casual hidden object game called Classic Adventures The Great Gatsby 288 289 In 2011 developer Charlie Hoey and editor Pete Smith created an 8 bit style online game of The Great Gatsby called The Great Gatsby for NES 290 291 292 in 2022 after the Adobe Flash end of life they adapted this game to an actual NES ROM file which can also be played on their website 293 294 In 2013 Slate released a short symbolic adaptation called The Great Gatsby The Video Game 295 296 Notes edit Historian Jeff Nilsson described F Scott Fitzgerald as the poet laureate of the Jazz Age the most raucous gaudy era in U S history 1 As a Southern belle Zelda Sayre s wealthy family employed half a dozen domestic servants many of whom were African American 23 She was unaccustomed to domestic labor of any kind and delegated all tasks to her servants 24 25 In the original 1925 edition Fitzgerald wrote that Gatsby and Nick served in the First Division Fitzgerald revised the text in later editions to be the Third Division 34 a b Throughout the novel Fitzgerald identifies his native region of the Midwest those towns beyond the Ohio with the perceived virtuousness and rustic simplicity of the American West and as culturally distinct from the decadent values of the eastern United States 249 250 Another possible model for Tom Buchanan was Southern polo champion and aviator Tommy Hitchcock Jr whom Fitzgerald met at Long Island parties while in New York 44 Primary sources such as Zelda Fitzgerald and F Scott Fitzgerald s friend Edmund Wilson both stated that Max Gerlach was a neighbor 37 69 Scholars have yet to find surviving property records for a Long Island residence with Gerlach s name 70 However there are likely gaps in the record of his addresses 70 and an accurate reconstruction of Gerlach s life and whereabouts is greatly hindered by the imperfect state of relevant documentation 71 In a 2009 book scholar Horst Kruse asserts that Max Gerlach was born in or near Berlin Germany and as a young boy he immigrated with his German parents to America 73 With the end of prohibition and the onset of the Great Depression Max Gerlach lost his wealth Living in poverty he attempted suicide by shooting himself in the head in 1939 75 Only two pages of the first draft of The Great Gatsby survive Fitzgerald enclosed them with a letter to Willa Cather in 1925 They are now in the Fitzgerald Papers at Princeton University 85 While Fitzgerald worked on the novel his wife Zelda was romanced by French naval aviator Edouard Jozan and asked for a divorce 99 In 2002 over six decades after Fitzgerald s death his earlier draft of the now famous novel was published under the title Trimalchio An Early Version of The Great Gatsby 112 Many years after The Great Gatsby s publication Francis Cugat s original painting for the book cover was presumed forever lost until it was found in a trash can at Scribner s and donated to the Princeton University Libraries for its Graphic Arts Collection 132 Daisy s statement that she hopes her daughter will be a beautiful little fool was said by Zelda Fitzgerald when their daughter Frances was born on October 26 1921 in a St Paul hospital 201 Fessenden 2005 argues that Fitzgerald struggled with his sexual orientation 230 In contrast Bruccoli 2002 insists that anyone can be called a latent homosexual but there is no evidence that Fitzgerald was ever involved in a homosexual attachment 231 Scholars have focused on Fitzgerald s statement in a letter that his mind was half feminine 232 In 1935 Fitzgerald wrote to Laura Guthrie I don t know what it is in me or that comes to me when I start to write I am half feminine at least my mind is 233 The spelling Wolfshiem appears throughout Fitzgerald s original manuscript while Wolfsheim was introduced by editor Edmund Wilson in the second edition 253 This appears in later Scribner s editions 254 References editCitations edit Donahue 2013a Fitzgerald 1945 p 16 Echoes of the Jazz Age a b c Fitzgerald 1945 p 18 Echoes of the Jazz Age Fitzgerald 1945 p 15 Echoes of the Jazz Age Scarcely had the staider citizens of the republic caught their breaths when the wildest of all generations the generation which had been adolescent during the confusion of the Great War brusquely shouldered my contemporaries out of the way and danced into the limelight This was the generation whose girls dramatized themselves as flappers Donahue 2013a a b Fitzgerald 1945 pp 14 15 Echoes of the Jazz Age Unchaperoned young people of the smaller cities had discovered the mobile privacy of that automobile given to young Bill at sixteen to make him self reliant At first petting was a desperate adventure even under such favorable conditions but presently confidences were exchanged and the old commandment broke down a b c Bruccoli 2000 pp 53 54 Donahue 2013a Gross 1998 p 167 Fitzgerald 1945 p 15 Echoes of the Jazz Age Fitzgerald 1945 pp 13 22 Fitzgerald documented the Jazz Age and his life s relation to the era in his essay Echoes of the Jazz Age which was published in the essay collection The Crack Up Mizener 1965 pp 11 129 140 Mizener 1965 pp 30 31 a b Smith 2003 Fitzgerald later confided to his daughter Frances Scott Fitzgerald that Ginevra King was the first girl I ever loved and that he faithfully avoided seeing her to keep the illusion perfect Mizener 1965 p 50 West 2005 p 35 Smith 2003 That August Fitzgerald visited Ginevra in Lake Forest Illinois Afterward he wrote in his ledger foreboding words spoken to him perhaps by Ginevra s father Poor boys shouldn t think of marrying rich girls Mizener 1965 p 70 a b Bruccoli 2002 pp 80 82 Fitzgerald wished to be killed in battle and he hoped that his novel would become a great success in the wake of his death Mizener 1965 pp 79 80 West 2005 p 73 Bruccoli 2002 pp 86 91 Bruccoli 2002 p 91 Mizener 1965 pp 85 89 90 Zelda would question whether he was ever going to make enough money for them to marry and Fitzgerald was compelled to prove that he was rich enough for her Wagner Martin 2004 p 24 Wagner Martin 2004 p 24 Bruccoli 2002 pp 189 437 Turnbull 1962 p 111 Zelda was no housekeeper Sketchy about ordering meals she completely ignored the laundry Mizener 1965 pp 79 82 Mizener 1965 p 87 Fame and fortune did not seem to be materializing on schedule for Fitzgerald and Zelda was fretting her time away in Montgomery wondering if she ought not to marry one of her more eligible and financially better equipped admirers Mizener 1965 p 164 Mizener 1965 pp 135 140 Mizener 1965 pp 140 41 Mizener 1965 p 140 Although Fitzgerald strove to become member of the community of the rich to live from day to day as they did to share their interests and tastes he found such a privileged lifestyle to be morally disquieting a b Mizener 1965 p 141 Fitzgerald admired deeply the rich and yet his wealthy friends often disappointed or repulsed him Consequently he harbored the smouldering hatred of a peasant towards the wealthy and their milieu Lask 1971 The valley of ashes was a landfill in Flushing Meadows Queens In those empty spaces and graying heaps part of which was known as the Corona Dumps Fitzgerald found his perfect image for the callous and brutal betrayal of the incurably innocent Gatsby Flushing Meadows was drained and became the location of the 1939 World s Fair Fitzgerald 1991 pp 39 188 Mizener 1965 p 190 McCullen 2007 pp 11 20 a b c Bruccoli 2002 p 178 Jay Gatsby was inspired in part by a local figure Max Gerlach Near the end of her life Zelda Fitzgerald said that Gatsby was based on a neighbor named Von Guerlach or something who was said to be General Pershing s nephew and was in trouble over bootlegging Kruse 2002 pp 45 46 a b Conor 2004 p 301 Fitzgerald s literary creation Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby was identified with the type of the flapper Her pictorial counterpart was drawn by the American cartoonist John Held Jr whose images of party going flappers who petted in cars frequented the cover of the American magazine Life during the 1920s Corrigan 2014 p 58 Because she s the one who got away Ginevra even more than Zelda is the love who lodged like an irritant in Fitzgerald s imagination producing the literary pearl that is Daisy Buchanan Borrelli 2013 Fitzgerald 1991 p 9 His speaking voice a gruff husky tenor added to the impression of fractiousness he conveyed There was a touch of paternal contempt in it even toward people he liked Slater 1973 p 54 Bruccoli 2000 pp 9 11 246 Baker 2016 Kruse 2014 pp 82 88 a b Bruccoli 2000 pp 9 11 246 Bruccoli 2002 p 86 West 2005 pp 66 70 West 2005 pp 4 57 59 Bruccoli 2002 p 211 West 2005 pp 57 59 Bruccoli 2000 pp 9 11 Whipple 2019 p 85 Fitzgerald 1991 p 184 Editor Matthew J Bruccoli notes This name combines two automobile makes The sporty Jordan and the conservative Baker electric Tredell 2007 p 124 An index note refers to Laurence E MacPhee s The Great Gatsby s Romance of Motoring Nick Carraway and Jordan Baker Modern Fiction Studies 18 Summer 1972 pp 207 212 Fitzgerald 2006 p 95 Fitzgerald 1997 p 184 Fitzgerald 1991 p 23 Fitzgerald 2006 p 18 Tate 2007 p 101 Tredell 2007 p 64 Tredell 2007 pp 54 55 Fitzgerald 1991 pp 28 29 Fitzgerald 2006 p 18 Tate 2007 p 101 Fitzgerald 1991 p 107 Mizener 1965 p 184 a b c d e f g Mizener 1960 Curnutt 2004 p 58 Bruccoli 2002 p 185 Fitzgerald 1963 p 189 Turnbull 1962 p 150 Murphy 2010 From Fall 1922 to Spring 1924 Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda resided at 6 Gateway Drive in Great Neck New York While reflecting upon the wild parties held during the Jazz Age on that slender riotous island Fitzgerald wrote the early story fragments which would become The Great Gatsby a b Bruccoli 2000 pp 38 39 Kellogg 2011 Bruccoli 2000 p 45 Randall 2003 pp 275 277 Kruse 2014 pp 13 14 Biographer Arthur Mizener wrote in a January 1951 letter to Max Gerlach that Edmund Wilson the literary critic told me that Fitzgerald came to his house apparently from yours Gerlach s and told him with great fascination about the life you were leading Naturally it fascinated him as all splendor did a b Kruse 2014 pp 23 24 Kruse 2014 p 20 Kruse 2002 p 51 Kruse 2014 pp 6 20 Kruse 2002 pp 53 54 47 48 63 64 Bruccoli 2002 p 178 Kruse 2002 pp 47 48 Kruse 2014 p 15 Kruse 2014 p 15 Kruse 2002 p 47 Bruccoli 2002 p 178 Kruse 2002 p 60 Kruse 2002 pp 45 83 Bruccoli 2002 p 178 Lopate 2014 Churchwell 2013a pp 1 9 Powers 2013 pp 9 11 West 2002 p xi Bruccoli 2000 pp 53 54 Eble 1974 p 37 Haglund 2013 Fitzgerald 1991 pp xvi xx Fitzgerald 1991 p xxvii Eble 1964 p 325 Bruccoli 2002 p 178 Bruccoli 1978 p 176 a b Alter 2013 Bruccoli 2002 p 190 Fitzgerald wrote in his private ledger Out of woods at last and starting novel a b c Eble 1974 p 37 Flanagan 2000 Leader 2000 pp 13 15 Quirk 1982 p 578 a b Bruccoli 1978 pp 171 172 Quirk 1982 p 578 Harvey 1995 p 76 Marian Forrester then represents the American Dream boldly focused on self almost fully disengaged from the morals and ethics to which it had been tied in the nineteenth century Funda 1995 p 275 Rosowski 1977 p 51 a b c Scribner 1992 pp 145 146 Since there were at most a couple of weeks between the commission and Fitzgerald s departure for France it is likely that what he had seen and written into the book was one or more of Cugat s preparatory sketches which were probably shown to him at Scribners before he set sail a b Scribner 1992 pp 143 144 Bruccoli 2002 p 195 Milford 1970 p 112 Howell 2013 Bruccoli 2002 p 206 a b Perkins 2004 pp 27 30 Eble 1974 p 38 Tate 2007 p 326 Bruccoli 2000 pp 54 56 Bruccoli 2002 p 215 Bruccoli 2002 p 213 Bruccoli 2002 p 215 F Scott Fitzgerald s ledger 1919 1938 Zuckerman 2013 a b c d Mizener 1965 p 185 Bruccoli 2002 pp 206 207 The Economist 2012 a b c d Vanderbilt 1999 p 96 Bruccoli 2002 p 207 West 2002 Fitzgerald 1991 p 88 Chapter 7 opening sentence It was when curiosity about Gatsby was at its highest that the lights in his house failed to go on one Saturday night and as obscurely as it had begun his career as Trimalchio was over Fitzgerald 2000 pp vii viii Tanner s introduction to the Penguin Books edition Hill Burns amp Shillingsburg 2002 p 331 Fitzgerald amp Perkins 1971 p 87 Bruccoli 2002 pp 206 207 Tate 2007 p 87 He settled on The Great Gatsby in December 1924 but in January and March 1925 he continued to express his concern to Perkins about the title cabling from CAPRI on March 19 CRAZY ABOUT TITLE UNDER THE RED WHITE AND BLUE STOP WHART sic WOULD DELAY BE a b c Churchwell 2013b Lipton 2013 Fitzgerald who despised the title The Great Gatsby and toiled for months to think of something else wrote to Perkins that he had finally found one Under the Red White and Blue Unfortunately it was too late to change Lazo 2003 p 75 Bruccoli 2002 pp 215 217 Scribner 1992 pp 141 155 a b Scribner 1992 p 141 Bruccoli 2002 p 202 a b Scribner 1992 pp 140 155 Scribner 1992 p 146 Scribner 1992 pp 148 149 Scribner 1992 pp 149 151 Scribner 1992 pp 149 153 Scribner 1992 p 154 Scribner 1992 pp 145 154 Scribner 1992 pp 143 154 Scribner 1992 p 145 It is entirely conceivable that Fitzgerald had never seen Cugat s final finished artwork a b Scribner 1992 p 142 Scribner 1992 pp 140 155 We are left then with the enticing possibility that Fitzgerald s arresting image was originally prompted by Cugat s fantastic apparitions over the valley of ashes in other words that the author derived his inventive metamorphosis from a recurrent theme of Cugat s trial jackets one which the artist himself was to reinterpret and transform through subsequent drafts Hemingway 1964 p 176 Scott brought his book over It had a garish dust jacket and I remember being embarrassed by the violence bad taste and slippery look of it It looked like the book jacket for a book of bad science fiction Scot told me not to be put off by it that it had to do with a billboard along a highway in Long Island that was important in the story He said he had liked the jacket and now he didn t like it I took it off to read the book a b Bruccoli 2002 p 217 a b O Meara 2002 p 49 Bruccoli 2002 p 217 Bruccoli 2002 p 218 Mizener 1960 Quirk 1982 p 576 Bruccoli 2002 p 217 Mizener 1965 p 193 Clark 1925 Ford 1925 New York Post 1925 New York Herald Tribune 1925 Mencken 1925 p 9 The Great Gatsby is in form no more than a glorified anecdote and not too probable at that The story for all its basic triviality has a fine texture a careful and brilliant finish What gives the story distinction is something quite different from the management of the action or the handling of the characters it is the charm and beauty of the writing Eagleton 1925 Fitzgerald is considered a Roman candle which burned brightly at first but now flares out Coghlan 1925 Snyder 1925 McClure 1925 Fitzgerald 1945 p 270 Letter to Edmund Wilson Bruccoli 2002 p 219 Flanagan 2000 Leader 2000 pp 13 15 Kruse 2002 p 75 O Meara 2002 p 49 a b Bruccoli 2000 p 175 Howell 2013 F Scott Fitzgerald s ledger 1919 1938 a b c Rimer 2008 Donahue 2013b When Gatsby author F Scott Fitzgerald died in 1940 he thought he was a failure Fitzgerald s obituary 1940 The best of his books the critics said was The Great Gatsby When it was published in 1925 this ironic tale of life on Long Island at a time when gin was the national drink and sex the national obsession it received critical acclaim In it Mr Fitzgerald was at his best Mizener 1960 Writers like John O Hara were showing its influence and younger men like Edward Newhouse and Budd Schulberg who would presently be deeply affected by it were discovering it Cole 1984 p 25 Cole 1984 p 26 One hundred fifty five thousand ASE copies of The Great Gatsby were distributed as against the twenty five thousand copies of the novel printed by Scribners between 1925 and 1942 Wittels 1945 Troops showed interest in books about the human mind and books with sexual situations were grabbed up eagerly One soldier said that books with racy passages were as popular as pin up girls Mizener 1960 Verghis 2013 Bruccoli 2002 p 217 Mizener 1960 Verghis 2013 Mizener 1965 Mizener 1965 p 183 Tredell 2007 p 90 Eble 1974 pp 34 45 Batchelor 2013 Menand Louis February 27 2005 Believer The New Yorker Archived from the original on July 1 2014 Retrieved March 26 2023 Ebert 2011 p 304 Hogeback 2016 Lacayo amp Grossman 2010 Burt 2010 Italie 2020 Tredell 2007 pp 89 90 a b Donahue 2013b Alter 2018 Williams 2021 Alberge Dalya February 12 2022 The Great Gapsby How modern editions of classics lost the plot The Guardian Archived from the original on June 12 2023 Retrieved June 12 2023 Kazin 1951 p 189 Bewley 1954 pp 223 224 Pearson 1970 p 638 Fitzgerald was the self appointed spokesman for the Jazz Age a term he takes credit for coining and he gave it its arch high priest and prophet Jay Gatsby in his novel The Great Gatsby a b c Pearson 1970 p 638 Pearson 1970 p 645 Bewley 1954 pp 235 238 For Gatsby Daisy does not exist in herself She is the green light that signals him into the heart of his ultimate vision Thus the American dream whose superstitious valuation of the future began in the past gives the green light through which alone the American returns to his traditional roots paradoxically retreating into the pattern of history while endeavoring to exploit the possibilities of the future Churchwell 2012 Churchwell 2013b Gillespie 2013 Bechtel 2017 p 117 Gillespie 2013 Bechtel 2017 p 117 Churchwell 2013b a b c d Gillespie 2013 Bechtel 2017 p 120 Bechtel 2017 pp 117 128 Drudzina 2006 pp 17 20 Conor 2004 p 209 More than any other type of the Modern Woman it was the Flapper who embodied the scandal which attached to women s new public visibility from their increasing street presence to their mechanical reproduction as spectacles Conor 2004 pp 210 221 Fitzgerald 1945 p 16 Echoes of the Jazz Age The flappers if they get about at all know the taste of gin or corn at sixteen Conor 2004 p 209 a b Person 1978 pp 250 257 a b Person 1978 p 253 Person 1978 pp 250 257 Donahue 2013a a b c Person 1978 p 250 Person 1978 p 256 Bruccoli 2002 p 156 Milford 1970 p 80 Turnbull 1962 p 127 Person 1978 pp 253 256 Slater 1973 p 55 Pekarofski 2012 p 52 Michaels 1995 pp 18 29 Vogel 2015 p 43 Berman 1996 p 33 Slater 1973 p 54 Michaels 1995 p 29 Slater 1973 p 54 Vogel 2015 p 36 Pekarofski 2012 p 52 Michaels 1995 p 29 Pekarofski 2012 p 52 Michaels 1995 pp 18 29 Berman 1996 p 33 Slater 1973 p 53 An obsessive concern with ethnic differences has always been a part of American culture but in some periods this concern has been more intense and explicit than in others The 1920s the time of the reborn Ku Klux Klan immigration restriction legislation and the pseudo scientific racism of Madison Grant and Lothrop Stoddard was one of the periods when concern about ethnicity was most evident on the surface of national life Vogel 2015 p 38 a b Vogel 2015 p 45 Vogel 2015 p 40 Slater 1973 p 54 Pekarofski 2012 p 52 a b Slater 1973 p 56 Vogel 2015 p 41 Vogel 2015 pp 29 30 33 38 40 51 The Great Gatsby resonates more in the present than it ever did in the Jazz Age and the work speaks in strikingly familiar terms to the issues of our time especially since its themes are inextricably woven into questions of race ethnicity gender and sexuality Vogel 2015 pp 38 40 Fessenden 2005 p 28 Fitzgerald s career records the ambient dogging pressure to repel charges of his own homosexuality a b Bruccoli 2002 p 284 According to biographer Matthew J Bruccoli author Robert McAlmon and other contemporaries in Paris publicly asserted that Fitzgerald was a homosexual and Hemingway later avoided Fitzgerald due to these rumors Milford 1970 p 154 Kerr 1996 p 417 Fessenden 2005 p 28 Biographers describe Fay as a fin de siecle aesthete of considerable appeal a dandy always heavily perfumed who introduced the teenaged Fitzgerald to Oscar Wilde and good wine Fessenden 2005 p 28 Bruccoli 2002 p 275 If Fay was a homosexual as has been asserted without proof Fitzgerald was presumably unaware of it Fessenden 2005 p 30 Mizener 1965 p 60 In February he put on his Show Girl make up and went to a Psi U dance at the University of Minnesota with his old friend Gus Schurmeier as escort He spent the evening casually asking for cigarettes in the middle of the dance floor and absent mindedly drawing a small vanity case from the top of a blue stocking a b Fessenden 2005 p 33 Milford 1970 p 183 Fitzgerald amp Fitzgerald 2002 p 65 Bruccoli 2002 p 275 Zelda extended her attack on Fitzgerald s masculinity by charging that he was involved in a homosexual liaison with Hemingway Fessenden 2005 pp 32 33 Bruccoli 2002 p 275 a b Kerr 1996 p 406 Turnbull 1962 p 259 Fessenden 2005 p 31 The novel includes some queer energies to be sure we needn t revisit the more gossipy strains of Fitzgerald biography to note that it s Nick who delivers the sensuous goods on Gatsby from beginning to end Kazin 1951 p 202 Paulson 1978 p 326 Friedrich 1960 p 394 Kerr 1996 p 406 It was in the 1970s that readers first began to address seriously the themes of gender and sexuality in The Great Gatsby a few critics have pointed out the novel s bizarre homoerotic leitmotif Vogel 2015 p 34 Kerr 1996 pp 412 414 Kerr 1996 pp 409 411 Vogel 2015 p 34 Lisca 1967 pp 20 21 Paulson 1978 p 329 Wasiolek 1992 pp 20 21 Vogel 2015 pp 31 51 Among the most significant contributions of The Great Gatsby to the present is its intersectional exploration of identity these themes are inextricably woven into questions of race ethnicity gender and sexuality Paulson 1978 p 329 Commenting upon Nick s sexual confusion A B Paulson remarked in 1978 that the novel is about identity about leaving home and venturing into a world of adults about choosing a profession about choosing a sexual role to play as well as a partner to love it is a novel that surely appeals on several deep levels to the problems of adolescent readers Keeler 2018 pp 174 188 Marx 1964 pp 358 362 364 Little 2015 pp 3 26 Marx 1964 pp 358 364 Marx 1964 p 358 Marx 1964 p 362 a b c Marx 1964 pp 363 364 Mizener 1965 p 190 Marx 1964 p 363 Turnbull 1962 p 46 In those days the contrasts between East and West between city and country between prep school and high school were more marked than they are now and correspondingly the nuances of dress and manners were more noticeable a b c d e Keeler 2018 p 174 a b Krystal 2015 Fitzgerald 1991 p liv Fitzgerald 1991 p 148 a b c Berrin 2013 Krystal 2015 Bruccoli 2000 p 29 Mizener 1965 p 186 Bruccoli 2002 p 179 Mizener 1965 p 186 Bruccoli 2000 p 29 Hindus 1947 Hindus 1947 Berrin 2013 Playbill 1926 Reproduction of original program at the Ambassador Theatre in 1926 Tredell 2007 pp 93 95 Skinner 2006 Brantley 2010 Stevens 1999 Grossberg 2009 Kaufman 2011 Aguirre 2011 Heckmann Ann Marie July 25 2023 Jeremy Jordan amp Eva Noblezada to Star in Paper Mill Playhouse s World Premiere of The Great Gatsby a New Musical Paper Mill Playhouse Archived from the original on July 30 2023 Retrieved July 30 2023 Full cast announced for Great Gatsby musical with Jeremy Jordan and Eva Noblezada September 6 2023 Archived from the original on October 27 2023 Retrieved November 13 2023 The Great Gatsby s Jeremy Jordan and Eva Noblezada Tease How the Page to Stage Musical Will Come Alive on Broadway The Great Gatsby Begins Performances on Broadway March 29 www playbill com Archived from the original on April 18 2024 Retrieved April 18 2024 Gatsby at A R T americanrepertorytheater org Archived from the original on July 30 2023 Retrieved July 30 2023 Dixon 2003 a b Howell 2013 Hischak 2012 pp 85 86 a b Dixon 2003 Hischak 2012 pp 85 86 Giardina 2021 Hyatt 2006 pp 49 50 a b Hischak 2012 pp 85 86 Howell 2013 Flood Alison July 15 2020 The Great Gatsby prequel set for release days after copyright expires The Guardian Archived from the original on July 12 2022 Retrieved July 12 2022 Wick Jessica June 6 2021 This Retelling Of Gatsby Has Demonic Flair To Spare NPR Archived from the original on July 12 2022 Retrieved July 12 2022 Grossman Mary Ann October 30 2021 Readers and writers Poet gives Jay Gatsby a new gay life with Nick Carraway in debut novel Twin Cities Pioneer Press Archived from the original on July 26 2022 Retrieved July 27 2022 Cerezo Arvyn September 16 2022 Longlists Announced for 2022 National Book Awards Archived from the original on October 5 2022 Retrieved October 5 2022 Gurdon 2021 Pitts 1986 p 127 White 2007 Forrest 2012 Benedetti 2010 Paskin 2010 Bell 2011 Crouch 2011 The Great Gatsby for NES greatgatsbygame com Archived from the original on April 27 2022 Retrieved April 1 2022 Hoey Charlie Lots of false leads over the past 11 years but we FINALLY tracked down an actual ROM dump for The Great Gatsby Game Enjoy Twitter Archived from the original on April 1 2022 Retrieved April 1 2022 Smith Peter 11 years ago today flimshaw and I launched our hit Flash game The Great Gatsby for NES Today we re launching it again as an 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